Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success?

Chapter 6. Matching Tasks to People’s Executive Skills

ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND a person’s strongest and weakest Executive Skills, you can begin to figure out in which situations they would be most likely to succeed. People are likely to do best in a situation where the task requires high use of their strongest Executive Skills, just as they are likely to fail in situations that require high use of their weakest skills. In other words, the person and task are either a good or a bad fit for each other. Knowing this, you can figure out—in advance—whether a certain job or position will be most suited to a particular individual. And when the Executive Skills of a job are a total mismatch with a person in that job, it can be predicted that the person will ...