‘Soft’ Skills that Aren't Soft

Many managers perform well against the ‘what has been achieved’ measures and achieve considerable personal and organisational success.

These same managers may never have performed as well against the ‘how was it achieved’ measures and whilst they may never have been terribly good at building effective working relationships they have nevertheless delivered the desired business outcomes.

So we might think that it is enough to have excellent cognitive and/or technical competencies as all that matters is that the job gets done and that the outcomes are good enough.

Rather, what is now increasingly supported by decades of excellent research is that it is the human realties of working relationships and the emotional competencies of managers and executives that distinguishes the performers that will continue to make a highly valued contribution to the growth of the organization from those who start to derail and fail to adapt to an increasingly changing and challenging workplace environment.

That means it is the managers who do well on developing their personal qualities such as initiative, empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness that will become outstanding performers.

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