Soft skills are foundational competencies
Aaron Chua at Wild Illusions sees financial measurements as no longer able to tell the complete story. He mentions various other areas for measurement, including “talent development” but in a different context from the tired “talent management” perspective we’ve heard for several years:
This means a total redefinition of what talent development means in organisations. The first implication is of course to throw out the idea of having a talent development unit. Instead, we need to think about ways to rebuilt how talent is truly developed via connections to the resources at the edge, connections to different organisational competencies that plugs their gaps, connections that increases cognitive diversity and brings about unexpected learnings et al. All these are rich areas for a new breed of talent development companies to think about and to create new products/services upon.
If you buy into Richard Florida’s concept of the Creative Class (which I mostly do) then it becomes obvious that for organizations to succeed they will have to nurture creativity in their workforce. Creative people are at all levels, including the janitor, and are not “human resources” but individuals who have the capability of gaining wisdom. From the Creative Class Blog is an article on The Workplace in a Wiki World, with this idea about the changing emphasis for workers:
Therefore, for an individual to succeed in a wiki-corporation or wiki-organization it will increasingly require being more than an engineer, programmer, economist, or accountant. It will also require the “soft skills” to do media relations or “wiki” relations, interacting daily with a range of customers and outside contributors, as well as collaborating with others in the company.
Here’s another bit of speculation on workplace learning in ten years:
Soft skills, especially collaboration and networking, will become more important than hard skills. Smart employers have always focused more on attitude than any specific skill-set because they know they can train for a lack of skills and knowledge. The soft skills require time, mentoring, informal learning and other environmental supports. Once you have the soft skills to perform in a networked workplace, you’ll have foundational competencies.
I think many people will say of course we’ve known this all along, but in a workplace where our networks are as important as our skills, it will be more difficult to hide the fact that you’re a highly skilled jerk.
Filed under: Informal Learning, Wirearchy
That last line is great!
Maybe it’s time to re-write/re-think the expression “jack of all trades, master of none” into something like “networked in my workplace, foundationally competent in many trades”.
Thanks for the link!
Your post inspired much of my thinking of what training can be in the 21st century.
How about “netted into my work, helped to find some competence in many trades” ?
I love the ideas in this post Harold. Another thought along these lines: shifting power balances from men to women in the corporate world. If companies are really going to be run like communities (similar to the way Best Buy and Cisco are going), and if women have better foundational social skills on average than men, then maybe we’ll see a reversal in the gender balance in management roles. Maybe a crazy thought, but a lot of research both recent and historical has shown that women, on average, are much better at stuff like empathy, socially networking, listening, discussion, sharing, asking for help… in other words, a lot of stuff that will make people successful in a community-driven workplace. So maybe they will have a bit of a leg up in this transition to a community-run workplace…
[...] interested in genuine human interactions than in an ‘items per hour’ ratio”. I recommended in soft skills are foundational competencies that hiring for attitude makes more sense because you can always train for skills [...]
[...] Soft Skills [...]
[...] are known as soft skills, like getting along with others, are becoming much more important than commonly known hard skills. [...]
Personally, I think having a skill set that is generalized is more appropriate for today’s world. Seeing how businesses are failing left a right, having many skills can be very beneficient to someone trying to recover from a lost position.
I totally agree with Harold, especially with the workplace. Even though an individual is an expert at their particular field of work, they still need to capture the soft skills to master their job. For example, you can go into thhe bank to make a deposit or for questions about your account, the bank teller could have done exactly what you wanted them to do but if their attitude is bad you would still not like the experience.
I agree with Harold on this one. Soft skills are very important . I believe that is the way our business is going now. They need people who are able to do multiple skills, instead of being an expert one just one.
I want to piggy back off Obsa. Soft skills are very vital and becoming mandatory to start and keep any profession. You can develop new skills but you can develop a new personality.
In ten years of customer service and even starting a business. I can truly say that from the most powerful of companies to the mom and pop, soft skills are essential. As a matter of fact, a company experiences death by asphyxiation (maybe not as fast when powered by influential stockholders and the like) on its own “great product” and mission statement. Maybe we think the “Wal-Mart” experience and the McDonald experience is not the best these days, but places like Chik-fil-A are knockin’ ‘em down with “My pleasure”- forcing other major companies to give a little more thought to the slowly dying ideal of customer service.