What determines superior performance?  What makes a prime candidate?  If you were to pick just one skill, what would it be?

TTI’s soft skills assessments have allowed us to look at personal skills in a new light, and the picture of talent in today’s workplace is becoming clearer than ever before.  After looking at research in several areas, we firmly believe that personal accountability is at the top on the list of ideal soft skills.

With personal accountability, people will likely be able to acquire additional skills vital to superior performance. This notion seems to be one of logic, as personally accountable people are responsible for their actions and will do what it takes to accomplish success.  On the flip side, those who have other skills, but are lacking personal accountability, will likely find it much harder to maintain their skills in the workplace.

In fact, we have found that those who show strength in the skill of personal accountability will often times bring several other skills to the table, including:

• Management/leadership
• Decision Making
• Goal Orientation
• Persuasion
• Negotiation
• Conflict Management

Unfortunately, even though personal accountability seems to be the number one skill to have, it does not seem to be easily achieved.  Of the 23 skills we measure, personal accountability has one of the two lowest means.  This shows that less people in our research of the average population show personal accountability as a component of their skill set.  Seem shocking?  Then again, if all of the people who claimed to be personally accountable actually were, the world might be a much different place.