I enjoy golfing. It’s a good thing too, because I’m not very good at it. I always feel like I could do better. The personal challenge to want to do better is motivating.

The other day I happen to see a highlight (actually a lowlight) of Tiger hitting a shot out of a 3 foot high rough onto the side of a hill for a raised green, into another 3 foot high rough. It was probably one of Tiger’s worst shots in his professional career. I’ll bet when Tiger hit that crappy shot, he didn’t say, oh darn this titanium shaft, or bugger-all my 100% leather shoes. He said, I’m going to practice that shot on the range tomorrow until I get it right.

There are a thousand different golf skills to master. As a rule, I practice 3 golf skills at a time, master those, and move onto the next 3. If I can get down a dozen skills in a year, that’s goodness. The same goes for being an SE. There are a thousand different skills to master. Master a few at a time, and then move onto the next few.

We as SEs spend 90% of our training time learning product features, tools, bits and bytes, speeds and feeds, knobs and dials. As SEs, do we need to be technically competent? You bet. Do we need to be obsessive about it in order to achieve fast and efficient solution decisions? Absolutely Not! Yet, the corporate powers that be continue to throw tons of technical training at us, and barely a lick of soft skills training.

Do you know who Hank Haney is? He is Tiger’s coach. Yes, Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer ever, relies heavily on his coach and tirelessly practices his technique to continually improve his game. He doesn’t obsess over the technical specifications of the equipment he uses. As an SE, why should we be any different?

Like Tiger, we should spend 90% of our time learning how to swing, how to hold the club, how to stand, how to pivot, how to, how to, how to — and practice the heck out of those skills so we hit 90% of our fairways and two-putt 90% of our greens.

Of course, let’s make sure we understand and use the right equipment, but much more importantly, let’s make sure we learn and study and practice how to be the best SE that we can be. For an SE, this means a) there is always room for improvement, and b) the large majority of our training time should be for soft skills improvement, not understanding equipment features.

Put in a word with the corporate powers that be — perhaps they should re-assess their training priorities for SEs.

Good SElling!