# Transferable Skills By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-03-04 There are two types of skills. The first is non-transferable skills. For example, one can spend many years becoming good at the sport of curling. You might be the greatest curler, but this skill does not transfer to many other things. Perhaps you could become an expert bowler, but being a top 1% curler does not mean you could become a top 1% business executive. The second is transferable skills. Examples include communication, thinking, discipline, and relationship building. Becoming an expert in these skills allows one to be more agile and flexible in many situations. Being able to communicate effectively is valuable in almost every situation. These two types of skills are not mutually exclusive and often go hand-in-hand. Becoming the best curler in the world likely required being highly skilled in discipline, but it could be that they are just naturally good at curling, and what we think is discipline is just them doing what they love. If you put them in a 9 to 5 job, suddenly the expected discipline is gone. We make this mistake all the time. We wrongly infer that someone with a high level of non-transferable skill must be high at transferable ones. Rich people must be good thinkers instead of lucky and ruthless. Famous actors must be excellent communicators instead of good-looking and expert liars. People with impressive resumes must be good employees and managers, etc. Our brains build false equivalencies and make many assumptions when we see someone highly skilled at a specific, non-transferable skill. We believe they must have other transferable skills that will make them successful in something else. The challenge is to see beyond this and take a minute to think. While the heuristics in your brain are there for a reason, it does not mean it is always right. Initial impressions are just initial impressions. Look for transferable skills that matter and ignore the gold medal and fancy diploma after the first 5 seconds. #### Related Items [[Skills]] [[Thinking]] [[People]] [[Hiring]]