Does Management have the Soft Skills? Part 1

“Are companies failing to adequately support managers and team leaders in effectively managing people and performance in the current work environment?”

Here at Masters in Minds, our answer would be a resounding yes.

We believe the overriding factor in this failure is a lack of priority and value placed on what is often referred to in management as ‘soft skills.’ Soft skills, also known as interpersonal skills or people skills, are essential requirements for any manager. However, organisations often overlook them in favour of the more technical, operational skills, also known as ‘hard skills’.

Similar to a luxury chocolate with a firm exterior and gooey centre, a successful manager should be a perfect combination of hard and soft skills, with soft elements being prioritised.

What actually are soft skills?

They are general traits not specific to any job, helping employees excel in any workplace. They include communication, teamwork, and adaptability, often termed as transferable or interpersonal skills. They’re essential for professional success. Here are some other soft skills that are essential traits among employees:

Problem-solving
Time management
Critical thinking
Decision-making
Organisational
Stress management
Conflict management
Leadership
Creativity
Resourcefulness

Persuasion
Openness to criticism

In the UK, 97% of employers say that soft skills are key to business growth or success.

Hard skills

Meanwhile, ‘hard skills’ are technical, job-specific skills, such as

data analysis
design
marketing skills

At a minimum, employees need role-specific knowledge and abilities to perform their job duties. But those who usually stand out as high performers need some additional qualities, such as

the ability to communicate clearly.
the ability to work well with others.
the ability to manage their time effectively.

Nearly a third of UK adults believe empathy is the most important soft skill their manager could possess. However, 54% of employees say they have not included soft skills in their CVs.

Soft skills allow employees to maximise their potential hard skills. Skills such as conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, time management, and working well under pressure are all critical in the workplace. These are particularly in demand now with the expansion of artificial intelligence. According to a Harvard study, 85% of one’s success at the workplace is attributed to soft skills and only 15% to technical skills. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that online searches for communication skills have increased year after year since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Why are Soft Skills so Important?

A lack of soft skills can be detrimental to professionals in their work. Let’s look at two such examples of this.

Kate
Experienced graphic designer Kate. She is highly skilled at what she does, producing high-quality work. However, her time-keeping leaves much to be desired, and as a result, she regularly misses deadlines, leading to costly project delays and disgruntled clients.

James
Then there’s James. He is an effective data analyst with years of experience; however, he doesn’t take feedback well and struggles with effective delegation. This creates tension with others and bottlenecks in his department.

While both individuals are gifted at what they do, they are being let down by their lack of soft skills. Imagine how much more successful and durable their career would be with the full package!

“Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career.”
Peggy Klaus

Our observations…

In our thirty years of helping organisations, it is apparent to us that most people;

aren’t given the skills and time to manage others adequately.
aren’t supported by their company to develop themselves/their people fully.
experience a discrepancy between the overall company strategy and what happens.

Why are they being neglected?

Forbes believes we lack workplace cultures that allow soft skills to flourish. They have identified three cultural expectations getting in the way of people adequately utilising soft skills.

1. Soft skills require us to make decisions – and be wrong.

They involve stepping outside your comfort zone and using interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence. Decision-making can, therefore, be more challenging here than with the technical tasks we are well versed in. We assume the best can only be measured in terms of concrete results, so we postpone and procrastinate, waiting for data before making decisions on anything. In the past, making a mistake may have cost your job, so naturally, people are careful. But the landscape has changed, and it’s okay to get it wrong sometimes, as it is part of growth.

2. Soft skills require us to take risks.

Workplace culture must accept that risks are part of the job and that pushing back against how things have been done is acceptable and desirable.

3. Soft skills require time.

The modern cycle of work dictates that we are plugged in 24/7, and this ‘always on’ mentality of churning work out fast doesn’t allow space for people to apply humanity to situations and people the same way it would if time and space were allocated to these areas.

Box-ticking Exercise

Employees are often allotted a half day of computer-based learning here and there. While this helps, it is likely to be ineffective without follow-up, support, and checks to see if they have learned from it and can deliver the skill. Unfortunately, soft skills training is often treated as a box-ticking exercise. Things may look good on paper, but there is no infrastructure in place for ongoing support of employees. It means gaps appear and issues arise.

There is a feeling in the current landscape that people are being promoted solely based on their technical ‘hard’ skills, and then there is no subsequent soft skills development beyond this point, and so it continues through levels of seniority.

The challenges organisations face include:

Identifying soft skills
Measuring them (unlike technical tasks you can’t rely on kpi’s, tracking, reporting)
Implementing a training program

External help is often necessary to pinpoint where issues lie, as team leaders and managers often only want to report the positive highlights to senior management rather than the areas requiring additional support, so senior management often has no idea of issues.

Let’s now be frank…

Whatever position of management you are in, be honest with yourself – do you believe you have been given the chance to develop your soft skills fully?

The cost of neglecting soft skills

According to recent research, the lack of low-level soft skills-building opportunities – including communication, problem-solving, and teamwork – is costing as much as £22.2bn a year in the UK. The report, conducted by the social enterprise Skills Builder Partnership in liaison with the CIPD, KPMG, and Edge Foundation, found that people with higher levels of these essential skills earn, on average, an extra £4,600 a year.

The study of more than 2,000 UK workers revealed that 51% had missed out on essential soft skills-building opportunities, with an average cost of £680 each. Projected across the broader population, the cost of not providing these opportunities equates to £22.2bn a year, according to the report.

At the Talent Conference in 2020, Susan Collins read some interesting facts, including;

97% of employers said that soft skills are essential.
However, a mere 37% of the same set of employers said their entry-level employees possess the necessary soft skills.
Only 31% of employers provide soft skill development training to their employees.

“In a high IQ job-pool, soft skills like discipline, drive, and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.”
Daniel Goleman

Re-skilling

There is an urgency for employees to exhibit soft skills. According to a McKinsey survey, re-skilling at scale is a concern and priority for 80 % of C-suite executives worldwide. Reskilling significant portions of the workforce within the next 5-10 years will be required – that’s tens of millions of mid-career, middle-aged workers, particularly in advanced economies.

In Summary

Companies can’t always climb this mountain unaided, and many require external help from experts in the field like us. A fresh set of eyes often reveals management soft skills gaps that those too closely involved are blind to.

If this article resonates and you would like advisory support, our team, Masters in Minds, has decades of experience in helping organisations and colleagues develop their soft-skills.

Contact our team today.