Grading research ability

Female Science Professor writes on a topic close to my own heart today: A-grade versus B-grade students and whether grade quality translates into researcher quality.  The general thrust of her argument is that it does not - some top students make poor researchers and some second-rate students make good researchers.

I'm biased here.  My control freak streak has meant that my academic past is strewn with As, first-class honours, distinctions, etc. and I'd like to think that I'm also a good researcher.  I don't find it easy to separate the two.

I always did well in English and other written expression, which is invaluable when trying to convert a complex dataset into a clear and persuasive theory of how a particular process in the mind or brain operates.  I also always did well at Maths, Science and technical things, which means I'm not afraid to wrestle said datasets into coherent submission.  My undergrad project was both collaborative and huge in scope, so even tenacity and teamwork were at some point graded.  Most of the skills and abilities that are useful to my research were formally assessed (even if in nascent form) during some part of my formal education.

So what's left?  What do I need as a researcher that was never graded as an undergrad?

• Creativity?  Being able to come up with good studies, and good lines of research, that are more than just incremental developments of someone else's work.  Being able to see through unexpected patterns in results to deduce what processes might be bringing them about.  My PhD was the first time I had to build these skills and the zen-like feeling of being one with the data is possibly unquantifiable.  Unless you give me an fMRI machine.

• Multitasking?  Dealing with planning research, writing grants, reviewing grants, creating studies, designing experiments, developing stimuli, training research assistants, supervising research assistants, collecting data, analysing data, interpreting data, reading papers, writing papers, reviewing papers, sitting on committees, going to research group meetings, organising events, giving talks, going to talks, brainstorming ideas with collaborators, designing courses, writing lectures, creating assignments/exams, giving lectures, marking assignments/exams, creating student projects, supervising students, tutoring students, giving pastoral care to students, recruiting PhD students, advising PhD students, examining student theses...  At times, I fit in eating and sleeping.

Now that I think of it, these last two qualities are possibly the most important.  I can easily imagine FSP's "A-grade students who make crap researchers" being clingy and anxious because they lack these qualities.  Equally, the B-grade students who make great researchers might have these qualities in buckets, even if they lack more classical academic ability.

So...  

Wanted: Research Assistant for busy psychological science lab.  Must be able to generate ideas from nothing and juggle up to 20 roles per day.  Grades unimportant.