Data-Driven Leaders: Attention!
The U.S. Army is about to drill some critical soft skills into our hard heads!
US Military and Soft Skills
Because some leaders dismiss soft skills as meaningless compared to measurables and data points, it’s fascinating to consider the military origin of the term “soft skills.” Joe Wright Software Development 2/17/18 blog:
…‘soft skills’ can be traced back to the US Military between 1968 and 1972. The military had excelled at training troops on how to use machines to do their job. But they were noticing that a lot of what made a group of soldiers victorious was how the group was led. This bothered the military as they weren’t training for that. So they went about creating a method to capture how this knowledge was being acquired.
Paul G Whitmore is the name that comes up the most in these documents. His team came up with the contrast between working with something that is physically hard like a machine and anything else which is soft to the touch. From this research three criteria were created to judge if a skill is ‘soft’ or ‘hard’:
- Degree of interaction with a machine
- Degree of specificity of behavior to be performed
- Typical kind of on the job situation
Key to Leadership Success
Since the military took note, a virtual industry has evolved to highlight the importance of soft skills – often defined differently than by the military. As the author of over 20 best-selling books on marketing, leadership and creativity, Seth Godin got many people thinking with his January 2017 article, “Let’s stop calling them soft skills” in It’s Your Turn (itsyourturnblog.com). Godin stressed that soft skills are the key to success in leadership and perhaps even happiness in life. He found it incorrect to call them soft when they are hard to acquire skills:
It turns out that what actually separates thriving organizations from struggling ones are the difficult-to-measure attitudes, processes and perceptions of the people who do the work.
In this first draft, we’ve chosen five large categories and then given examples of each [Examples are not included here.] Not a definitive taxonomy, but a start, a way to move the conversation and the investment forward. The five categories might include:
Self Control — Once you’ve decided that something is important, are you able to persist in doing it, without letting distractions or bad habits get in the way? Doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short run.
Productivity — Are you skilled with your instrument? Are you able to use your insights and your commitment to actually move things forward? Getting non-vocational tasks done.
Wisdom — Have you learned things that are difficult to glean from a textbook or a manual? Experience is how we become adults.
Perception — Do you have the experience and the practice to see the world clearly? Seeing things before others have to point them out.
Influence — Have you developed the skills needed to persuade others to take action? Charisma is just one form of this skill.
Since 2017, Godin and the soft skills world have given much attention to his “first draft.” Yet, his point holds true: Honoring soft skills is critical to leadership and success.
Character Skills
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, author, and podcaster, is recognized as one of the world’s ten most influential management thinkers. He provides insights on soft skills. In his book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (2023), he explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked. That’s an invaluable mindset that encourages leaders to recognize and look for fresh talent within our existing ranks.
Grant points to a growing body of evidence that it’s obviously good to be smart and have cognitive skills and expertise, but it’s more important to build character skills (dependable, determined, disciplined, proactive, prosocial, ability to persist to overcome obstacles, confront the unknown). We should think of them less as values, but as skills that can be built over time.
Beyond Cognitive Skills
Grant acknowledges that we live in a business world obsessed with cognitive skills. He urges not to view building character skills as a moral undertaking, but as a way to make progress with our professional goals. After all, he teaches at The Wharton School where they’re all about business skills.
He shares a study done in Africa, where one group was trained in cognitive skills (finance, marketing, etc.) and another trained in character skills (overcome obstacles, persist when you’re failing, etc.). The data showed that profits grew 3 x more for those trained in character skills compared with those trained in direct business skills
Better at Life
Grant demonstrates how those mastering character skills will do better at life. Similarly, Godin suggested years earlier that perhaps soft skills are the key to happiness in life. Even from Godin’s “first draft,” we know that beyond Grant’s character skills there is a wide range of soft skills to master – or at least be mindful of. We should pay attention to these two business experts who are urging that we develop these soft skills to do better at work and in life.
Continuing Challenges
There is no end to the challenges leaders face. Some of the most intractable ones have less to do with a particular “business” issue and more to do with “human” factors at play. Simmering frustration may get in the way of identifying the actual source of a problem.
There was friction around failure to file required reports. The issue had been ongoing for a year. The leader considered it as such an easy task that the only explanation was lazy and non-compliant team members. The leader continued to berate everyone to immediately comply, but the reporting problem persisted.
There was some culpability on the team’s part, but the root causes of lackluster reporting had more to do with: 1) leadership’s sluggishness in dealing with its management structure and corresponding reporting, and 2) leadership minimizing the need for administrative support for a workable reporting system. Of almost no concern to the leader:
- Actually listening to team members’ challenges in securing data for the reports.
- Any empathy for what team members’ faced in the field.
- Taking time to discuss specific impediments and how to overcome them.
- Collectively planning an effective approach with team members.
- leadership’s conflicting priorities which confused and drained team members.
Soft skills would have come in handy.
Reminder to the Gifted
The “Reports” fiasco reflected that leader’s default response to many challenges: “It’s easy; they just won’t do it.” That belief can be an immensely helpful reminder to us. Leaders, particularly gifted leaders, may not see that it’s not so easy or so clear to others.
Team members may not have had the benefits of university training, MBA skills, strong intellectual capacity, professional experience, or other opportunities and preparation that have produced their leaders. That does not excuse poor performance, but might cause leaders to better evaluate why someone is failing at some “easy” task. More focus on soft skills, even for gifted leaders, can go a long way.
Root Cause
If our cognitive skills aren’t identifying root causes of ongoing business challenges, we might give our (under-practiced) soft skills a shot. Leaders who find such skills irrelevant might rethink that when facing problems that keep giving. Examples:
- Dysfunction in the workplace
- Allowed or even created by leadership
- Could be at the top or at the bottom
- Toxic employees
- Personal issues of the CEO or leadership
- Subtle infighting within leadership (or anywhere in management)
- Quarrels in a family business
- Simmering financial, domestic, or other pressures on the leader (and others)
- Internal or external disputes that don’t seem significant but are sapping time, collaboration, and good will
- Claims, litigation, PR problem, etc. being “handled by Legal” but are (silently) unnerving everyone
- Industry or technology changes outpacing leadership’s plans (or abilities?). Perhaps obvious to everyone, but leadership remains unmoved (out of fear?)
If we have intractable business issues, we might more successfully address them when we bring on the soft skills.
