Coaching: Why Are Soft Skills Important?

In many positions and occupations, job performance is soft skill dependent. Companies use assessment tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, so they can get an idea of what soft skills employees possess. These skills are often intangible and, therefore, not easily taught. They tend to be more a function of personality characteristics. Some examples of soft skills include:

Responsibility
Self-esteem
Sociability
Self-management
Integrity/honesty

Examples of interpersonal soft skills include:

Participates as a member of the team
Teaches others
Serves customers
Exercises leadership
Negotiates
Works with cultural diversity

Hard and soft knowledge are both important in the working world but employees who lack the ability to manage their lives, take responsibility for their own success, and follow through on commitments need to learn soft skills along with the hard skills required for a job so they understand how all aspects of their lives connect. Soft skills provide a way to get the highest return on investment when considering human capital. They can build great people. Few individuals are fired because they lack technical knowledge. Most are fired because of a deficit in soft skill knowledge. Ultimately, what we know is not nearly as important as what we do with what we know, and how well we do it.

Some organizations will attempt to train soft skills but training is a use it or lose it proposition. While a participant may be motivated and excited after returning from a program, preexisting thought patterns can work against implementation. Many trainers will admit that follow up is necessary for retention. The transfer of training includes both generalizations of training on-the-job and maintenance of learned material. For this to occur, abilities must be learned and retained through practical experience and repetition. The work environment, including cultural climate, management and peer support, and performance opportunity, is vital to this achievement. Coaching is a tool that can help arrive at transfer of knowledge by recalling the lessons learned, reinforcing their importance, and motivating the client to move forward, despite obstacles or roadblocks. It is suggested that peer coaching, group coaching, or manager to employee coaching take place as follow-up. These techniques will make soft skill retention possible.

Teams, Socio-Technical Systems, & Organizational Values

High performance and self-organizing teams have become an important part of organizational design to maintain a competitive edge. One of the most progressive team designs was developed in the 1950’s by social scientists Trist and Emery. The theory of socio-technical systems (STS) is a process-based, team oriented approach to work that evolved as a way to extend democratic and humane values into the workplace. The organization is viewed as an open system structured to integrate two independent but linked systems; the technical subsystem and the social subsystem. The technical subsystem, following the rules of physics, chemistry, and engineering, includes equipment and transformation processes which are technologically and economically driven so the most desirable method is the most productive at the least cost. The social subsystem, following the rules of psychology, sociology, and politics, incorporates interpersonal relationships that develop among people and build a mutual trust. The system recognizes that commitment to work is conditional on the work experience and assumes technology can be adapted to fit people. The best match of solutions is explored through joint optimization and discovery (see All Teams Are Not Created Equal by Lyman D. Ketchum and Eric Trist, 1992).

STS requires those who work to get a great deal more authority, control, skills, and information than what was customary with scientific management. Socio-technical designers seek to broaden each individual’s knowledge of social and economic consequences, and encourage each worker to develop a range of skills to get results. The work group becomes the focus of change. Organizations using STS should structure the task, authority, and reporting relationships around the work group by delegating decisions regarding job assignments, training, inspection, rewards, and punishment to the group. The aim is to optimize both technical and social subsystems for the benefit of the larger system. Management is responsible for coordinating the groups according to the demands of the work and task environment. Their role is to monitor the environmental factors that effect internal operations and coordinate the two subsystems.

One STS design goal is to produce a system that is capable of adapting to change and making the best use of an individual’s creative abilities. Turning to socio-technical values, objectives, and principles can simplify overly complex production systems and may provide answers for current problems, such as the challenge of reinforcing corporate values. Values are something of worth and importance where learning and experience are the two greatest forces shaping them. Organizational values involve individuals working together to achieve a common goal and help us create our standards of conduct that drive business decisions. As Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer put it, “The only thing that works is management by values. Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, find people who care exactly about the same things you care about.”

Organizations need to establish a shared set of values and beliefs that align with the social and technical aspects of project management to achieve the organizations business objectives. These values provide the linkages between the organization’s members, structure, systems, and processes used in the adoption of management project methods. There are several principles leaders can follow to design a socio-technical system based on organizational values:

1. Express the needs and hopes of workers in design criteria and values to insure greater worker investment in organizational purposes. Participants share expectations while working to achieve agreement on the goals and objectives of a design team. The outcome is a set of shared values and assumptions that reflect the process.
2. Express values in the language of the organization and refer to the experiences of its members.
3. Clarify Values. Value clarification is a process of making explicit the premises that inform design choices.
4. Guide and test design decisions against explicit values.
5. Fit the workgroup to the technology. Technology should not determine work organization or design.

A supportive climate must exist between employees and leaders to strengthen organizational values. Management has a social responsibility to employees to ensure technology-based changes are introduced properly. Here are a few recommendations:

1. Let everyone know about the new technology changes through “selling and telling”.
2. Introduce the system to management first (to gain support), then to employees.
3. Make sure the technology works as promised.
4. Get rid of the old system once the new system is working.
5. Provide hands-on training.

How is your Organization Structured for Today’s Economy?

Structure facilitates the creation and implementation of strategy and the overall coordination of the enterprise. Organizational structure determines the placement of power and authority. It embraces two relationships: who is responsible for what, and who reports to whom. Organizations can become more “structure influenced” when they hit market maturity, there is a decline in competition, their industry is stabile, tasks are routine, or they operate in a politically charged environment. Movement away from a strong structural influence may be caused by industry upheavals, deregulation, economic decline, and legislation.

Businesses with structure-driven configurations buffer themselves from the need to change. In many ways they resemble a closed system and will use politics to capture key environmental resources. Organizations that can ignore the environment either reside in stable markets or have market power and resources to resist pressures to change. Uncertainty is reduced by pursuing routinization, standardization, and formalization. Performance in structure driven organizations is usually measured against internal standards like cost. Ironically, structure can also serve as a major factor in extreme open and flexible structures where rich organizations are well-adapted to their environment or operate in an unchanging setting.

Organizations with high structural influence may confine themselves to existing and predictable market niches. The choice of strategy is limited to adherence with specified power distributions, inviolate rules, and procedures with specific modes of interaction. Innovation and differentiation are rare, as norms of efficiency would be pursued. Managers within a structural influence are comfortable with existing functions and will have very little personal discretion. This uniformity reinforces the status quo.

There are five common ways to structure an organization: function, geography, product, customer, front-back hybrid.

Function
The functional structure is organized around major activity groups. It provides advantages in knowledge sharing, specialization, leverage with vendors, economics of scale, and standardization. This structure is most effective for managing a single product or service line and can create barriers between different functional areas. Each area tends to develop a unique perspective that can make collaboration difficult. Functional organizations operate most effectively in small companies, businesses with little diversity in product, or markets that don’t compete based on speed. Common criteria: single line of business, small, core capability requires depth of expertise in one or more functional areas, product diversity or fast product development cycles not critical, common standards important.

Geographic
A geographic structure is organized around physical locations. It provides the advantage of local focus because power is given to the regional manager but slows down response time when a global solution is needed. Common criteria: high cost to transport, service delivery on-site, proximity to customer for delivery or support, local perception.

Product
The product structure is organized around product divisions. It can evolve from a functional structure when a company diversifies and each line is large enough to support its own production. This structure has the advantage of a product development cycle, product excellence, and a broad operating freedom. Its challenges lie in divergence issues, duplication, lost economies of scale, and multiple customer points of contact. Common criteria: product features or being first to market is important, multiple products are produced for separate market segments, short product development time is an advantage; products have short life cycles, the organization is large enough to achieve the minimum efficient scale required to duplicate functions.

Customer
The customer structure is organized around major market segments. It provides customization, relationships, and total solutions. Difficulties arise in divergence, duplication, and scale. Common criteria: important market segments where buyers have strength, customer knowledge provides an advantage, rapid customer service and product cycle times are required, the organization is large enough to achieve the minimum efficient scale required to duplicate functions.

Front-Back Hybrid
The front-back hybrid structure contains elements from the product and customer structures. It allows for product excellence at the back end while increasing customer satisfaction at the front end. This structure is best for large organizations that have multiple product lines and segments, serve global customers, need to maximize both customer and product excellence, and have managers capable of managing complexity. The front-back hybrid has several advantages, such as a single point of interface for customers, cross-selling, value-added systems and solutions, product focus, and multiple distribution channels. The complexity of the design can overwhelm an organization.

What Else is Important?
The size of an organization is another aspect for structural decision-making. Small organizations tend to have flat, simple, structures. They cannot afford to duplicate functions, so a functional structure will be most efficient. As an organization grows, it will have the resources to specialize its products and services by market or industry. This usually happens when an organization’s volume increases to a point where they hit the break-even point. The size of an organization does not change the design process, only the number of iterations in the process. For example, a one hundred person firm may only have one level of design. The resulting units will not be large enough to be structured more than one level further.

Every organization experiences the pulls that underlie their structure: pulls to centralize by top management, pulls to formalize by the technostructure, pulls to professionalize by the operators, pulls to collaborate by the support staff, and pulls to divide by the middle line managers. Since organizations tend to configure around the pull that dominates, structures can serve as a tool for diagnosing the problems of organizational design.

How is your organization designed and structured? Is the structure the dominate influence on how things get done? Maybe leadership or environment is more important. Does your organization have the right structure to grow and expand? What could change?

Is Your Organization Influenced by the Environment?

Environment is usually a dominant influence for small firms in highly competitive environments with few resources, and midsized firms in uncertain situations. In this scenario, there is little potential for product differentiation and few barriers to entry. Small profit margins lead to simple, centralized, cost efficient strategies that can respond quickly to changing markets. In an unstable economy, more organizations will move towards environmental influence when there is an increase in external uncertainty. They will only move away from environmental influence when their company accumulates sufficient market power through size, differentiation, vertical integration, and diversification.

According to the book, Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations, there are 4 types of structures found under specific environmental conditions. Simple, stable environments result in organizations that rely on standardization of processes and centralization for coordination. Complex, stable environments lead to decentralized structures that coordinate through the standardization of skills. Dynamic, simple environments rely on flexible, organic structures while remaining centralized. Dynamic, complex environments have decentralized organizations so managers or specialists can understand the issues. The structure provides flexibility so the firm can respond to unpredictable changes. Extreme hostility in the environment will drive organizational types to temporarily centralize their structures.

There are seven external categories that can influence an organization and affect their bottom line:

• Economic - inflation, interest rates, employment, incomes
• Social - births, housing, population trends
• Cultural - consumer values, safety, needs, beliefs
• Resources - materials, labor, credit, investors
• Government - laws, regulations, contracts, trade
• Political - policies, tariffs, taxes, elections
• Industry - competitors, prices, technology, markets

Supporters of environmental influence suggest that organizations must adapt to their surroundings because constraints determine which forms of strategy and structure are practical. The environment, as a cause, imposes uniformity by extinguishing organizations that ignore it. It is assumed that gross departures from industry standards will lead to failure. This position is held by many traditional contingency theorists and industrial economists.

Environmental scanning can provide the information needed to strategically plan for change. In a study of 20 nondiversified companies, profitability was greater when executives had an accurate perception of industry volatility. A study of 65 organizations concluded that active participation by top leaders in monitoring the external environment was associated with a more accurate perception of the market.

When the environment is a major influence, organizations should develop intelligent systems that scan for threats and opportunities. Here are some questions likely to be important to your organization in these hard economic times:

• What do clients and customers need and want?
• What is the reaction of clients and customers to the organization’s current products and services?
• Who are the primary competitors?
• What strategies are they pursuing?
• How do competitors’ products and services compare to ourorganizations products and services?
• What events affect the acquisition of materials, energy, information, and other inputs used by our organization to conduct its operations?
• How will our organization be affected by new legislation and by government agencies that regulate its activities?
• How will new technologies affect our organization’s products, services, and operations?
• How will our organization be affected by changes in the economy?
• How will our organization be affected by changing population demographics?
• How will our organization be affected by international events?

There are several guidelines leaders can use to monitor the external environment. First, identify the relevant information that needs to be gathered. Look for timely information about specific sectors of the environment on which the organization is most dependent and for competitor performance. Second, use multiple sources of relevant information. For example, informal network contacts, journals, newsletters, trade and professional publications, and government reports can help avoid biases. Interpretations are likely to be more accurate if many people are involved in the process. Third, learn what customers want and need. Market surveys are a common source of information. Fourth, learn about the products and services of competitors. This information provides a basis for evaluating your own organization. Fifth, link environmental information to strategic plans. Use the information to measure the relevance of current goals.

What Type of Leader Are You? Leadership Influence in the Organization

The term leader is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “a person who leads.” The definition suggests that a leader must help the organization choose a path by developing a plan, then motivate people to follow that plan. James Gardner, author of On Leadership, magnifies this premise, “The two tasks at the heart of the popular notion of leadership are goal setting and motivating” In reality, leaders are more multidimensional, with each having a unique pattern of attributes. An observation made by Bennis years ago rings true today:

Always, it seems, the concept of leadership eludes us or turns up in another form to taunt us again with its slipperiness and complexity. So we have invented an endless proliferation of terms to deal with it… and still the concept is not sufficiently defined.

Underlying much of the research on executives is an interest in discovering how much and in what ways they influence the organization. When leadership is a major influence, it emphasizes the impact of a CEO’s behavior, goals, talents, drives, emotions, and fantasies on the organization. McClelland argues that leaders with a high need for achievement attempt to control their organizations while pursuing ambitious strategies. Miller and Droge show that a CEO’s need for achievement in a small firm was an important predictor of organizational structure. High achievers tend to like centralized power and will set up control systems and formal procedures to obtain feedback on performance. A CEO’s flexibility gives rise to niche strategies, informal and simple structures, intuitive decision-making, and risk-taking. In addition, a CEO’s perceived ability to persuade strongly influences organizational innovation, and pro-activeness.

A strong leadership influence is usually more prevalent in the birth phase of a business cycle. It also includes firms that are often small and run by the owners who make the key decisions. Movement towards a major leadership influence might occur when past leader successes elevate power, charismatic leaders hire like-minded managers, CEO’s are also owners, or hiring policies discourage dissent. Movement away can be influenced by a leader’s departure, performance problems that erode a leader’s credibility, a public offering, or takeover.

There are several avenues in determining the effects of leader influence. One way is to assess competing leadership values and trade-offs. For example, task requirements, such as efficiency, productivity, and investment, sometimes conflict with the desires or concerns of employees. Structured work may increase efficiencies, but this less flexible environment will make it difficult to implement changes in strategy. Efficiency is easier to increase when the environment is stable and there is less need to innovate products and services. The more volatile the environment, the more important it is to be adaptive. Leaders who deal with internal and external stakeholders will also need to weigh incompatible demands, such as, should profits increase at the expense of social responsibility? A leader is responsible to find some balance.

Leadership models can also help us to understand a leader’s organizational influence. Bolman and Deal, in Four Framework Approach, suggest that leaders display behaviors in one of four frameworks: Structural, Human Resource, Political, or Symbolic. Each requires a specific organizational setting to be successful. In the structural framework, the leader is detail oriented and focuses on configurations of structure, strategy, environment, implementation, experimentation, and adaptation through a thorough analysis. This framework is very effective during reorganization or change efforts. The human resource framework describes a leader who believes in the people and provides support and empowerment. This leader is visible, accessible, and shares information to move decision-making downward. In some organizations, the leader would be seen as a pushover. Leaders of a political framework clarify what they want and assess the distribution of power and interests. They use persuasion, negotiation, and coercion, if necessary, to achieve their goals. In the wrong environment, these leaders appear manipulative. In the symbolic framework, leaders view organizations like actors view a stage. Experience is framed through interpretation and used to communicate a vision. This type of leader can be very inspiring or appear all “smoke and mirrors”. Leaders should be conscious of all four approaches, even when one approach is preferred.

Dr. Bruce Winston of Regent University provides an excellent audio presentation on eight types of leaders:

• Despotic Ruler
• Benevolent Dictator
• Paternalistic Clan Chief
• Democratic Official
• Absentee Leader
• Transactional Leader
• Transformational Leader
• Servant Leader

Visit http://media.regent.edu/schlead/leadership/leadership_leader_follower.wma to listen to the presentation.

In summary, leaders establish goals, assumptions, policies, strategies, and accepted norms of behavior. They usually recruit and promote managers who conform to their own values and expectations. While a leader’s influence is evident in all organizations, it will apply more to small, highly centralized firms, or young, owner run businesses, and can increase with tenure. In your organization:

• What type of leader is in control?
• What type of leader do you see yourself as?
• Did you see a relationship between how the various leaders interacted with their followers and what structure might be best suited for the organization?
• What can you do to create a more leadership friendly environment?