Skills at work are often divided into “hard” and “soft” skills, where hard skills are technical or field specific, and soft skills are things like communication, negotiation and other people skills. Over the years, I have found that in general, very technical people who struggle with their soft skills do so because they don’t really understand why people skills are important, and why they should spend any time improving them.
My favourite way to look at this is in terms of the experience that you’re giving to anyone who interacts with you at work: is it an overall positive or negative experience? The key point, that is often misunderstood, is that the experience you give someone when you deal with them is completely unrelated to the content of the interaction. In other words, what you need to tell someone need not dictate how you deliver that message.
Of course, telling someone something they naturally will dislike will affect their impression of that interaction with you. But the point is that you can still make an effort to give that person as positive an experience as possible during that conversation. In almost all cases, doing so will result in a more positive result, meaning a more effective interaction, than not.
The next question that many people ask is: why bother giving people a great experience in the first place? After all, if the person respects you for your knowledge and skills, and you’re meeting your commitments to them, what’s the big deal? This logic is what holds many people back from achieve that next level of success within their organisation.
Human nature is that in general, it takes more than technical efficiency and effectiveness to be seen as a top resource, when a role involves dealing with other people. Giving people a great experience every time they deal with you, regardless of the content of the interaction, is a game changer when it comes to your perception within your organisation. This is also a good measure of whether you have sufficient soft skills for your role: if you’re not able to give a great experience, it’s time to identify what people interaction skills need improvement, and come up with a plan to work on them.
