July 2007

For What Skills Are You Really Being Paid?

How do you improve them?

The Difference Between Hard and Soft Skills

Most of us have personal experience with medical professionals that can help us understand the difference and the value of hard (technical) skills and soft (people/life) skills.  A highly skilled surgeon who lacks a comfortable bedside manner is less enduring to patients. In fact research by malpractice insurance providers reveals that doctors who are unable to convey empathy toward their patients are more likely to be sued, irregardless of their technical ability. That said, highly skilled surgeons can still have successful careers despite being people skills deficient.  In the graphic below, they would be categorized toward the bottom as individual contributors. 

The Corporate Ladder's Skill Demands

Organizational Studies show that as people rise up the rungs of the corporate ladder, the importance of technical issues is less significant. At top management levels, 90% of executive effectiveness is dependant on the ability to handle people issues. 

What are these increasingly valuable soft skills? Here is a short list...

• Communication

• Delegation

• Decision Making

• Time Management

• Understanding Motivation

• Goal Achievement

• Leadership

• Influencing others

More importantly, how do most people acquire their soft skills?  In the absence of a formal development process, there are two ways.

1. Role Models

2. Trial and Error

How does this work? For Role Models to succeed, you better have good gone ones.  If not, there can be a lot of costly errors in the trial and error process.  Sound expensive?  It can be, especially when your poor role models are breeding more poor role models. So the alternative is to invest in developing critical people skills as key people are promoted.

However with today's more frequent job hopping, some employers are less willing to invest in developing the soft skills vital to their management success. For them, I share the word of an old role model of mine...

Review your scores and ask yourself...

• Where are the low marks?

• Both personally and organizationally, what achievements are being compromised as a result?

• If you could improve each of these scores by 20%, how much more might you achieve personally and organizationally?

• For each category where you scored yourself as 9 or 10, have you reached a state of complacency and/or apathy that has stalled your potential for personal and professional growth?

There is more insight on Skills Curve concept in these past briefings...

•  Do You Promote From Within?  •  Business Growth and The Peter Principle

Tom Lemanski of Vista Development serves as business catalyst and executive coach in the strategic development of SMARTer, executives, managers and  sales professionals.

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