When I started talking about the importance of soft skills and introducing the topic in 2008, I often received a very negative reaction. They were looked at with derision. They were too warm, fuzzy, and too delicate for professionals. They encompassed too much of the “feminine” to be of value in the tough world of business. It was also seen that they de-professionalized and devalued what professionals were close to and wanted.
However, when a topic begins to be discussed in places as prestigious as the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times, we must pay attention. When business schools around the world start adding programs on this topic to their curriculum, we need to take a serious look. When, every day, Google produces blogs, question-and-answer forums, news, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews with prominent leaders and managers, and podcasts on this very subject, my conviction was strengthened that Soft Skills is a topic whose time has arrived. . However, many people still ask me: what exactly are soft skills?
Definition of “Soft Skills”.
The first thing I want to say is that they are much more than people skills. Most people boil it down to that: the ability to communicate well with other people, to be liked by other people, good interpersonal skills in other words. If only it were that simple. We could teach people how to do that. It’s Dale Carnegie’s approach to “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
In my book, Soft Skills-The Hard Stuff of Success, I give my definition of soft skills. They are “the skills we use to develop, change, reshape, or improve our personality, behavior, attitudes, and mindset so that we can achieve the results we want in our professional (and personal) lives.”
These four aspects of ourselves are what attract or repel people. If they like the way we relate to them, our way of thinking, share the same attitudes towards life and work as they do, and have similar behavior patterns to us, they will want to be around us. They will want to work with us, have us as part of their professional network, and may even want to collaborate with us in joint ventures or partnerships.
On the other hand, if there is little resonance between us and them, if we rub them the wrong way, if we don’t agree on anything, no relationship will form. For example, if we have a confrontational personality or a laissez-faire attitude to meeting deadlines, a black or white mentality on most issues, and behave unprofessionally, we will have a hard time getting promoted in most jobs. organizations today.
We need to understand our own personality and how we meet others. Do we have a negative or positive personality? Are we proactive or reactive? We need to be aware of our behavior, the way we speak and act, dress and groom ourselves. Is our behavior appropriate for the situations we find ourselves in? Is our mindset fixed and rigid, black and white, or is it open and flexible? Do we have a famine mindset always focused on deficits and scarcity, or do we have a growth mindset focused on abundance? However, the most important thing is that those people who lack well-developed soft skills realize their lack; otherwise, they won’t be able to do anything about it.
I recently heard someone say, “As long as I’m still doing good work for the organization (ie technical work), Smoocher is out there sucking the boss. He doesn’t have anywhere near the qualifications I have, but then he gets the ascent”. What “Smoocher” is probably doing is managing, which is a very important soft skill to develop. He is getting to know his boss and his goals and aspirations for the organization. He knows that if he’s going to advance in the organization, he needs to be on the same page as his boss. He needs his boss to know him, love him and trust him. He is aligning his goals with those of the organization in order to help implement the organization’s vision. His boss is probably realizing that “Smoocher” is someone he wants on his team because he’s aligned. “Sucking” is a very derisive term and certainly not what “Smoocher” is doing.
Many people like this complainer are baffled that they don’t get the opportunities and promotions they want because they haven’t realized that they need to spend as much time developing and improving their non-technical skills as they do their technical qualifications. If you are very logical and rational with a strong technical bent, this is not easy to do. And that’s why soft skills are actually very hard skills. It’s not easy to look at ourselves and recognize that we need to change and do something different and take responsibility for that. Being able to do that is all about developing self-awareness.
- What do I need to change in myself? personality to get where I want to go? Is there something in the way I relate to people that is keeping me from getting where I want to go? Be brave enough to ask your manager or a trusted colleague.
- Ask the same about your conduct. Am I acting like the leader I want to be? Did I meet and interact well with those people at that function I attended on behalf of the organization?
- Do I have a “can I do” attitude to my work? Do I make a discretionary effort? Or is my attitude too laissez-faire and light-hearted?
- I have a mentality who can embrace these changing times, uncertainty and unpredictability? Or am I anxious and scared below the surface and try to stay in control of everything to the point of micromanaging myself and others?
Being able to ask and answer these questions is about self-awareness, which is an essential soft skill to develop. In fact, it is now considered one of the most important soft skills for leaders and aspiring leaders and why the best MBA courses and graduate business courses have interactive programs that take participants through a process to develop his self-awareness.
You cannot develop and improve your soft skills alone.
The first important step to take is to realize that we cannot change these aspects of our personality, behavior, attitudes or way of thinking alone. We would have done it already if we could have. We all have blind spots that create barriers to our success. We need to get a coach, mentor, performance partner or join a Mastermind group to take us to the next level.
Get a trainer.
We are all aware of what coaches do on sports teams, or what they do for elite athletes. They enhance their strengths and help them work on their weaknesses. They build them up, get them physically and mentally fit, motivate and inspire them. The most successful always attribute much of their success to their coach. A leadership development coach works the same way. You set your goals. They help you reach them. They help you empower them. They often help you discover talent and potential you never knew you had. BUT, you have to do the work. Most trainers are paid. Some work session by session, but most work in packages of a number of sessions and set goals are committed to being met within that time frame. Coaching is very solution focused.
Get a mentor.
Mentors are the side guide rather than the sage on stage. They walk the path with you and share their experience so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel at every turn. A mentor is preferable to a coach when you feel quite focused, you feel that your soft skills are well developed but maybe you are being challenged in the position you are in. He is struggling, for example, with the uncertainty and unpredictability of today’s changing times. You feel insecure about yourself, but you have clear goals and aspirations. You know where you want to go, just by hitting some brick walls right now. A good mentor will be able to identify with you and know where you are because he or she has probably been there himself at some point in his or her career. They can motivate and inspire you through this stage. They can be a voice of empowerment. They may put your mind at ease, but again, they won’t do the work for you. Mentors can come from your organization or from another organization. They are more experienced people who you admire for the soft skills they have. Some mentors are paid; some without paying. Many larger organizations have mentoring programs within. The mentoring relationship is usually more informal than the coaching relationship and does not necessarily involve a regular meeting. They are there when you need them.
Get a performance partner.
A performance partner is a colleague inside or outside your own organization, and could even be someone in another industry with whom you meet regularly. It has to be someone you respect and trust and whose personality, behavior, attitudes, and mindset resonate with yours. The purpose of the relationship is to help each other improve their performance. Share with each other what you want to change. In a sense, you are mentors to each other. You ask good questions that challenge each other to think differently about the way you do things. You share your experience with others. There is no rate change here.
Join/Form a Mastermind group.
This is a high performance group, comprised of people with clear goals and an absolute commitment to give whatever it takes to be the best they can be. They meet regularly for a certain period of time, for example, from 6 to 12 months. People in a mastermind group aren’t waiting for someone else to do it for them. They are very prepared to do that, but they want some direction. For this reason, these groups are often led by someone with skills in the area they want to grow in and good facilitation skills. This person is usually paid. Sometimes these groups work very effectively with a rotating leadership model within the group and therefore do not involve a fee for an external facilitator. So if you want to speed up your career and feel like it’s your soft skills that are holding you back, reach out and be brave enough to get the support you need to get there. While it may be difficult at first to make the changes, rest assured, it becomes a very exciting journey as you grow and change and great things begin to happen to you.
- You gain enormous confidence in yourself.
- You can enter any new situation with a minimum of anxiety, if any.
- In crisis situations, you can maintain an authoritative presence, be in control, reassure people, and remain committed to working collaboratively to find a solution. In other words, you are very resilient and can bounce back from adversity.
- You become naturally positive and proactive most of the time. That’s why people like to be around you and work with you.
- You can relate to all kinds of people, even people you’ve never met before, and have them respond positively to you.
All of these qualities make you an ideal person to motivate and inspire others, and if you are an aspiring leader, your leadership potential becomes apparent. If you are already in leadership, you become someone who will go much further.