A recent article from Harvard Business Review caught my attention. It reaffirmed what many of us already know which that is being a good CEO is no longer just about having industry expertise and financial savvy but more about having strong social skills.

It also explored the reasons that the focus on CEO and C-suite skills must change.

Organisations need executives who can motivate diverse, technically savvy, and global workforces.

The authors research determined the capabilities that are now in demand, how they have changed over time, and what adjustments organisations need to make to ensure they have the social skills in place for success.

The social skills needed include:

·       High levels of self-awareness

·       Ability to communicate and listen effectively

·       Facility for working with a diverse workforce

·       Theory of mind – the capacity to infer how others are thinking and feeling

The focus now is enabling coordination by communicating information, facilitating the exchange of ideas, building and overseeing teams, and identifying and solving problems.

Whilst the article focuses on the C-suite, I believe that the social skills apply at every level of the organisation. You don’t know where your next executive may come from but home-grown is best. That approach allows internal up-and-comers to hone and demonstrate a range of strong social skills.

Drivers of change

Leaders in organisations must coordinate disparate and specialised knowledge, match the organisation’s problems with the best people to solve them, and effectively orchestrate communication. All this needs the ability to interact well with others.

Back in 1967, Peter Drucker, management guru said, “The more we automate information-handling, the more we will have to create opportunities for effective communication.” He wasn’t wrong. When routine tasks across the organisation are automated, the competitiveness relies on capabilities that technology does not have – judgement, creativity, and perception. This requires people with strong social skills.

Most organisation today use the same technology platforms e.g., Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Workday and Facebook. The technology they use is no longer a differentiator. The differentiator now is leadership that can distinguish themselves through superior leadership of the people using the technology, who are excellent communicators, and can deliver the right messages with empathy. It is a workforce with superior social skills at every level of the organisation that will make the organisation stand out in the industry.

Organisations as black boxes where customers, consumers, and constituents could only see what went in and what came out, do not exist today. Social media has made what goes on within an organisation immediately transparent. Everyone in the organisation must be attuned to how their decisions and actions will be perceived by various audiences. Leaders need to be expert at communicating spontaneously and anticipating how their words and actions will play out.

The entire workforce must embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organisation. Everyone must understand that others have unique values, beliefs, preferences, and aspirations, that may differ from our own. This requires strong social skills particularly theory of mind. Theory of mind refers to the abilities underlying the capacity to reason about one’s own and others’ mental states.

What needs to change

Organisations must appreciate the importance of strong social skills throughout the workforce. The challenge is to find ways in which to evaluate and compare employee’s social skills. Consideration could be given to psychometric assessment and simulation exercises. In learning and development programs, there must be a systematic approach to building and evaluating social skills.

One company, Pymetrics, has built a soft skills platform using data-driven insights and artificial intelligence to assist with the hiring and development of employees with strong social skills.

The biggest change is for organisations, and those within them, to truly recognise what strong social skills look and feel like. You cannot build them into training and development programs unless you know what you are looking for. You cannot determine how to evaluate and measure them unless you can recognise them.

High levels of self-awareness

Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence.

Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer coined the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ in 1990 describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action”.

Daniel Goleman, psychologist and science journalist, popularised the term emotional intelligence in his 1995 book, “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.” He argued that it was not cognitive intelligence that guaranteed business success but emotional intelligence. He described emotionally intelligent people as those with four characteristics:

1. They were good at understanding their own emotions (self-awareness)

2. They were good at managing their emotions (self-management)

3. They were empathetic to the emotional drives of other people (social awareness)

4. They were good at handling other people’s emotions (social skills)

Individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence are comfortable with their own thoughts and emotions and understand how they impact on others. Self-awareness means you can tap into your own feelings, sense inner signals, and recognise how your feelings affect you and your performance.

Daniel Goleman writing for Korn Ferry says:

“Self-Awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions and their effects on your performance. You know what you are feeling and why—and how it helps or hurts what you are trying to do. You sense how others see you and so align your self-image with a larger reality. You have an accurate sense of your strengths and limitations, which gives you a realistic self-confidence. It also gives you clarity on your values and sense of purpose, so you can be more decisive when you set a course of action.”

Here are 15 self-awareness strategies from Travis Bradbury and Jean Greaves. Reproduced from getstoryshots.com

1. Quit treating your feelings as good or bad. Judging your emotions prevents you from understanding them, adds more emotions to the pile, and keeps you from being able to see the cause of the original feeling. Understand, don’t judge.

2. Observe the ripple effect from your emotions. Recognise that when you act out of your emotions, the effects can be long-term, and on more than the person at whom you directed the emotion.

3. Lean into your discomfort. We tend to try to ignore or minimise unpleasant emotions, but this prevents us from understanding those emotions.

4. Feel your emotions physically. Learn to spot the physical changes that come with your different emotions, and you’ll be able to better understand what you’re feeling.

5. Know who and what pushes your buttons. This needs to be specific – identify the exact people, situations, and environments that trigger your emotions by rubbing you the wrong way and make a list. This will then allow you to determine the source of your reaction to these things.

6. Watch yourself like a hawk. Develop a more objective understanding of your behaviour by taking notice of your emotions and behaviours as a situation unfolds.

7. Keep a journal about your emotions. Because emotions are such an intangible subject, you’ll need to write things down to understand them better, identify patterns, and track progress. It will also later help you to remember your tendencies in the moment.

8. Don’t be fooled by a bad mood. A bad mood can overshadow all your emotions, so you need to recognise when it’s the emotional state that’s affecting you rather than an individual emotion and go through the same process to identify what caused the mood.

9. Don’t be fooled by a good mood, either. You should also seek to understand why your good moods happen, both for the sake of understanding your emotions better, and to avoid the harm that can come from a good mood (irrational exuberance, for example).

10. Stop and ask yourself why you do the things you do. Your emotions will alert you to things you never would know otherwise.

11. Visit your values. Contrasting your values with the way your emotions compel you to act is a helpful exercise to increase your self-awareness. Take a piece of paper and write down your values in one column, and anything you’ve done recently that you’re not proud of in a second column. The authors suggest doing this somewhere between daily and monthly to keep it in your mind before you react in a way you’d regret.

12. Check yourself. Your physical appearance always gives good clues about how you feel. Observe your facial expressions, body language, clothes, etc.

13. Spot your emotions in books, movies, and music. Art that you identify with can offer further clues about your emotions. Consider which of these things grabs your attention and ask yourself why.

14. Seek feedback. Because your understanding of your emotions is limited by your one perspective, getting feedback from others is invaluable. Ask others for specific examples and look for similarities in different people’s answers.

15. Get to know yourself under stress. Learn to recognise your personal physiological and emotional first signs of stress and take the time to rest or recharge before that stress piles up.

Ability to communicate and listen effectively

Communication

Everyone needs to communication effectively and utilise active listening. Communication and listening are something we think we get right whilst most often we don’t. Communication must be clear. When teams are distributed as may are today, the chances of miscommunication increase. Everyone needs to check in and ensure their message has been heard as intended.

When physically face-to-face it can be easier to sense that the recipient of your message has not understood it and you then deliver the communication in a different manner until you can see that there is understanding.

When you are not physically face-to-face, communicating through a screen or in writing over various time zones, communication can go awry.

You cannot afford to let this happen.

If you are sending out a written communication, get a colleague or team member to give it the ‘once over’ to check it is clear and without ambiguity.

When you communicate verbally, ask the recipient to play back to you what they have heard. In this way you can check understanding.

If you are communicating to a large group, check-in afterwards with a random selection of recipients to check their comprehension.

Remember what Brené Brown said: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Think of communication as a conversation which is a 2-way dialogue. I have written about the differences between communication and conversation here in two articles – Part 1 and Part 2.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to communication. Everyone is different with different needs.  You must communicate with others in ways that suit the recipient(s). You must get insight into others preferred communication styles and adapt your style to that of the recipient(s). Want to know their style? Ask. Want to know if your communication is effective? Ask.

Listening

You must practice active listening. This means that you are fully present.

Concentrate on what is being said. Listen with all your senses and give your full attention to the person(s) speaking. Remove all distractions and focus on what is being said. Shut down any internal dialogue you are having.

Listen with intent. Show the other person(s) that you are genuinely interested in what they are saying. Look at them and observe nonverbal behaviours. Smile, lean in, and nod at key moments. Make eye contact.

Seek clarification to ensure you have heard what was intended. Be patient and resist the urge to interrupt and let the speaker finish. You must remain non-judgemental and where possible remove biases you are aware of. Encourage the other person(s) to elaborate on what they are saying and ask open-ended questions about the person and their experiences to show you are interested in them.

Acknowledge and thank each person for their contribution.

Summary

Strong social skills are now in high demand as organisations recognise the competitive advantage they deliver.

Having self-awareness gives you the power to influence outcomes; help you become a better decision-maker and gives you more self-confidence. 

Next week I will look at the other two social skills - facility for working with a diverse workforce; and theory of mind – the capacity to infer how others are thinking and feeling; and explore two fundamental characteristics I believe everyone must have if they are to build these social skills – a growth mindset, compassion and courage.