Six Secret Soft S.K.I.L.L.S.

Having taught many people how to manage and lead people in organizations for a few decades now, I’ve been asked repeatedly by practicing managers what can they do — that’s practical, doable, and useful — to be more effective? However, over time I’ve looked for ways to synthesize that research into practical actions — tweaks really — that provide a lot of benefit for comparatively small effort. The result is this topic — Six Secret Soft S.K.I.L.L.S..

They’re not secret because people don’t know about them or use them — but because many of the people who do use them are not always able to articulate how or why they work. I’ve picked skills that have backing about their effectiveness from research. We tend to use ‘soft’ to contrast with hard-edged business skills. They’re soft skills, differentiating them from the functional and technical skills we teach in business schools, because they help us relate to each other better. They’re not soft because they’re easy. Nor are they soft because they’re less important. And they’re skills (or competencies if you prefer) because they’re totally learnable.

These soft skills are also mutually reinforcing. They all contribute to our ability to appreciate each other, to learn from each other, and to have healthy relationship boundaries supporting our connection.

Using any one of the skills in this acronym S.K.I.L.L.S. will boost your leadership effectiveness: Solution Seeking, Kudos, Inclusion, Listening, Learning, and S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Goals.

• Solution Seeking | Explains why you want to value people with answers and team members who engage others in the process for finding solutions.
• Kudos | Shares the motivation research that says the best Kudos:Constructive Criticism ratio is 3:1 and explains how to give feedback effectively using that research. When giving kudos, however, it is important to know what and how to give reinforcing feedback.
• Inclusion | While there are many inclusion strategies, using names with contributions is high-leverage inclusive behavior that works really when leading diverse-multicultural teams.
• Listening | Listening as we teach it is a meta-emotional intelligence competency that demonstrates respect, balances cultural and personality-based communication styles and helps you learn fast.
• Learning | Learning from different perspectives is a core benefit of diversity, according to state-of-the-art Harvard Business School research — and we explore the cycle of inference and how you can make sure you include more relevant information when making important decisions.
• S.M.A.R.T.E.R. | While many people-managers already know how to make S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific, Measured, Actionable, Results-Oriented and Timed), the motivation research suggests that adding Engaging and Reinforcement to your goals, e.g. making them S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goals, boosts your team’s effectiveness.