Looking at the job market right now and the way recruiters’ thought processes appear to work, you’d be forgiven for believing that ‘communication skills’ (I don’t like ’soft’ skills either!) don’t even exist.

As far as I can see, selection processes today have been made to resemble procurement processes for components. The closest fit to the technical specification gets the job.

The results?
1. Increasing rudeness and incivility in the workplace.
2. Increasing lack of initiative in the workplace.
3. Increasing lack of flexibility in the workplace.
4. Increasing lack of real growth prospects in the workplace.

The largest companies are the worst offenders.

In the short term, these companies will continue to do what they do.

In the long term, these companies will fall victim to competition of smaller, nimbler competitors who will do what it takes to get the job done, not what it takes to please the corporate hierarchy.

Best wishes

Liam

Thanks for adding your voice (and your well designed blog) to this discussion.

Here is one of my recent posts underscoring how people-skills in sales/service impact the bottom line outcome. Emotional intelligence has hit mainstream business and the sky is the limit as a result.
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http://katenasser.com/5-best-customer-service-emotionally-intelligent-thoughts/

Highest regards,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

Maybe we can rethink and realign “soft” with software vs hardware instead of “soft” like unimportant. We know software makes the hardware operate; same thing here…

The hard (tech) skills are required, but they ain’t gonna get used unless someone BEFORE them mastered soft skills. You make a fabulous point, and as much as it pains me to admit, I agree with Drew too.

Every day I am in contact with people from whom I WOULD buy. I’m reasonably solvent, have a need, am either IN the store, ON their website, or the phone, and yet so few people can “sell”. They just ‘take orders’ or respond robotically.

Contractors, just imagine for a moment – - what would happen if you bumped EVERY transaction size by 10% and boosted your closing ratio by 10 points. Suddenly the soft skills are very measurable indeed, allowing you to use more hard skills to get all that equipment installed.

I also find it ironic that salespeople, CSRs, techs, etc. always talk about sharpening up these so-called “soft skills”. How do you sharpen something that is “soft”???

You can’t!

These skills are forged with the blood (from paper cuts), sweat (due to hot offices, cars, classrooms in which we read, listen and study) and tears (from spouses and kids missing you while you learn or work).

Once forged with knowledge, they are hardened with role-playing and experience, then the edge is hone with laser-like precision ongoing coaching, training, troubleshooting and reinforcement, until the sharpness of these skills is part of the fabric of the person and who they are and how they act without flexing.

Sales, selling, effective interpersonal communication, and relationship building take effort to learn and master and anyone who thinks they have mastered them is to be marked a fool because, like golf, you can always get better and improve on your performance both personally and professionally.

The skills of which you write in your blog, are anything but soft. They are hard to learn, hard to implement, hard to own an master, hard to maintain, and hard to excel at, but they easy to succeed with since so few ever really put in any effort to strive for excellence in their utilization.

Make a connection, share some mutual insights, and see if it makes sense to work together.

Sounds easy enough, but then again if it were that easy there would be no need for me, Joe, or blog.

All the best!

Drew Cameron
HVAC Sellutions