Who needs Soft Skills? From the book-in-progress: Soft Skills, Hard Results.
Pretty much everyone uses or needs soft skills.
Even those who focus on results and getting things done. And especially those who lead with their head. Analytical, logical and rationale has worked fine, up to now. The world and business have changed and will continue to be uncertain and complex.
My soon-to-be-book-reader feels they should, or have been told, to engage, motivate and inspire their teams more. This means they’d benefit from leading more from their heart (emotional, collaborative, and vulnerable).
Now they face the challenges of:
– rising inter-generational differences with millennials in the workforce,
– increasing stress and emotions of and among staff,
– needing to stand out from their colleagues,
– trying to achieve more with less,
– wanting to feel confident/comfortable in their interpersonal interactions, and
– addressing feedback they may have received that they deliver results but could be warmer, use more people skills or be more empathetic.
Soft skills aren’t fluffy. The cost of underdeveloped people skills is lost productivity.
Soft skills fall within the realm of Emotional Intelligence. EI is the ability to know one’s emotions, managing them and to understand the emotions in other people in order to manage relationships with others. The English Oxford Living Dictionary defines it as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
What aspect of soft skills would serve you to improve?
[Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Bloomsbury Publishing 1996]
