Soft Skills: Not A Vulnerability

You don’t want to be treated as a number. You don’t want to be ignored. You don’t want to feel invisible and lumped in with the rest of ‘the pack’. 

You want opportunities to be your best and treated with kindness. You want to reach your goals and dreams, to grow. You want your uniqueness and potential to be noticed, respected… and used. And all of this makes sense so don’t let anyone tell you or make you feel you shouldn’t want this or that you don’t deserve this. You do. We all do. 

I believe we can all remember a time when we were lumped in with others and not seen for our full potential. And, I’m sure we can all also remember what it felt like when someone respected our expertise, saw us for our potential, and gave us an amazing opportunity. When that happened to you I bet you were eager to work hard and rise to the occasion because you wanted to honour them… and yourself. 

You and I just proved why soft skills and helping others feel proud or accomplished is not a vulnerability – if anything it is a superpower. Whether it’s your children, your partner, your co-worker or the employee who reports to you, when you are clear with your expectations, offer opportunities for them to reach their dreams, give them a chance to learn, grow, and be noticed… you are using what most people would call soft skills and what many people also call leadership skills, people skills or human skills. And, when you care about other people, learn from them and are open to the possibility to change your mind… you are still using your soft skills. 

Soft Skills: One of The Best Resources of a Leader. 

I can’t think of a job today that doesn’t need people to help each other, trust each other, find consensus, learn from each other and even forgive each other. Even the people who support and supervise the self-check-out area of our grocery stores need to have these qualities. And just a personal question here – is it just me or do these who work the self-check-out spaces people seem like they are enjoying their job more than usual? My guess is because they feel a sense of autonomy and flexibility as they get to interact with people – not just their groceries. 

More than ever we all want to be treated with kindness and respect – even if we are introverted and our definition of kindness and respect is being left alone at the self-check-out area of the grocery store. Yes, the spotlight on soft skills has never been more intense and important for everyone.

Respect may be the most important soft skill since in many ways respect opens the door for other skills including honesty, curiosity, and feeling we can safely ask questions, learn and grow.

If we respect each other, we should be able to keep ourselves from imposing our beliefs onto each other. Instead, respect should allow us to share our beliefs and have an open discussion. And when we respect each other, we must accept that the things that inspires each of us and make us proud can also be – must also be as different as our skillset, our background, in the same way our personal preferences around coriander (I like it) and horror movies (I don’t like them) may be different.

Embracing soft skills isn’t about kindness and being nice. Embracing your soft skills is about being clear with shared expectations, holding others – and ourselves accountable, being honest, seeing other people for who they are and who they want to be, and allowing others to ‘see’ you. 

Soft Skills: In a Hybrid or Remote Work Environment

As most companies and positions shift to remote or a hybrid work models, the focus and importance on soft skills has grown in its importance, often being weighed equal to technical skills. Why? Because in many cases – even in careers that are highly technical, it is more critical than ever that we work together which requires us to be patient, inspire each other, and communicate respectfully. 

Don’t just take my word for it. According to Rohan Rajiv, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, “Foundational soft skills have become even more important given the rise of remote and autonomous work, and are growing in importance across industries, levels and work environments. In fact, these soft skills were featured in 78% of jobs posted globally over the last three months.”

There is no doubt as more and more of us work remote and we become more geographically disconnected from the people who most of us work most often with (our teammates), soft skills like our communication skills, trust in our ability to manage each other’s expectations and our shared respect for each other and our work only becomes more important.

Soft Skills: Conclusion

So yes, embracing your soft skills is not a vulnerability. But one last point – as a soft skill my self-respect for myself lets me know I’m not perfect… and that I am still OK and important. My self-respect also lets me know I can learn and evolve and that even though change may be scary, it is also an opportunity to embrace adaptability and resilience, two more characteristics of highly successful teams and organizations.  

Our personal and professional success depends on our individual and shared responsibility to invest in ourselves and each other. Our investment into each other and our company’s investment into us is the key building a highly engaged, wonderfully loyal and decidingly creative workforce that is dedicated to excellence and delivering outstanding products and services to your customer.

Thank you for reading about Soft Skills: Not A Vulnerability. I know - it was a long post. I look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions.

Bruce

Other articles in this series include:

• The Importance of Empathy at Work

• How to Practice Empathy at Work

• Practicing Empathy During & After the Covid-19 Pandemic

• The Role of Empathy During Difficult Conversations at Work
  

About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.

Bruce is Corporate Trainer, Keynote Speaker and Executive Coach.

Bruce Mayhew Consulting specializes in customized Difficult Conversations, Crucial Conversations or Conflict Management Training, Email Etiquette Training, Leadership & New Leadership Development, Generational Differences, Time Management Training and other soft skills training solutions in Toronto and across Canada. Bruce is also an Executive Coach to a few select clients.

Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.

What Should We Do When We Feel A Lack Of Respect For Someone?

Respect is an interesting, complicated thing, and it’s not one size fits all. The point I want to make is that very often we see respect as an absolute. We get caught up in the idea that, “If you don’t respect my idea or my work then you don’t respect me,” and that really doesn’t have to be the case at all… as I described in the four examples below.

Examples: we can:

• Respect the person as a human, but not respect their authority or their suggestion or their idea.

• Respect the company, but not the person we are engaging with from the company.

• Respect how a person is trying to help us, but not the company.

• Respect a person’s authority, but not their goals or tactics they use to achieve those goals.

And I’m sure you and I could easily continue adding to this list of examples if we were brainstorming examples.

So what should we do when we feel a lack of respect for someone? 

The answer is both simple and complex. It’s so complex there are whole books written and specialists dedicated to only this topic. But let me give you a few steps to get the conversation moving in the right direction. This approach is often the starting point I use when I work with leaders to help them solve a respect challenge with their team or in their company.

Firstly, at the very least we should acknowledge we should be able to show a person respect as a human even if we don’t respect their achievements (or lack of), goals (or lack of), or values (or lack of).

Secondly, we should take a moment to consider where our feelings of respect and lack-of-respect are coming from. Looking inwardly to what we are feeling is always a good starting point in any and every situation including this one. What are we respecting and why (hopefully there is something)? What are we not respecting and why? Do we have an internal, learned bias that is getting in our own way? Might they have an internal, learned bias that is getting in their way?

This is a great exercise to go through (by yourself) for everyone in your inner circle. Take the time to point out what you do and don’t respect / appreciate / admire for those closest to you. It helps especially if find you are feeling negatively triggered by someone because it will help you control (be mindful of) your response.

Thirdly, is our lack of respect creating a barrier between us that is making the situation worse? It’s important to note that this is often the case. You know that when you feel negative energy from someone your own defences usually go up; which in turn often gets reflected back to them as negative energy from you. It is an unfortunate and vicious circle. It’s important to note at this point that whenever respect falters so does trust. When we don’t trust each other everything usually is much more difficult and take much longer. This in turn usually translates to being more expensive and less effective. 

Lastly, having reflected on what and why we are feeling as well as what biases we are (or they may be) feeling, how might we be able to build respect and trust within this situation? Generally, there are two areas we can work on and they are:

1. What We Can Make Sure We Are Doing

2. What We Can Make Sure We Are Not Doing

Lets explore these two areas.

What We Can Make Sure We Are Doing

Whether we are a leader of a team or an equal member of a team, we can all take a leadership role and set an example through our own behaviour. So, even if we are not feeling respect we can strive to build it with others. To build respect with one or more people we can all practice the following:

• Smile and say hello when we pass in the hall

• Listen mindfully / with all of our attention in a meeting or conversation

• Treat everyone equally 

• Encourage everyone to be their true, whole self and bring all of their experiences, education and perspective to every engagement 

• Be transparent with goals and tactics

• Give people credit for their ideas… and use other peoples ideas (it can’t be ‘my way or the highway’)

• Have a safe environment where people can make mistakes… and learn from those mistakes

• Imagine what it’s like to be in someone elses shoes (display empathy)

• Everyone can disagree and of course, still be civil and not feel threatened

 I encourage you to add to this list because it is far from exhaustive.

The amazing thing is that people who feel respected are not only trusted and more creative, they are:

• 92% more focused

• 55% more engaged

• 61% more likely to embrace change

• 56% healthier (fewer sick days)

• Over 100% more loyal (far less turnover)

Simply put, there are no downsides to having respectful relationships. 

What We Can Make Sure We Are Not Doing

Again, whether we are a leader of a team or an equal part of a team, we can all take a leadership role and set an example through our own behaviour. So, how can we begin to build respectful, trusting relationships? The idea is to explore how to build relationships where everyone has an open, safe space where everyone can share ideas by not:

• Mocking someone – publicly or privately

• Teasing

• Telling offensive jokes

• Letting someone finish a sentence

• Taking credit for someone else’s work

• Texting in meetings

• Making inappropriate advances

• Putting up silos instead of being transparent

• Always saying ‘No’ when asked to do something 

As I said earlier, I encourage you to add to this list because it is far from exhaustive. But even better, do this with someone else or with your team. Have this and keep this as an open dialogue where you have open and safe dialogues.

If you have a challenging situation and are working to make it better, give it time. Conversations will help and are a sign of a healthy environment. You won’t be perfect at first, and neither will other people. And I dare say you will always make mistakes along the way. The solution isn’t to be perfect, the solution is to be aware of your actions and humble enough that you are able to help others have the confidence to talk with you about challenges or feelings they are having so they can be worked on early.

As I said at the beginning, respect is a simple and yet complex thing. It never happens when there is an environment of secrecy and where people can’t speak freely. As respect begins to grow it is like a seed planted, it will require care and attention and it will grow - seemingly slowly at first but before you know it, you will have a healthy, wonderful space filled with respect… and trust.

Thank you for reading.

Bruce

About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.

Bruce is Corporate Trainer and Executive Coach.

As a Corporate Trainer Bruce Mayhew (of BMC) specialize in customized Time Management Training, Email Etiquette Training, Leadership & New Leadership Development, Generational Differences and other soft skills training solutions in Toronto and across Canada. Bruce is also an Executive Coach to a few select clients.

BMC helps your greatest assets think productive and be productive.

Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.

What is Respect At Work?

Respect and Trust go hand-in-hand. They are two of the most important components of a thriving, productive and diverse work environment… and must be shared among your team, suppliers and customers. Without respect and trust being intentional parts of your team development, employees will almost always feel disconnected, be low-producers and have limited employee loyalty. In addition, suppliers will be weary of working with your company and clients just won’t buy and/or refer business.

I’ve written about trust and team development before, so let’s focus on ‘what is respect in the workplace and how we can improve it?’

Let’s begin by noticing that respect is a feeling, but showing respect to someone is an action. Showing respect at work lets people know at an emotional level that they are valued. Nobody wants to feel they don’t matter or that the work they do isn’t important / respected.

We don’t have to agree with someone to treat them with respect and appreciate their knowledge and/or experience. Even if we don’t like someone, we should always be dignified because any negative behaviour on our part will diminished our point of view if others feel our opinion is based on us not liking the other person versus our experience.

How We Can Show Others Respect In The Workplace:

• Acknowledge them or as they say in the movie ‘Avatar’, “I see you.”

• Encourage people to bring their whole selves to work, embrace diversity

• Be transparent with your goals, values and resources

• Be aware of any conscious or unconscious biases you may be experience – and help others do the same 

• Listen to others with an open mind – turn off autopilot

• Be curious, ask questions (evaluation is healthy), but still remain open-minded and polite

• Recognize generational differences and how people from different generations add to the conversation

• Recognize cultural differences and how people from different places and backgrounds add to the conversation

• Delegate work and opportunities across the whole team, based on criteria like skill and interest

• Offer support, even when you have nothing to gain

• Inspire and reinforce others using intrinsic and extrinsic, verbal and non-verbal motivators

• Recognize different people are rewarded by different things (Competency, Autonomy, Purpose, Impact)

• Tap into your empathy and be aware of what others are feeling and needing… but not sharing verbally

Having disagreements is almost always a sign of a healthy relationship. It shows people feel comfortable to share their thoughts and unique experiences. And for this to be healthy everyone has to realize that disagreement doesn’t have to be steeped in conflict or disrespect. What is important is everyones ability to show respect and be able to listen to each others input in line with the agreed upon goals and shared values versus personal beliefs.

The thing is, when we show others respect and when we openly listen to them, most people – even people who are confrontational will most likely pull back and begin showing you and others respect (noting I said most people and most likely). When this does happen, it’s possible that over time a respectful relationship can be built or rebuilt.

Real Example: I coached a leader who took over a department and was having a challenging time with a leader from another department. Historically, my clients’ predecessor and the other leader didn’t work well together. My client started slowly; taking time to listen to the other leader, be transparent with their goals and share relevant information. It took some time and there were a few bumps along the way, but mutual respect and trust was built, which made everyone’s work easier, helped both teams be more productive and overall work for everyone was less stressful and more enjoyable.

For the record, the leader from the other department likely initially felt two types of disrespect:

• Owed Respect: Respect (or disrespect) of the work and/or contribution of their group or team

• Earned Respect: Respect (or disrespect) of their own work and/or contribution (including leadership)   

Part of having a respectful space is to know that from time to time there may be disagreement. To overcome disagreements in a respectful way it’s important for everyone to know the plan is to always share when you are not feeling respected and valued. Knowing in advance that from time-to-time there may be situations that require a difficult conversation, can be healthy because it demonstrates a learning-based corporate culture dedicated to growth versus negative confrontations where people feel attacked and blindsided and often lead to broken relationships.

Conclusion:

People often say, “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” I say no. Instead, treat other people the way they want to be treated. Part of showing respect at work means rewarding people the way they want to be rewarded.  As I mentioned earlier, there are four main ways people feel reward (Competency, Autonomy, Purpose, Impact). Using myself as an example, the only way to know how which of these four is my preferred motivator is to talk with me – get to know me. If Autonomy is my key motivator and I have a leader who rewards me with Purpose or Impact there will be a gap – and that gap is likely to grow over time as I don’t feel understood and respected.

Companies that have a respectful workplace almost always are more successful, more creative and more resilient / responsive to their market in large part because employees are satisfied with their work and are proud of the company.

Life is messy. Let’s stay open and embrace it all.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have enjoyed.

Bruce

About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.

Bruce is Corporate Trainer and Executive Coach.

As a Corporate Trainer Bruce Mayhew (of BMC) specialize in customized Time Management Training, Email Etiquette Training, Leadership & New Leadership Development, Generational Differences and other soft skills training solutions in Toronto and across Canada. Bruce is also an Executive Coach to a few select clients.

BMC helps your greatest assets think productive and be productive.

Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.