Rookie Mistakes: Prioritizing Technical over Soft Skills

January 11, 2025

A rookie mistake is thinking your technical proficiency is more important than your soft skills.

I have been in Production in Vancouver’s animation industry for a decade now. And while our industry is ever-volatile, one thing that has remained true and consistent is that those in leadership positions almost always prefer to hire someone for attitude rather than skills if they have the choice to. A rookie mistake, therefore, is thinking your technical proficiency is more important and valuable than your soft skills.

Some Production staff think it is enough to be a wiz with google sheet formulas, Shotgrid/flow, or whatever shot and asset-tracking software your team uses. Even strong knowledge of your studio’s pipeline or technical problem solving is not enough. You can’t advance through Production on mere technical skill alone. You must have good soft skills as well.

This belief extends well beyond animation. Renowned basketball coach, Coach K identifies a few key points below throughout his book Leading with the Heart:

Recruit great individuals who are willing to be part of a team and who are coachable (p.18, Chapter One: Getting Organized)
Don’t hire people solely on their technical merits. Consider whether they can work in a team environment
Communication skills are just as important as technical skills.
Always search for the communicator on the team (last three points all from p.84, Chapter 5: Teamwork)

From Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life by Mike Krzyzewski with Donald T. Phillips

Remember, we work with artists and clients. Shotgrid/Flow and Google, Excel–these are just tools we use to get our job done, much like our artists use nuke, maya, katana, etc. The shot comes to life with the artistry they apply.

Similarly for us in Production or management, our technical prowess is only going to get us so far before it becomes abundantly obvious that something is missing. In my opinion and experience, I personally find Production staff who love working with Shotgrid/Flow more than artists, or who identify as a numbers person are a red flag.

If you love numbers, go be an accountant. If you like working with a software, go work in software or tech. We manage people and artists, using data and tools like excel to support our work, it is not the work itself.

Over the years I have had many conversations with people at all levels of management and leadership positions, both with creative supervisors, Directors, and Production staff, and it's pretty unanimous that we’d take someone with a good attitude over technical proficiency any day.

You can teach things like Shotgrid, Google, Microsoft Office. It is much more challenging to coach someone into attitudinal and behavioural changes, which is why having a good attitude in the first place is so important.