Soft skills, sometimes called People skills, complement hard skills.
Soft skills are defined as the interpersonal qualitative interactions that people have with their co-workers and clients versus hard skill training that relate more to analytics, programming and evaluation.
We have to be able to work well with people and know how to lead a team. These so-called “soft” skills are just as important as the factual knowledge needed to perform competently.
According to business advisor and author Patti Hathaway,
”In management, it is all about the soft skills. Professionals who recognize the importance of soft skills will be miles ahead of their peers.”
How do you know when you have a soft skills gap in your organization?
Here are four signs:
- You have lots of staff turnover and need to keep retraining people, chances are you have a soft skills gap.
- You have lots of managers but no real leaders, that’s a soft skills gap.
- Your staff is frustrated and complains a lot, you have a soft skills gap.
- Your management is not fully supporting their departments to achieve success – that’s a soft skills gap.
This is the reason more and more companies are hiring coaches to teach Soft Skill Training. Soft skill training, when paired with coaching, increases resiliency, effectiveness, teamwork, and productivity.
Teams learn how to quickly adapt to the ever shifting workplace and do it with a sense of purpose, focus and fewer struggles. Coaching is focused on what is proactive and optimistic. It operates on the premise that people are most satisfied when they are learning and developing themselves and their skills. This happens most easily when they are in supportive relationships with others who are coping with the same circumstances.
If you work in an organization that has Soft Skill gaps, call me at 402-890-5741. I’d love to have the opportunity to change that around.
