Management Information |
Why Soft Skills?
The industrial age is over. Organizations still stuck in the industrial age business models are going out of business very fast. Technology is only as good as the people using it. That is the clear message of the new millennium. The knowledge era is supported by tapping into the immense power of the humans to think creatively, find unconventional solutions to add value, improve productivity, and find answers which will make life and work more valuable to the society. The straight jacketed systems thinking, assembly line techniques adapted to human endeavor has failed to provide the required results. Not that they are not required. But humans cannot be automated. Automation is good only as far as inanimate objects are involved. While discipline is important, systems cannot be the end all to derive the best value out of individuals. Human capital is best exploited when self actualization needs are met. There is lot more to human beings than repetitive, mechanical operations. Value is derived from out of the box thinking. Values are derived from the best possible team work, communication skills, empathy, intuitiveness, and self management needs of the people. This realization has resulted in the west embracing soft skills in a big way at considerable expense. The needs of different work environment, industries and business organizations are unique. The same systems applied in different environments will produce different results. The knowledge era demands certain freedom to apply skills specifically suited to the particular set of situation and circumstances. Soft skills are the key to providing workers with the core skills in communication, team work, leadership; personal effectiveness skills required to leverage one's individual strengths. With better quality of people the organization will produce higher customer satisfaction and achieve market leaderships. The soft skills initiative needs to be planned very carefully by organizations. They need to be tailored to the set of circumstances to connect the acquired skills to the workplace. World's topmost names in training today-Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy and Edward De Bono are all advocating and emphasizing on a total shift in training to self awareness, core values, mental and creative management skills-indispensable to personal success. Some of these names mentioned above are not even from the management discipline and they are the buzzwords in fortune 500 companies. What then must a CEO and the HR focus on? The answer might sound simplistic. Forget the organizational success models. Focus on success of each individual working for the organization. Make him succeed. Be it in work, personal lives or relationships. Make him a better contributor to the society. Take your people's self esteem to a very high level. And they will take your organization to the next level. Though it may sound dramatic forget the outdated management models and training models. Focus on core human values. The important element is not look into immediate cost benefit analysis which cannot be applied to soft skills training. While you can measure the effective transfer of knowledge you cannot measure the change in behavior in the short term. The process must be defined in the longer term benefits of upping the total value concept of the organizations by improving the human potential and thereby create a much higher market value in all areas of corporate activity. Look closely and prepare a soft skills inventory required by your organization. Not with the standard training products available. Ensure the training to be tailored to your unique requirement. Start on a strategic plan to improve such skills across the organization. Improve the skills and you automatically improve the bottom line and your market leadership. About The Author R.G. Srinivasan is founder of Born to Win Forum. He is a certified trainer and consultant in training design & methodologies. He is also the author of e-books, publishes 2 ezines on success and motivation and Home Business. His articles are widely published across the world. He is featured as an Expert Author in leading content syndication portals. Check out his home business ezine at http://home-businessleaders.tripod.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
When Being A Facilitator DOESNT Help I talked with a group of internal consultants last week - they felt they had to wear too many hats in their work. They had to be consultants, facilitators, coaches and trainers - sometimes in the same one-hour session. How to Manage Your People Well: Tips for Managers of Training As a training manager, there are two important aspects to managing your people well: hiring, supervising, and motivating (managing with your people) and building up corporate support for your department (managing for your people). Unfortunately, training is not well understood by some executives, and its benefits can be hard to assess. Firing Someone Without Resentment Firing, sacking, letting go or terminating people is unpleasant. There are ways to minimise resentment, but why bother? Because most legal action and unpleasantness stems from dissatisfaction/resentment about the way things were handled - about how rather than what happened. Creativity and Innovation Management - Competition versus Collaboration There is much confusion as to whether competition or collaboration is most beneficial to creativity and innovation. Though there are negatives to collaboration and it is not easy separating the effects of time pressure and group activity, in general collaboration beats competition. Innovation Management - Good Leadership Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas. Get Meeting off To a Great Start When asked what part of their job they find a major time waster, many will answer loud and clear.. Turn Your Speech Into A Leadership Talk My experience working with thousands of leaders world wide for the past two decades teaches me that most leaders are screwing up their careers.On a daily basis, these leaders are getting the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways. 11 Strategies on How to Work in An Open Plan Environment Many work environments now are open plan, with only a few senior managers having offices of their own. This style of work can have great benefits for team building - fostering cooperation and collaboration and can be wonderful for developing the social aspects of teams, but on the flipside, it can drive some people crazy and be damaging to productivity. This Old Business Not long ago I was asked to come out and take a look at a business that had been around for about 10 years.. CEOs Are Great, Top CEOs Are Greater People in leading positions are often in a dilemma: on one hand they are supposed to give great performances, make the right decisions and so forth; on the other hand, they have to fill the role of a very confident and self-assured manager. This may be considered a dilemma because CEOs are expected to be almost supernatural, and asking for assistance in what is supposed to be their core competence (leadership!) simply does not fit the picture, no matter how necessary it may be. The Few & the Many: Free Trade, Outsourcing, & Communication Have you noticed that some sound ideas get bad publicity? Two Ihave in mind are outsourcing and free trade.No doubt you could name others, but looking at these two initiatives helps us understand a communication challenge for many companies and not-for-profit organizations. Sexual Harassment Policy Guidelines Part I Sexual Harassment Policy Guidelines - Part IPermission is hereby granted to modify and use the information in this draft sexual harassment guideline, provided you include reference to the author as shown at the end.We shall take all reasonable steps to see that this sexual harassment policy is followed everyone in our organization who has contact with employees. 30 Ways to be a Butt-Head Boss 1. Trust no one. Change Management: Avoid Havoc In Very Uncertain Times Escalating gas prices.. Unravelling the Data Mining Mystery - The Key to Dramatically Higher Profits Data mining is the art of extracting nuggets of gold from a set of seeminngly meaningless and random data. For the web, this data can be in the form of your server hit log, a database of visitors to your website or customers that have actually purchased from your web site at one time or another. What One Thing? A few weeks ago I asked my readers what the most important issue was in their business. Hundreds responded with a variety of answers, but one of the most common was, "How do I get everything that needs doing done?" Happily, I have an answer for this question, but like many things in life, it carries both good news and bad news. Are You Using the Right Form of Energy? As we near the end of summer, here is a question I have for you, "Are you using the right form of energy to grow your business?" Are you having trouble growing your small business as fast as you want? Are you making all the right moves and still the business just inches forward? Read this article and see if you are using the right form of energy to grow your small business?Head EnergyMy consulting experiences have taught me there are two types of business energy. I call the first type "head energy". Organize your Office- Seven Solutions 1. Create a filing system with broad categories such as "Insurance" and then break those categories down further into sub-categories (i. The Cheapest, Forget It ! Wouldn't it be great if we got get the cheapest price on everything. I know I wouldn't want it. Leading Meetings: The Top Three Challenges What do people really find challenging about leading meetings? Here are the top three questions that keep on cropping up followed by guidelines or simple ways to keep meetings under control and on track. Make your meetings work. |
home | site map | contact us |