The Science Behind
Developing High Performance
High Performance Is Not An Accident
It is only possible when you master specific cognitive, psychological, and interpersonal skills. Futures Forge engineers environments to build them.
What Science Tells Us About Learning & Performance
For decades, academic and industry research has aligned on the core skills that lead to the best career outcomes in complex professions. These skills are consistent across industries and job functions, yet most graduates leave school without them.
Research and experience confirm four key points:
1. A small number of skills predict job performance, career growth, and even long-term health and happiness.
2. Executive leaders consistently struggle to find recruits with these skills.
3. The most valuable jobs of the future demand abstract, complex skills over narrow technical competencies.
4. Conventional education rarely teaches these skills directly.
Prof Frank Schmidt’s 100-year meta-study on selection methods for employment launched our journey to understand how different attributes contribute to job performance and career success. We found that the field of Organizational Psychology has very consistently shown which attributes, skills, and other measurable aspects of a person matter most, and which don’t matter at all, in predicting future job performance and career success.
Measured variability in these attributes accounts for over 80% of the observed difference in job productivity and performance between equally intelligent workers. That’s why they matter.
Business leaders will intuitively understand the value of these attributes in employees, venture capitalists will understand their value in entrepreneurs, and college recruiters will understand that recruits who can demonstrate these skills will stand out upon graduation.
The 12 Skills That Drive Performance
Measured differences in these skills explain most of the performance variation between equally intelligent workers, especially in complex roles:
1. Self-Awareness
2. Critical Thinking
3. Effective Communication
4. Collaboration
5. Digital Literacy
6. Integrity
Each one delivers measurable improvements to performance, regardless of industry.
Sources:
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). "The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings." Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262–274 (and Schmidt, 2016)
Rafilson, “Development of a Standardized Measure to Predict Employee Productivity,” 1988.
7. Autonomous Motivation
8. Conscientiousness
9. Perseverance
10. Adaptability
11. Resilience
12. Emotional Intelligence
From Industry: What Skills Are Most Sought by Business Leaders Now and In The Future
Our research found that the 12 high performance skills are highly sought after by executive leaders when recruiting employees for high-complexity jobs. As a general summary, our research found 8 core performance skills that are highly sought after by executive leaders when recruiting employees for high-complexity and high-income jobs. To develop this list, we used surveys conducted by academics, NGOs, and firms such as McKinsey and PwC, as well as our own experience in hiring. We have found broad agreement in both the generalities and particulars.
We define these “most sought” skills in this way: those that are both highly desirable and very difficult to find. These skills have substantial overlap with the attributes identified by academic research. These are the skills we teach.
For example, 75% of surveyed CEOs said that critical thinking was one of the top 5 skills they recruit for, and that 70% of entry-level employees arrive with insufficient critical skills to succeed in their role. And it’s no surprise: a large 2011 study using the Collegiate Learning Assessment showed that nearly 50% of college students did not improve their critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills at all in the first 2 years of college; after 4 years, 36% had made no improvements.
The World Economic Forum and McKinsey both conducted their own extensive studies on what skills would be most required for the high-value jobs of the future. We found that almost all of the “skills of the future” have complete overlap with the skills that top employers need now. This is not surprising: the technical competencies for a given task or set of tasks (even complex tasks such as engineering or surgery) will be ever-changing as new technology radically alters ways of working. But this process of evolution is not new. Most professionals are constantly learning new technical competencies for new tasks, and this pace will only accelerate. There appears to be general agreement that employees with the below skills and attributes will be able to learn the necessary technical competencies for their evolving careers without significant difficulty.
Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. 2011.
20th CEO Survey of Global Talent. PWC.
“9 things we learnt from our recent roundtable on ‘Preparing students for university and the workplace’ “ Eton College, 05 May, 2023.
“These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow – and how long it takes to learn them.” World Economic Forum, 21 October, 2020.
“Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work.” McKinsey & Co., 25 June, 2021.
Bernard Marr, Future Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World.
These Skills Can Be Learned
Recent science has shown that all of these skills, including psychological traits like conscientiousness, can be significantly developed in young adults. The process is clear:
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Understand the skill and its behaviors
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See its real-world value
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Apply it in challenging situations
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Receive targeted feedback and coaching
Catalytic Learning: The Pedagogy for Performance
Futures Forge uses challenge-driven, peer-matched learning proven to build high-performance skills faster than traditional education. Decades of research show that our approach:
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Boosts performance – Students with high intrinsic motivation see GPA gains of up to 1.0 compared to peers, driven by competitive, self-directed challenges.
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Improves retention – Active learning increases long-term knowledge retention by 14% and reduces failure rates by over 30% in rigorous subjects.
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Accelerates mastery – Immediate feedback and rapid iteration cycles lead to 10x faster skill growth than semester-based courses.
This is the same science-backed system elite organizations use to train their top performers.