A meeting with a client recently got me thinking around soft skills capability, which we have been hearing a lot about from our client base – corporate, government and small businesses all working to different agendas but all needing strong capability with their people’s soft skills.
What do I mean by “soft skills”?
These are intangible and difficult to measure. Measurement would usually rely upon “perception” of the person measuring it. They are core skill sets that sit at the opposite end of commercial capability and could be also classed as “cultural skills”.
This is most commonly seen most audibly by the communication skills, interpersonal skills and relationships of your people. Usually less obvious is the values, the feelings, the beliefs, and the energy that drive them.
Yes – they always aren’t deliverables in themselves, however they are the method by which the deliverables get delivered. The approach. The words. The body language. The tone. The energetic delivery (or otherwise). They are the method by which we often assume our people have capability in, -but can be far from it.
Not many University degrees offer training in this area. Yes they might assess presentation skills and specialised communication degrees might delve deeper. But mostly they will focus in on the technical or specialist information that sits within the delivery. More on the content, less on the person. Yet the capability of our people and how well they can master the art of their approach and their manner (ie their soft skills) is often where their greatest value will lie, or greatest encumbrance.
Have you ever heard someone talking about a staff member they are trying to replace, not stating difficulty in replacing their technical skill, but expressing something to the effect of not being able to match anyone like employee “John” – “they have his technical capability but they just lack that special thing that John had about him – the way he dealt with clients and built relationships, the way he put people at ease, the way he handled the difficult conversations”.
The difficult thing about soft skills and our capability in this area is often that we require awareness around our skills (or lack thereof). We inherently believe that we know ourselves so well across our many years of life inside our own bodies that we often forget our areas requiring growth and instead travel on day by day making compensations where required, to avoid or distract from them, and get by without them.
So – soft skills are arguably a very big part of the life of most of our skilled workforce, and bring a great deal of value for those who excel in them.
Some soft skills are driven by the beliefs or assumptions sitting behind them that may have created a pattern of behaviour over many years. Bringing awareness to what is working, and what isn’t working, and reflecting upon these with a supportive yet challenging independent person can often bring about a choice point – to continue how things are or to make a change and do something differently – and then the conscious choice and action that inevitably follows. What comes after that can be intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding – and a platform that will propel us forward and ahead to greater opportunities, growth and satisfaction, in how we are “showing up” in our business life and in our home life, and in realising we have every potential to be the very best we can be.
At North Star Leadership we specialise in working closely with our clients both culturally and commercially to bring about growth – growth in our clients and not surprisingly growth in their businesses or organisations.
Please get in touch if I can work with you on the growth that will move your personal and business goals forward.