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Let's stop calling them 'soft skills'
Making a business thrive
Specific vocational skills are essential - coders should be able to code, salespeople should be able to sell. But, we also need soft skills. By only focusing on the seemingly essential skills, we've reduced the value of the skills that actually matter.
What separates thriving organizations from struggling ones is the "soft" skills. These skills are not negotiable.
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IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
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Key Ideas
Ignoring soft skills
Organizations know how to measure vocational skills. They know how to measure typing skills for example. However, they are less able to measure passion or commitment.
Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output. But, getting rid of a negative thinker or a bully is much more difficult. An employee that demoralizes an entire team is hampering productivity.
Soft skills
If you've got the vocational skills, you're of little help without the human skills. The soft skills, or rather real skills, can't replace vocational skills, but amplify the things you've already been measuring.
For instance, a team member with all the traditional vocational skills is the baseline. Add to that perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring, motivated, deep listener, and you have a team member that will benefit the organization in exponential ways.
Being people-focused
69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees.
How does one build organizations that are people-focused, while acknowledging that nearly 70% of managers find communication with their employees uncomfortable?
Categories of Real Skills
- Self Control: Persisting in doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short term.
- Productivity: The ability to use insights, and the commitment to move things forward.
- Wisdom: Learning things that are difficult to glean from a manual.
- Perception: Having the experience and the practice to see the world clearly.
- Influence: Develop the skills you need to persuade others to take action.
Self-control skills
- Adaptability to changing requirements
- Authenticity and consistent behavior
- Bouncing back from failure
- Coach-ability
- Collaborative mindset
- Compassion for those in need
- Competitiveness
- Emotional intelligence
- Motivation to take on new challenges
- Risk-taking
- Stress management
Productivity
- Crisis management skills
- Decision making with effectiveness
- Delegation for productivity
- Diligence and attention to detail
- Facilitation of discussion
- Goal-setting skills
- Innovative problem-solving techniques
- Lateral thinking
- Meeting hygiene
- Planning for projects.
Wisdom
- Artistic sense and good taste
- Conflict resolution instincts
- Creativity in the face of challenges
- Critical thinking instead of mere compliance
- Dealing with difficult people
- Diplomacy in difficult situations
- Empathy for customers, co-workers and vendors
- Intercultural competence
- Mentoring
- Social skills
- Supervising with confidence
Influence
- Ability to deliver clear and useful criticism
- Assertiveness on behalf of ideas that matter
- Body language (reading and delivering)
- Dispute resolution skills
- Inspiring to others
- Interpersonal skills
- Leadership
- Negotiation and sales skills
- Networking and presentation skills
- Reframing
- Talent management and team building.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
3
Key Ideas
Don't take credit
Bad leaders take credit for the good things and pin any blame for bad things to others.
Good leaders let the credit go to the team and team members. They only call attention to themselves wh...
Don't call attention to yourself
Your task is to help your team and team members do good work. You should understand that the mission is important, not you.
As a leader, you’re just there to make things work better.
Your coaching style
Coaching should be your primary tool in leading. If your coaching sessions seem more like you’re the therapist and your team member the patient, you’re doing it wrong.
Your team members should pay attention to how it will be different in the future.
4
Key Ideas
The wrong questions
Some questions are too easy to fake, for example, "What's your greatest weakness?" Other questions like brainteasers reveal more about the manager than the candidate.
Behaviora...
The wrong criteria
Some managers favor candidates who went to the same school. There's also evidence that African-American sounding names, birthmarks, being pregnant, and being overweight puts candidates at a disadvantage.
To overcome this bias, identify the key skills and values in advance, then create a standard set of behavioral and situational questions to ask every candidate. Doing this can triple the manager's accuracy in predicting job performance.
Favoring the best talkers
College seniors often stretch the truth in interviews to make a better impression. Be aware that when you meet someone for the first time, you meet their representative.
An antidote could include to let them showcase their skills by collecting a work sample. It might be a project they've done in the past or a live simulation of the job in real-time.
one more idea
3
Key Ideas
Why We Judge Others
There are many ways we choose to measure the value of our own lives, be it money or popularity of family or good deeds.
The way you measure yourself is how you measure others, and how you ...
Judging Mindfully
Traits we will not tolerate within ourselves, we will not tolerate in others. It is a choice we make. We should make those choices consciously and not without thinking.
It’s why corrupt officials choose to be corrupt: because they assume everyone else is as corrupt as they are. It’s why cheaters choose to cheat. It’s why those who can’t trust are the ones who can’t be trusted.
Recognize our own fixation
Recognize how you measure yourself and consciously choose your metric. Also, realize that everyone has their own criteria that will not be the same as yours.