Effective Leaders Need Leadership Soft Skills
In today’s technology-driven world, companies put a premium on having technical knowledge and skills. Organizations scour colleges looking for the next great technology whiz kids to join their company and take them to levels they never thought possible. Today’s digital generation is practically born with a smartphone in their hand. By the time they reach college, they are far ahead of the previous generation in technology application. They are, in essence, hard-wired with hard skills by the time they enter the workforce. With leadership soft skills, however, companies can lead their companies towards more effective change.
When this tech-savvy generation enters the workforce, they continue to build on their technical knowledge and skills. By the time they are offered a leadership position, they’re certainly prepared for the technical needs of their position. Are they prepared for the leadership needs those job positions require, though? Do they truly understand how to be servant leaders, to communicate, to build teams, to model behaviors, build cultures, get the most potential out of their employees, and last but not least, help employees through change?
The Hard Truth About Leadership Soft Skills
The hard truth is that there’s a lack of strong leadership soft skills in today’s business world. This is in direct conflict with today’s millennials who look for servant leadership more than ever. Gone are the days of, “toe the line, put in a hard day’s work, and be happy with it.” This generation of employees needs to know “why?” and they need autonomy and empowerment to feel a driven purpose to do the work. Gone are the “time clock punchers.”
Today’s leaders must be able to truly connect with these employees. That requires strong interpersonal skills, communication skills, and an understanding of employee’s psychology and motivation.
Key Leadership Activities To Connect with Your Employees For More Effective Leadership
Listen to your employees.
Create regular, two-way channels to get feedback and ideas from employees. The frontline employees who are in the trenches every day have great ideas. It’s always amazing how often no one asks them for their input!
Ask the right questions.
Ask questions such as what tools, resources, and support do you need to be successful?
Create an environment for innovative and creative thinking.
Allow time to step away from typical reactionary, operations work and let them brainstorm and analyze.
Give employees autonomy and empowerment to make decisions without fear of making mistakes.
Encourage them to not be afraid to make quick decisions on behalf of customers.
Enable your leaders to stop doing certain activities so they actually have the time to be more intentional, effective leaders.
From my experience with today’s technical managers, they’re very open to understanding and learning about areas such as change management, organizational effectiveness, culture building, and team building. They have good intentions and want what’s best for their teams. Unfortunately, they’re so busy with documentation, reporting, hitting quotas, and worrying about compliance that they can’t take the time to be intentional and proactive about using soft skills to connect with their employees and build more effective teams.
Using Soft Skills For Stronger Leadership
I have talked with many clients about doing a “stop, start, continue” approach for continuous improvements, process redesign, and agile implementation. Over and over, managers complain that top leadership is continuously adding to their plate but taking nothing away. I’ve been in meetings where managers discuss the many unproductive, inefficient processes they’re using, but when I suggest they stop some of these things in order to enable the managers to become better leaders and the employees to be more engaged, all I hear are crickets.
As an organizational leader, you can’t tell managers to engage in leadership activities to become better leaders if you are overloading them with too many unproductive tasks on a daily basis.
To be an effective leader, you need to worry more about how to get a strong connection with your employees and help them realize their full potential. Create the environment for your team to become intentional, accountable, and innovative, provide them with the tools and support they need—then stand back!