The Attributes (25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance)

Anyone can learn a skill. But not everyone has the right attributes to succeed. The former head of the Navy SEAL training program explains, after years of observing SEAL candidates pass through or wash out of the rigorous testing process, why we get recruiting, success, and personal growth all wrong-- and shows you how to do it right.

What would you do if you were lost in a foreign country with no language skills and no transportation? Or if your five-year-old had just raced onto a subway train that took off in the opposite direction? It's in these moments of acute stress that your attributes, not your skills, make the difference between success and failure.
     During his twenty years as a Navy SEAL, including thirteen as an officer in charge of training, Commander Rich Diviney was intimately involved in the world-renowned SEAL selection process, which whittles a group of exceptional candidates down to a small cadre of the most elite optimal performers. But Diviney was often surprised by which recruits washed out and which succeeded. Someone could have all the right skills and background and still fail, while recruits he might have initially dismissed would prove to be top performers. The external standards, the seemingly objective criteria, weren't telling him what he most needed to know: Who could be part of the world's most elite military unit?
    Eventually, he cracked the code. Through years of observation, Diviney learned to identify a successful recruit's core attributes, the innate traits that help explain how a person performs as an individual and as part of a team. That same methodology can be used by anyone in their personal or professional lives.
    The attributes--condensed here to the most important, including cunning, adaptability, even narcissism--are defined in fresh and surprising ways, and Diviney shows how they can be applied to a team as readily as a person. He tells the story of an advertising executive who lands a huge account and puts together a dream-team of talent, only to watch them fail miserably. Why? Diviney explains how teammates can complement or consternate each other--and shows how understanding your own attributes and those of the people around you can create optimal performance in all areas of your life.