How are your People Skills? ~ John J Arent

In today’s organizations, virtually all professionals need to have excellent people skills.  These skills are known as “soft skills” which go beyond knowledge and technological talents.  The “bed-side” manner so to speak that long was missing from the medical profession comes to mind when we talk about certain social skills that top leaders possess.  Today, Medical Schools across the country have as part of their curriculum, courses in treating patients kindly.  Why do we not have the same in business?  There are many companies today that continue to promote employees to management positions without any formalized training.  The training that most managers receive is "after the promotion" and also generally centers on "hard skills" such as analysis, metrics, administration, etc...This omission I believe is a major mistake and can cause failure to both the employee that was promoted as well as the company itself.  In some extraordinary cases, it could cause the company to go out of business.

What are the major people skills that are needed today for our newly promoted managers?

There are many “soft” skill sets that need to be developed PRIOR to promoting your employees.  The key areas that come to mind are:

Interpersonal Communications ~ this is a catch-all which has many facets. Some of these include:

Listening

Feedback

Understanding

Collaboration

Coaching

Body Language

Presenting Skills

Managing Conflict

Humility

Support of your people

Support of your company

Empathy

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I will be following up with specific blogs on each of these “soft” skills and ideas to enhance these skill sets in upcoming blogs.