Soft skills for leaders and the secret sauce for employee engagement
Soft skills are not some hippy, ‘woo woo’ fluffy concept. Soft skills are life skills, they help us to form and sustain relationships, help us manage ourselves and others and they make us human.
I believe that Communication skills are one of the most important soft skills, not only for leaders and managers but for anyone. They make a good manager into a great leader and from those teams led by great leaders grow, high performing, compassionate and inspirational people and future leaders.
I want to share why communication skills matter for employee engagement and why human connection is the secret sauce.
First, a little about engagement. There is so much research and writing about employee engagement; what it is, how to get it, how to measure it, who owns… the list goes on.
Are you engaged? I was in the line at a motorways service station Starbucks and I noticed that one of the baristas working that day had dyed her hair two colours (excuse my lame drawing, I wish I had taken her picture). One side of her neat bob haircut was jet black hair and on the other side was a vivid Starbucks green, it looked amazing with her green apron! But, more importantly she was quick and accurate with her orders and was enjoying her day, she was chatting and connecting with customers and her team. Her energy was hard to ignore, I thought, this would be a fun place to work (even though it was suspended on a noisy motorway bridge).
Now have a think, how many employees would choose your company brand colours when choosing their hair colour or outfit? Ok hair styles aside…there is something to be said for the people, who don’t just ‘like’ working for their company, they ‘love’ working for their company and their emotional commitment is triggered by genuine human connection.
But all that emotional stuff feels all a bit soft and fluffy right!
Well just take a look at the costs of disengagement, poor performance, absenteeism, toxicity and bullying at work. The soft stuff makes business sense.
That extra effort is not just about what people give to the company, it is about the emotions behind their efforts. They are simply ‘doing their thing’ and get paid for it.
A leader I worked with described engagement as; “that people come to work to do the best work of their lives”.
Great leaders help people to find and use their superpower and support them to get the most out of the opportunities ahead of them. I have seen that behind many high performers and engaged people is a leader with strong soft skills, which include the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, speaking clearly and intentionally – listening openly and often.
They are called soft skills… but they are hard, they are equally hard to prove you have them and measure improvements, like with listening for example. You might think that you have nailed a soft skill, but the best way to find out is to ask other people if you are a good listener.
Why are they hard? Because for some people they come naturally, for others they need to be developed over time and for others very little. To establish a new soft skill, you need to use it in real life and in a variety of settings over a long period, but you often need to ‘unlearn’ old habits and default behaviours that have built up over long periods of time. However with change is possible by understanding what a difference you can make and having a strong willingness to learn and grow.
Do you need to boost engagement?
I have spent most of my career working to improve engagement with clear and effective communication, focusing mostly on how leaders and managers can communicate better. I have trained leaders all over the world to improve their communication skills. Some new managers, others C-suite leaders. From the basics of planning strategic communications or chance communication to storytelling and active listening. Here is a bit of what I have learned and just three tips to help you spread that secret sauce; human connection.
1. Get an empathy boost. Go into every conversation with an aim to learn something you didn’t know about that person. Leaders and line managers play a big role in how people think and behave at work, so it is pretty common that when engagement and performance is low, attention goes to the leader and managers. One thing we do all the time is communicate. Leaders need to communicate with stakeholders and to upward management, between departments and teams and importantly within their own teams. These are all opportunities for human connection and for genuine or authentic conversations for a common goal. Unfortunately, what often ends up happening is that the leader talks and the employees apparently listen. Listen to yourself in a conversation… its harder than you might think.
2. Check assumptions. When you share a message, pause and check if people are clear about the context, content and expectations. Humans are hardwired to look for purpose and meaning in our work, this is why personal connection to corporate purpose becomes so important. Purpose and context tells people a story that they can find themselves in and it helps to express what you mean and taps into people’s emotional drivers. Then ask what they understand, is it relevant, how they feel and do they like it? Make less and less assumptions… stay in a place of curiosity and it is a genuine conversation!
3. Create psychological safety. We may be using our brains to do our work, but our heart and minds are connected; which means that when we feel valued, appreciated, stimulated, supported and safe… we will thrive. But it also means that when we like and trust the leader we are also more likely to like and trust the message they bring. Have you done everything you can to make your team a safe place for people to talk to you and each other? Ask them what else you can do. So often the default is that the boss gives the orders and has the answers… the reaction is that people who work for the boss is expected to do what they are told. Re-frame this! Set the direction, communicate it clearly but they invite input to make it clearer for them and for you and to improve it! See your teams as the source of insights and knowledge that you can unlock and communicate to them in a way that shows that. They will respect you for it.
What you communicate and how you communicate can either strengthen or undermine their efforts to build trust and influence.
Even with training and implementing new schemes, away-days etc, we struggle to improve employee engagement. Often intentions are great, but I have seen many times that we look to address processes like talent management, resources, training and changes to working conditions. But it is much harder to get beyond the ‘hard’ skill level and into ‘soft’ skills. My experience of many communication skills training in leadership development or onboarding of new managers is that they just don’t prepare you for the job you need to do or give you the confidence and competence to communicate better, we need more than theories. Yes, we need practical applications, toolkits and techniques coaching on the job to keep the learning going. But one essential ingredient; the secret sauce…is the will and mindset to have meaningful human connections.
But here is the thing…you will only connect when people feel free to be their real self. If you are being your real self and others are also being themselves, then you get a genuine connection.
So get connecting!
For more about me, how we can connect and how we can work together get in touch
