March 28, 2024 • 26 mins
Hosts Samhita Jayanti and Jamie Kosmar discuss the attributes and benefits of exhibiting 'soft skills' in the workplace. Unveiling proof that these skills are a bonus in allowing you to connect easier with co-workers or those who work for you. These are very critical skills for how we interact with other people. This eye-opening dialogue can change the way you interact with those at work and abroad.
Subscribe to ideamix - Coaching, Performance, and Wellness, and stay tuned for new episodes every other Thursday. On ideamix podcasts, we speak with innovators and coaches to help you build the life, business, and career you want. ideamix is the go-to destination for individuals to find their ideal coach. Check out our website at www.theideamix.com. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas, or sponsorship inquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.
Subscribe to ideamix - Coaching, Performance, and Wellness, and stay tuned for new episodes every other Thursday. On ideamix podcasts, we speak with innovators and coaches to help you build the life, business, and career you want. ideamix is the go-to destination for individuals to find their ideal coach. Check out our website at www.theideamix.com. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas, or sponsorship inquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to Idemics Performance and Wellness,where world leading coaches and scientists explain how
their research can help you achieve yourpersonal and professional goals. Foster hi It's
Sanjayanti, co founder and CEO ofIdemics Coaching. Coaching has played an important
role in my life. It's helpedme through my journey to become a powerful
(00:24):
leader, mother and wife. IDMXcoaches help you increase your self awareness,
improve your problem solving skills, andevolve your habits to achieve your goals,
all things I'm grateful to have learnedand done through my own coaching journey.
Our easy one minute assessment matches youwith an Idemics coach that best fits your
needs and values. Each Idemics coachis vetted and experienced. It helps clients
(00:46):
mad and achieve their wellness, professionaland business goals. If you or someone
you know could benefit from coaching,visit our website at www dotidemics dot com.
We also know that not everyone caninvest in coaching right now, and
that's why we provide free coaching inour Coach Shorts episodes. If you think
someone you know would benefit from it, please share a podcast with them.
(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome to this episode of the
Idemics podcast. We're excited today tobe chatting about soft skills, what they
are, why they're important, howpeople develop them, and why they're increasingly
relevant for each individual at every stageof their lives. Shall we get started,
(01:36):
Let's dive in. So our firstquestion is is to sort of lay
the landscape. I always like tostart with a definition of how we're thinking
about these things. So let's discusswhat are soft skills. I think two
(01:56):
words that our core to the ideaof soft skills in my view, and
I think this shows up a lotin the research as well. Our empathy
and persuasion, Right, and whenyou think of anybody in an interactive context,
you know, definitely at work,but just in life in general.
(02:19):
If we're not able to exhibit thosetwo qualities of being able to connect with
other people relate to what they're actuallytelling us the empathy piece, and if
we're not able to persuade them asto our point of view or to do
something that we want them to do, it's pretty hard to navigate the world
(02:39):
without those two qualities. Yeah,it's the way. Basically, those are
very critical skills for how we interactwith other people. I also like to
maybe broaden our definition a little bit, and it's also about how we self
(03:01):
manage in the sense of y.In order to be able to to practice
empathy, we have to also beable to identify what feelings we feel in
a situation and how then we respondor don't respond to a certain situation or
(03:23):
uh, certain behavior pattern of somebodyelse. I think that's a great point,
right, this sort of idea ofself awareness and being able to unpack
and understand and analyze our own thoughtprocess and reactions to understand how we're feeling,
what we're feeling, or why we'redoing what we're doing. Yeah.
(03:46):
Absolutely, And I think it's reallyyou know, obviously, if you reading
in the literature out there, softskills can cover a w much broader array
of what people talk about, communicationand leadership and collaboration, you know,
all basically skills in the way wethink of them. Where As you're saying,
(04:08):
empathy, persuasion, and self managementare critical to how they unfold basically.
But you know, I always liketo differentiate skills from you know,
Okay, these are soft skills.What is not a soft skill? So
we think of maybe a software developerdoing programming, for example, that is
(04:28):
not a soft skill. You canprobably take an online course and learn how
to program. Or learning a foreignlanguage. You know, you're learning a
vocabulary, you're learning phrases, you'relearning very concrete information, technical knowledge.
Yes exactly. That doesn't make change, but not really, whereas soft skills
(04:51):
require a level of adaptive behavior tothe situation. Totally totally agree with you.
I mean the analogy, it's sortof brought up in my mind,
Jamie, as you are explaining thisidea is why do we as parents encourage
our children to play a team sport. One of the reasons is that it
(05:16):
forces them to develop these skills ofempathy and persuasion. Right because without the
ability to communicate effectively with relate towork collaboratively with the other members of that
team, their skills don't become better, the game doesn't work as well,
(05:38):
the team doesn't win. There's somany knock on effects. And similarly,
in a professional context, the mostvaluable work in organizations, and so much
of the business research bears this out, happens in teams. It does not
happen with single individuals. Right,of course, they're very talented single individuals.
(06:00):
But the really valuable work in abusiness endeavor happens when teams come together
and then learn to do something verywell and collaborate to solve a problem,
rise to a challenge, whatever itis that you're trying to solve. And
I think I think that really getsat sort of why are soft skills now
(06:24):
increasingly more important? And in factthe in the there's a World Economic Forum
labor report about you know, whatare the most in demand skills for the
workforce for twenty twenty five, andwe see soft skills showing up in many
of the top fifteen that they thatthey had identified. You know, adaptability,
(06:48):
flexibility, you know, creative thinking, problem solving, communication, you
know all these things that you know. Typically when you are a student in
a traditional school environment or even atuniversity, you're not necessarily learning. So
(07:09):
that's a great question. Do wefeel our educational system teaches these soft skills?
I I mean no, no,I would land on no, I
would land on no here. Andyou know the moral that I have understood
(07:30):
the world of coaching and the benefitsof coaching. You know, it's clear
to me that there is this gapin what we call education around what we
say we value and then what weactually then ask our students to do in
a traditional school environment. And youknow, I mean, I think this
(07:51):
gets at sort of one of thechallenges with soft skills is how do you
measure them? So in a traditionalacademic environment, you know, we've got
tests, kids get scores. Theycan know how much knowledge of X,
Y and Z they have by howthey performed on a quiz and are in
tests. But then how do youmeasure how much empathy a child has?
(08:16):
I mean, I don't know.I don't have an answer to that.
So maybe the contrast, which isinteresting is that in a professional context and
in the world of coaching, inmuch of the work that we do,
we use a series of assessment tools, whether that's three sixties, whether it's
(08:37):
assessments that focus on emotional intelligence thatare a framework for helping to measure or
it needs develop some quantifiable barometer ofa person's soft skills right relative to their
peers, relative to their team,relative to similar individuals in that kind of
(09:00):
role, And that's deeply useful.Right in an academic context, we never
measure those things, right. Wesay it all day long that we want
our children, you know, tobe a certain way, right, but
it's never rewarded, right, Andwhen something is neither measured nor concretely rewarded,
(09:24):
I think it's very hard to transmitthat it should be near the top
of the list in terms of thetypes of skills that our children are trying
to acquire. Your point about theincentive structure that exists is quite important.
And I was listening to this otherpodcast the other day that talked about how
(09:46):
you know, oftentimes in organizational psychologiststalk about the awareness behavior gap, and
the reason why a certain leader maypound the table about doing a certain thing
and then not do it themselves isbecause there at the end of the day,
there's no reward in doing it,which is quite interesting. So that's
(10:09):
a systematic like systemic problem. Right. We have to change and how we
reward people if we want them toactually focus on developing these skills. You
know, competition gets rewarded with firstplace, with the you know, straight
a's, with all this stuff,and then it then gets externalized and people
(10:30):
get praised and you're smart, you'rethis that you know, nobody gets praised
for being empathetic, right, right, You don't never hear anybody talking about
like, oh, straight a forempathy, It's just not me for persuasion.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. There'sno reward system actually, whether it's
in school and quite frankly, Ialmost feel even in the work environment today.
(10:56):
You know, people particularly in certainindustries, they get paid based on
their productivity, right, and theiroutput, not on did they were they
a team player, did they help? Were they collaborative? You know a
lot of organizations just don't measure thatstuff when they're thinking about bonuses. I
(11:16):
think this is why, right inour business, we've seen such an increase
in the need and demand for coachingat companies because I think, as you
were just saying, from the startingpoint of from the lowest kind of entry
(11:39):
level job in an organization to thepoint when someone is actually managing a team,
what's being measured and what's being rewardedas technical skills? Right? In
finance? Did they build a model? Right? You know? Do they
understand the financial complexity of a transaction? Whatever that is? And it's only
(12:00):
once an individual is put into aposition of managing a team that then these
soft skills come so much to thefour because now they're not doing the work
themselves, but they're actually trying topersuade a set of people to do these
things in whatever way they want todo them. And if they're not empathetic
(12:22):
towards the members of that team,it's very hard to get anywhere. And
I think the other pieces that theseskills are absolutely teachable. We've built an
educational system that is entirely geared toteach technical skills, which totally made sense
in a kind of industrializing society,and now in this post industrial world,
(12:48):
we're still in that old educational system. But in this new world, we're
not focused on teaching these soft skills. People aren't coming into the workforce having
acquired them. Some of them havethem naturally, and that stands them in
very good stead. But for thevast majority of people, you know,
(13:11):
learning is a lifelong thing and weall need an assist with furthering our learning
that starts with self awareness and thenmoves on to development and change. Absolutely,
I just want to I want togo back to the idea of the
assessment here and how assessments I thinkcan be really helpful in that development process.
(13:33):
You know, I think the waythat I think about specific assessments that
sort of assess personality in particular andwhat it looks. What they look at
is how do you show up naturally? What is your innate ability and a
certain circumstance or a certain situation.That being said, even if your natural
(13:56):
ability in a specific situation is X, it does not mean that you can't
learn to bring something else to thetable, because in actuality, all of
us are made up. We're verycomplex. Human beings are very complex,
and we actually have the capability ofyou know, being X in one situation
and why in a different situation wherewe're actually really reactive in that to situations
(14:18):
and people yup. And the wholeidea behind these assessments is to say,
this is where you this is yourinnate ability, this is where you typically
how you typically show up, whatyou typically do, what you're typically motivated
by. But then it's like,okay, but certain circumstances require this.
So then how can we with acoach practice getting this skill and making this
(14:43):
become in these particular circumstances when youneed'em? How can you help that
skill show up? And I thewhen I think, when I think about
this, I often think about competitionis really useful in certain situations, but
knowing when competition is appropriate. Wedon't teach our kids that. And I
(15:09):
feel like you have a lot ofkids because we come out of a traditional
school environment where it is super competitive, they just always show up competitive because
that's what they've been taught to do, when in fact, there are situations
where being collaborative is how you're gonnaget the best outcome. But we were
not teaching our kids that every naildoes not require a hammer, right exactly.
(15:31):
Yeah. I also think there's areally interesting study. It was a
twenty twenty Yale University study, andwhat it found was that when leaders of
teams, no matter how small orlarge, are emotionally intelligent, to go
back to that empathy and persuasion point, they were number one themselves happier,
(15:56):
more innovative, more creative individuals intheir work. But number two, that's
seventy percent of the team members whoworked with those individuals when they were short
on emotional intelligence, were unhappy andnegative about their work. Right. It's
(16:17):
such a sort of cancerous thing thattransmits throughout a team when the leader is
not able to illustrate and manifest empathyand persuasion in their work, and I
mean those numbers are sort of fascinating, right, yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
(16:37):
yeah. I mean I think,you know, so much of what
happens in terms of soft skill learningnow is mentor through mentorship and through modeling,
right, but that's very idiosyncratic,right, and not a repeatable system
in the way that coaching is.Absolutely absolutely And then you think in a
(17:00):
hybrid or remote working environment, howmuch more challenging that mentorship piece, that
modeling piece becomes because you're not inthe office all the time and there's not
there's a lot of sort of naturalinteractions that you're right or not replicable,
not happening. So I think it'syou know, we're gonna even we see
(17:21):
in much more of a need forleaders who know how, who are very
you know, have a very highlevel of soft skills, and then can
translate those soft skills through you know, video chat and and to a model
where not everybody's in the office allthe time. And you know, I
(17:41):
believe you had you've always had alittle bit of this because we have had
global organizations for a while, butnot to the extent that we're seeing now.
And I think for for young professionalswho have entered the workforce over this
lost you know, sort of postpandemic period right or even before that,
(18:03):
when they were in remote and hybridwork environments, which are popular because of
the obvious convenience. The lack ofthose in person interactions has really hampered their
development on this soft skills piece,which is sort of essential. Right as
(18:27):
I was thinking about getting ready forthis podcast, Jamie came across a woman
who's a futurist and she's a writer, and she talked about this idea of
career durability, and the idea wasthat if someone does not develop the ability
to learn the knowledge, the skills, the mindset that's required to remain an
(18:53):
engaged and productive member of a team, then they sort of hit a wall,
right, because when you're a youngprofessional and you don't develop that muscle
memory, you are sort of deprivingyourself of a resource to enable yourself to
adapt to a new job, anew team, a new situation of crisis
(19:15):
and whatever. That is super interesting. I mean, it's also just think
about how much you learn when youapproach an individual with curiosity and as each
individual having a story behind what yousee on the outside. Just think about
like the growth in learning that comesfrom those interactions, right. And you
(19:36):
basically if you don't have that curiosityand you don't find the way to connect
with people in a team environment,I do think it just dons your growth
effectively as a contributing member. Imean, in the reality is is you
know, we've become culturally much morespecialized, right, there's a lot of
(19:57):
emphasis on specialty, specialty, specialty, but we really still need the bridges
to bring the specialties together to actuallybe solving problems, right, And that's
where this sort of team mentality andinterpersonal skills and collaboration really become valuable,
particularly, I think to organizations.Yeah, I mean it's all now.
(20:21):
I think I sort of feel likewe've were exhausting the you know, shipping
and production overseas and you know wherecost is the you know, we race
to the bottom with cost. It'sactually the people and how they function together
for organizations that's going to make adifference totally. Well, one of the
dirty little secrets of offshoring has beenthat the process of trying to manage offshore
(20:49):
teams has been incredibly hard. Theprocess of trying to train the managers locally
who are Managing those offshore teams hasbeen incredibly hard, right, and proven
expensive thereby sort of undermining the costrace to the lowest cost analysis that drove
a lot of those decisions. Andso, you know, I always feel
(21:11):
this is true of so many thingsin life. It's like, beware of
the unintended consequences, right. Theunintended consequence of a young professional working mostly
remotely is the lack of development ofthese soft skills that come from the people
interactions. The unintended consequences of theoffshoring is, Hey, it turns out
it's really hard to manage someone who'ssitting in the Philippines from New York,
(21:33):
you know, and also has avery completely different cultural context, right as
well. Totally totally. I foundit actually really interesting you had mentioned you
had read an article by a futurist. One of my favorite futurists is y've
All Harari. You know, I'mnot sure for those of you out there
(21:56):
if you've read any of his books, but he's well known for Sapiens and
Homodeis, which actually actually is theone that I read. And you know,
I, as we were thinking aboutthe scott soft skills piece, I
remembered in his book how he talksabout the reason his theory for why humans
(22:17):
became dominant was because our ability thedominant animal, the dominant species, right,
is because of our ability to collaborate. And you know, so I
think that it really this soft skillspiece is really going to be the sort
of the way to become the dominantcompanies and get the winds is to figure
(22:41):
out how to put the pieces ofpeople together and make them the center of
the organization and the culture. That'sso true. I mean I often when
we think and talk about coaching,I always my mind always goes to sports,
right, And when you think aboutcreating, like, I don't know,
(23:04):
a basketball dream team, right,which do you think performs better.
Is it a team comprised of fivestar players who are all amazing individually and
whatever set of skills are required.Or is the team that has complementary skills,
(23:25):
communicates well and knows how to collaboratethe more successful one, And time
after time, right, the answeris always the more collaborative team. And
across every sport, in every discipline, this model of oh, if we
just put a bunch of stars inthe room, like they'll get it.
Done, has been tried, andit's never actually worked. I'm actually remembering.
(23:45):
I don't know if you watched TedLasso or anybody out there watched Ted
Lasso, but that's the ultimate example, is how highly criticized he was for
not having the technical background of thegame, and his whole approach was getting
the team to work together as ateam, which did bring them to victory.
Yeah. Absolutely, well, Ithink maybe as an EndNote, something
(24:14):
that's worth highlighting is there's a tonof ongoing research on this topic of soft
skills. Some of what it's revealedis that while companies realize that in the
recruitment of individuals who are capable ofleading teams, soft skills are super important,
right, but what hasn't yet happenedis that the recruiting function hasn't found
(24:44):
a data driven, repeatable process interms of how to recruit these leaders.
So much of the work that wedo also focuses on this, right,
Like, how do you make arelative assessment between a few candidates that on
paper are all equally qualified for thejob. What is the distinguishing feature?
It becomes the soft skills time afterabsolutely absolutely, and it is possible to
(25:10):
get at those soft skills through thevariety of you know, robust industry standard
assessment tools that are now out there, and so it's you know, we're
very much at the beginning of thatprocess of evolution. I think of companies
understanding how to assess soft skills andthen recruit based on that. Yes,
(25:32):
yeah, absolutely, and it's it'sjust going to be more and more important.
So from you know, having thelay of the landscape is going to
be really crucial again for your organizationalsuccess. Thank you for being with us
today, Thanks for listening. Pleasesubscribe wherever you listen and leave us a
review. Find your ideal coach atwww dot viidemics dot com. Special thanks
(25:59):
to our producer Martin Maluski and singersongwriter Doug Allen.
Welcome to Idemics Performance and Wellness,where world leading coaches and scientists explain how
their research can help you achieve yourpersonal and professional goals. Foster hi It's
Sanjayanti, co founder and CEO ofIdemics Coaching. Coaching has played an important
role in my life. It's helpedme through my journey to become a powerful
(00:24):
leader, mother and wife. IDMXcoaches help you increase your self awareness,
improve your problem solving skills, andevolve your habits to achieve your goals,
all things I'm grateful to have learnedand done through my own coaching journey.
Our easy one minute assessment matches youwith an Idemics coach that best fits your
needs and values. Each Idemics coachis vetted and experienced. It helps clients
(00:46):
mad and achieve their wellness, professionaland business goals. If you or someone
you know could benefit from coaching,visit our website at www dotidemics dot com.
We also know that not everyone caninvest in coaching right now, and
that's why we provide free coaching inour Coach Shorts episodes. If you think
someone you know would benefit from it, please share a podcast with them.
(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome to this episode of the
Idemics podcast. We're excited today tobe chatting about soft skills, what they
are, why they're important, howpeople develop them, and why they're increasingly
relevant for each individual at every stageof their lives. Shall we get started,
(01:36):
Let's dive in. So our firstquestion is is to sort of lay
the landscape. I always like tostart with a definition of how we're thinking
about these things. So let's discusswhat are soft skills. I think two
(01:56):
words that our core to the ideaof soft skills in my view, and
I think this shows up a lotin the research as well. Our empathy
and persuasion, Right, and whenyou think of anybody in an interactive context,
you know, definitely at work,but just in life in general.
(02:19):
If we're not able to exhibit thosetwo qualities of being able to connect with
other people relate to what they're actuallytelling us the empathy piece, and if
we're not able to persuade them asto our point of view or to do
something that we want them to do, it's pretty hard to navigate the world
(02:39):
without those two qualities. Yeah,it's the way. Basically, those are
very critical skills for how we interactwith other people. I also like to
maybe broaden our definition a little bit, and it's also about how we self
(03:01):
manage in the sense of y.In order to be able to to practice
empathy, we have to also beable to identify what feelings we feel in
a situation and how then we respondor don't respond to a certain situation or
(03:23):
uh, certain behavior pattern of somebodyelse. I think that's a great point,
right, this sort of idea ofself awareness and being able to unpack
and understand and analyze our own thoughtprocess and reactions to understand how we're feeling,
what we're feeling, or why we'redoing what we're doing. Yeah.
(03:46):
Absolutely, And I think it's reallyyou know, obviously, if you reading
in the literature out there, softskills can cover a w much broader array
of what people talk about, communicationand leadership and collaboration, you know,
all basically skills in the way wethink of them. Where As you're saying,
(04:08):
empathy, persuasion, and self managementare critical to how they unfold basically.
But you know, I always liketo differentiate skills from you know,
Okay, these are soft skills.What is not a soft skill? So
we think of maybe a software developerdoing programming, for example, that is
(04:28):
not a soft skill. You canprobably take an online course and learn how
to program. Or learning a foreignlanguage. You know, you're learning a
vocabulary, you're learning phrases, you'relearning very concrete information, technical knowledge.
Yes exactly. That doesn't make change, but not really, whereas soft skills
(04:51):
require a level of adaptive behavior tothe situation. Totally totally agree with you.
I mean the analogy, it's sortof brought up in my mind,
Jamie, as you are explaining thisidea is why do we as parents encourage
our children to play a team sport. One of the reasons is that it
(05:16):
forces them to develop these skills ofempathy and persuasion. Right because without the
ability to communicate effectively with relate towork collaboratively with the other members of that
team, their skills don't become better, the game doesn't work as well,
(05:38):
the team doesn't win. There's somany knock on effects. And similarly,
in a professional context, the mostvaluable work in organizations, and so much
of the business research bears this out, happens in teams. It does not
happen with single individuals. Right,of course, they're very talented single individuals.
(06:00):
But the really valuable work in abusiness endeavor happens when teams come together
and then learn to do something verywell and collaborate to solve a problem,
rise to a challenge, whatever itis that you're trying to solve. And
I think I think that really getsat sort of why are soft skills now
(06:24):
increasingly more important? And in factthe in the there's a World Economic Forum
labor report about you know, whatare the most in demand skills for the
workforce for twenty twenty five, andwe see soft skills showing up in many
of the top fifteen that they thatthey had identified. You know, adaptability,
(06:48):
flexibility, you know, creative thinking, problem solving, communication, you
know all these things that you know. Typically when you are a student in
a traditional school environment or even atuniversity, you're not necessarily learning. So
(07:09):
that's a great question. Do wefeel our educational system teaches these soft skills?
I I mean no, no,I would land on no, I
would land on no here. Andyou know the moral that I have understood
(07:30):
the world of coaching and the benefitsof coaching. You know, it's clear
to me that there is this gapin what we call education around what we
say we value and then what weactually then ask our students to do in
a traditional school environment. And youknow, I mean, I think this
(07:51):
gets at sort of one of thechallenges with soft skills is how do you
measure them? So in a traditionalacademic environment, you know, we've got
tests, kids get scores. Theycan know how much knowledge of X,
Y and Z they have by howthey performed on a quiz and are in
tests. But then how do youmeasure how much empathy a child has?
(08:16):
I mean, I don't know.I don't have an answer to that.
So maybe the contrast, which isinteresting is that in a professional context and
in the world of coaching, inmuch of the work that we do,
we use a series of assessment tools, whether that's three sixties, whether it's
(08:37):
assessments that focus on emotional intelligence thatare a framework for helping to measure or
it needs develop some quantifiable barometer ofa person's soft skills right relative to their
peers, relative to their team,relative to similar individuals in that kind of
(09:00):
role, And that's deeply useful.Right in an academic context, we never
measure those things, right. Wesay it all day long that we want
our children, you know, tobe a certain way, right, but
it's never rewarded, right, Andwhen something is neither measured nor concretely rewarded,
(09:24):
I think it's very hard to transmitthat it should be near the top
of the list in terms of thetypes of skills that our children are trying
to acquire. Your point about theincentive structure that exists is quite important.
And I was listening to this otherpodcast the other day that talked about how
(09:46):
you know, oftentimes in organizational psychologiststalk about the awareness behavior gap, and
the reason why a certain leader maypound the table about doing a certain thing
and then not do it themselves isbecause there at the end of the day,
there's no reward in doing it,which is quite interesting. So that's
(10:09):
a systematic like systemic problem. Right. We have to change and how we
reward people if we want them toactually focus on developing these skills. You
know, competition gets rewarded with firstplace, with the you know, straight
a's, with all this stuff,and then it then gets externalized and people
(10:30):
get praised and you're smart, you'rethis that you know, nobody gets praised
for being empathetic, right, right, You don't never hear anybody talking about
like, oh, straight a forempathy, It's just not me for persuasion.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. There'sno reward system actually, whether it's
in school and quite frankly, Ialmost feel even in the work environment today.
(10:56):
You know, people particularly in certainindustries, they get paid based on
their productivity, right, and theiroutput, not on did they were they
a team player, did they help? Were they collaborative? You know a
lot of organizations just don't measure thatstuff when they're thinking about bonuses. I
(11:16):
think this is why, right inour business, we've seen such an increase
in the need and demand for coachingat companies because I think, as you
were just saying, from the startingpoint of from the lowest kind of entry
(11:39):
level job in an organization to thepoint when someone is actually managing a team,
what's being measured and what's being rewardedas technical skills? Right? In
finance? Did they build a model? Right? You know? Do they
understand the financial complexity of a transaction? Whatever that is? And it's only
(12:00):
once an individual is put into aposition of managing a team that then these
soft skills come so much to thefour because now they're not doing the work
themselves, but they're actually trying topersuade a set of people to do these
things in whatever way they want todo them. And if they're not empathetic
(12:22):
towards the members of that team,it's very hard to get anywhere. And
I think the other pieces that theseskills are absolutely teachable. We've built an
educational system that is entirely geared toteach technical skills, which totally made sense
in a kind of industrializing society,and now in this post industrial world,
(12:48):
we're still in that old educational system. But in this new world, we're
not focused on teaching these soft skills. People aren't coming into the workforce having
acquired them. Some of them havethem naturally, and that stands them in
very good stead. But for thevast majority of people, you know,
(13:11):
learning is a lifelong thing and weall need an assist with furthering our learning
that starts with self awareness and thenmoves on to development and change. Absolutely,
I just want to I want togo back to the idea of the
assessment here and how assessments I thinkcan be really helpful in that development process.
(13:33):
You know, I think the waythat I think about specific assessments that
sort of assess personality in particular andwhat it looks. What they look at
is how do you show up naturally? What is your innate ability and a
certain circumstance or a certain situation.That being said, even if your natural
(13:56):
ability in a specific situation is X, it does not mean that you can't
learn to bring something else to thetable, because in actuality, all of
us are made up. We're verycomplex. Human beings are very complex,
and we actually have the capability ofyou know, being X in one situation
and why in a different situation wherewe're actually really reactive in that to situations
(14:18):
and people yup. And the wholeidea behind these assessments is to say,
this is where you this is yourinnate ability, this is where you typically
how you typically show up, whatyou typically do, what you're typically motivated
by. But then it's like,okay, but certain circumstances require this.
So then how can we with acoach practice getting this skill and making this
(14:43):
become in these particular circumstances when youneed'em? How can you help that
skill show up? And I thewhen I think, when I think about
this, I often think about competitionis really useful in certain situations, but
knowing when competition is appropriate. Wedon't teach our kids that. And I
(15:09):
feel like you have a lot ofkids because we come out of a traditional
school environment where it is super competitive, they just always show up competitive because
that's what they've been taught to do, when in fact, there are situations
where being collaborative is how you're gonnaget the best outcome. But we were
not teaching our kids that every naildoes not require a hammer, right exactly.
(15:31):
Yeah. I also think there's areally interesting study. It was a
twenty twenty Yale University study, andwhat it found was that when leaders of
teams, no matter how small orlarge, are emotionally intelligent, to go
back to that empathy and persuasion point, they were number one themselves happier,
(15:56):
more innovative, more creative individuals intheir work. But number two, that's
seventy percent of the team members whoworked with those individuals when they were short
on emotional intelligence, were unhappy andnegative about their work. Right. It's
(16:17):
such a sort of cancerous thing thattransmits throughout a team when the leader is
not able to illustrate and manifest empathyand persuasion in their work, and I
mean those numbers are sort of fascinating, right, yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
(16:37):
yeah. I mean I think,you know, so much of what
happens in terms of soft skill learningnow is mentor through mentorship and through modeling,
right, but that's very idiosyncratic,right, and not a repeatable system
in the way that coaching is.Absolutely absolutely And then you think in a
(17:00):
hybrid or remote working environment, howmuch more challenging that mentorship piece, that
modeling piece becomes because you're not inthe office all the time and there's not
there's a lot of sort of naturalinteractions that you're right or not replicable,
not happening. So I think it'syou know, we're gonna even we see
(17:21):
in much more of a need forleaders who know how, who are very
you know, have a very highlevel of soft skills, and then can
translate those soft skills through you know, video chat and and to a model
where not everybody's in the office allthe time. And you know, I
(17:41):
believe you had you've always had alittle bit of this because we have had
global organizations for a while, butnot to the extent that we're seeing now.
And I think for for young professionalswho have entered the workforce over this
lost you know, sort of postpandemic period right or even before that,
(18:03):
when they were in remote and hybridwork environments, which are popular because of
the obvious convenience. The lack ofthose in person interactions has really hampered their
development on this soft skills piece,which is sort of essential. Right as
(18:27):
I was thinking about getting ready forthis podcast, Jamie came across a woman
who's a futurist and she's a writer, and she talked about this idea of
career durability, and the idea wasthat if someone does not develop the ability
to learn the knowledge, the skills, the mindset that's required to remain an
(18:53):
engaged and productive member of a team, then they sort of hit a wall,
right, because when you're a youngprofessional and you don't develop that muscle
memory, you are sort of deprivingyourself of a resource to enable yourself to
adapt to a new job, anew team, a new situation of crisis
(19:15):
and whatever. That is super interesting. I mean, it's also just think
about how much you learn when youapproach an individual with curiosity and as each
individual having a story behind what yousee on the outside. Just think about
like the growth in learning that comesfrom those interactions, right. And you
(19:36):
basically if you don't have that curiosityand you don't find the way to connect
with people in a team environment,I do think it just dons your growth
effectively as a contributing member. Imean, in the reality is is you
know, we've become culturally much morespecialized, right, there's a lot of
(19:57):
emphasis on specialty, specialty, specialty, but we really still need the bridges
to bring the specialties together to actuallybe solving problems, right, And that's
where this sort of team mentality andinterpersonal skills and collaboration really become valuable,
particularly, I think to organizations.Yeah, I mean it's all now.
(20:21):
I think I sort of feel likewe've were exhausting the you know, shipping
and production overseas and you know wherecost is the you know, we race
to the bottom with cost. It'sactually the people and how they function together
for organizations that's going to make adifference totally. Well, one of the
dirty little secrets of offshoring has beenthat the process of trying to manage offshore
(20:49):
teams has been incredibly hard. Theprocess of trying to train the managers locally
who are Managing those offshore teams hasbeen incredibly hard, right, and proven
expensive thereby sort of undermining the costrace to the lowest cost analysis that drove
a lot of those decisions. Andso, you know, I always feel
(21:11):
this is true of so many thingsin life. It's like, beware of
the unintended consequences, right. Theunintended consequence of a young professional working mostly
remotely is the lack of development ofthese soft skills that come from the people
interactions. The unintended consequences of theoffshoring is, Hey, it turns out
it's really hard to manage someone who'ssitting in the Philippines from New York,
(21:33):
you know, and also has avery completely different cultural context, right as
well. Totally totally. I foundit actually really interesting you had mentioned you
had read an article by a futurist. One of my favorite futurists is y've
All Harari. You know, I'mnot sure for those of you out there
(21:56):
if you've read any of his books, but he's well known for Sapiens and
Homodeis, which actually actually is theone that I read. And you know,
I, as we were thinking aboutthe scott soft skills piece, I
remembered in his book how he talksabout the reason his theory for why humans
(22:17):
became dominant was because our ability thedominant animal, the dominant species, right,
is because of our ability to collaborate. And you know, so I
think that it really this soft skillspiece is really going to be the sort
of the way to become the dominantcompanies and get the winds is to figure
(22:41):
out how to put the pieces ofpeople together and make them the center of
the organization and the culture. That'sso true. I mean I often when
we think and talk about coaching,I always my mind always goes to sports,
right, And when you think aboutcreating, like, I don't know,
(23:04):
a basketball dream team, right,which do you think performs better.
Is it a team comprised of fivestar players who are all amazing individually and
whatever set of skills are required.Or is the team that has complementary skills,
(23:25):
communicates well and knows how to collaboratethe more successful one, And time
after time, right, the answeris always the more collaborative team. And
across every sport, in every discipline, this model of oh, if we
just put a bunch of stars inthe room, like they'll get it.
Done, has been tried, andit's never actually worked. I'm actually remembering.
(23:45):
I don't know if you watched TedLasso or anybody out there watched Ted
Lasso, but that's the ultimate example, is how highly criticized he was for
not having the technical background of thegame, and his whole approach was getting
the team to work together as ateam, which did bring them to victory.
Yeah. Absolutely, well, Ithink maybe as an EndNote, something
(24:14):
that's worth highlighting is there's a tonof ongoing research on this topic of soft
skills. Some of what it's revealedis that while companies realize that in the
recruitment of individuals who are capable ofleading teams, soft skills are super important,
right, but what hasn't yet happenedis that the recruiting function hasn't found
(24:44):
a data driven, repeatable process interms of how to recruit these leaders.
So much of the work that wedo also focuses on this, right,
Like, how do you make arelative assessment between a few candidates that on
paper are all equally qualified for thejob. What is the distinguishing feature?
It becomes the soft skills time afterabsolutely absolutely, and it is possible to
(25:10):
get at those soft skills through thevariety of you know, robust industry standard
assessment tools that are now out there, and so it's you know, we're
very much at the beginning of thatprocess of evolution. I think of companies
understanding how to assess soft skills andthen recruit based on that. Yes,
(25:32):
yeah, absolutely, and it's it'sjust going to be more and more important.
So from you know, having thelay of the landscape is going to
be really crucial again for your organizationalsuccess. Thank you for being with us
today, Thanks for listening. Pleasesubscribe wherever you listen and leave us a
review. Find your ideal coach atwww dot viidemics dot com. Special thanks
(25:59):
to our producer Martin Maluski and singersongwriter Doug Allen.
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