Soft skills: Just because they’re soft doesn’t mean they’re easy
It’s performance review time and you’ve just received the following feedback from your line manager: “Your hard skills are excellent and technically you are hitting above all the marks. Unfortunately, we can’t promote you yet to the management track because your soft skills need a lot of work.”
How do you move from there? What are some actions that you need to take to ensure soft skill improvement? What does success look like and how can you or your line manager measure whether there has been improvement or not?
This scenario is one that I’ve seen play out too many times. The problem is that while most line managers feel that the above feedback is reasonable, the person on the receiving end is left trying to figure out what to do with it.
If you have received this kind of feedback and are struggling to figure out what to do next, here are five things you can do right away:
Ask for specific examples:
It’s difficult to improve something if you’re not aware of the specific area to improve.
For example, your line manager tells you that you need to improve your communication skills. This could mean a variety of things — Are you talking too much or Not enough? Does your communication style make people feel defensive or eager to engage in dialogue with you?
For…
