Human Skills, Not Soft Skills: What OrgDev Does, Fighting Burnout and Impostor Syndrome
Today I’m chatting with Anna Murphy, I begin our (re)scheduled Teams call by profusely apologising for having to reschedule the call that was supposed to happen yesterday, and she immediately puts me at ease. I let her know I’m here to pick her brain about how to help techies be more communicative, collaborative and successful in social interactions, which is an incredibly important part of my job as a DevOps Engineer in a consulting role.
Anna Murphy is a Senior People Success Coach here at Version 1, in the Organizational Development department. Where most software and technology companies have an HR department who cover all ‘non-technical’ issues that get shoved into a pile, Version 1 has a number of people and departments who deal with non-cloud responsibilities.
I start off by asking her “What’s the most rewarding part of being a People Success Coach?” (admittedly a pretty mean and far too open-ended question to start with, but she takes it in stride immediately). Anna takes a moment to deliberate and speaks on it:
“We support individuals through challenges that they face in their roles and very often the positive impact that our coaching can have ends up having a really transformational impact on that individual’s role, their performance and actually beyond that, their lives.”
She seems serious about OrgDev’s mission, determined, open and, most of all, that she cares. The above quote rings very true and runs as a theme throughout our whole chat.
Soft Skills is a Thing of the Past
I confess that I’m not all that familiar with what OrgDev do, that I know they help Version 1 employees work on their “Soft Skills” (which is a buzzword one might hear thrown around in these contexts). Anna attentively listens to me waffle for a bit and then comes in with a quick correction.
“On that note, in Workplace Psychology, which is our area, we have moved away from using the terms ‘Soft Skills’ and ‘Hard Skills’. Simply because ‘Soft Skills’ can almost diminish the importance of the skill and we’ve moved towards using the term ‘Human Skills’.”
This is key to how OrgDev think and act. So many people and workplaces do not put enough emphasis on Human Skills and see them as only “Soft Skills”. I’ve seen many people, both online and in real life, have a dismissive attitude towards Human Skills, and this can lead to an environment that’s full of miscommunication in which it is just hard to exist and get work done.
“It’s all about human interaction, communication, how you manage yourself and how you manage other people, how you relate with yourself and how you relate with other people. It’s a human skill. It’s humanistic.”
A lot of us get lost in the world of jobs and business and some of us forget that, at the end of the day, we’re all just dealing with humans on the other end of a Teams chat, a desk, a phone or a PowerPoint presentation.
“That’s a kind of unconscious bias I hadn’t really considered”, I say.
“Which we all have, and sure I’ve been trained in an industry where that was the word that was used. But psychologists would say it can be, I don’t know, it can have a negative impact when you use that word, so Human Skill makes it more important right? Because we all have to be human, even though we’re in our professional space with our professional hat on. You’ve got to be human you know?”
I express the sentiment that this has seemed like a running theme in Version 1 as I’ve only been here for a couple of months and observed this. Anna has also been here for under a year and agrees.
“That’s a good point, I’ve only been in Version 1 since September and my feeling is those Core Values, we tend to live them, bring those to life… it is important to be our authentic Human selves… We aren’t robots… In OrgDev we do support people to be themselves but to pull from their own strengths and values and to showcase themselves a lot more.”
Even if you aren’t in Version 1, this is advice that can be taken back to any company, however they operate, in whatever small way you can.
How OrgDev Works
In OrgDev, they support peoples’ Human Skills development with 1-to-1 coaching, team coaching or team training. They will ask powerful questions and present scenarios that will challenge a coachee to come up with answers themselves about what their goals are, and how they might best work most comfortably in a certain environment. Things they often help coach on are communication tools, how to manage people better or how to get someone’s point across better, and most importantly decide on and enact (in the weeks or months later) ways to measure this success.
They also use assessment tools, such as the Thomas International suite of assessments (this includes Personal Profiling and DISC profiling). This is an assessment to “help an individual get to know themselves and understand other behaviours as well”. They also use the WRAW or Workplace Resilience And Wellbeing assessment (and are one of the first tech companies in Ireland to do so), which is a proactive assessment on how suceptible someone might be to burnout, and then OrgDev can help the individual and address any of the root causes.
“It could be sleep, it could be nutrition, it could be saying yes to too many tasks. How are we going to learn how to say no, how are we going to manage our time better, how are we going to create boundaries so we aren’t heading towards burnout. And again, that’s a human skill, it’s not a soft skill… to understand that you don’t always have to say yes to every task that comes your way.”
Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is also a huge issue in the tech industry and especially somewhere like Version 1 with a lot of high achievers.
“The research proves that over 70% of people globally, men and women, experience impostor syndrome.” However, Anna says that you can “manage that feeling in a more positive way” to “propel you forward in your performance”. She says a good technique is that due to impostor syndrome feeling physically like fear, you can pivot and tell yourself, even out loud, “actually I am excited” and to own what you are about to do and “be proud of yourself” for the responsibility you’ve been given.
Reframing
Another technique they use is “reframing” a situation. When you have the negative thought of “I’m not good enough to be here”, Anna says “the reframe for that might be ‘My boss wouldn’t have asked me to be here if they didn’t think I was good enough.’” It’s “listening to that negative thought, acknowledging it and saying ‘thanks little monkey [on my shoulder] for that’ but I am good enough to be here.”
We all have negative thoughts and Anna encourages her coachees to set aside time every day to reframe a negative thought, which is something that we all (inside Version 1 or not) could do.
“When you’re faced with an unforeseen circumstance, such as being called to do something last minute that you haven’t prepared for, your brain is typically more likely to deal with that in a confident way if you’ve been doing the daily practice of positive reframing.”
Burnout
“Typically,” Anna tells me, “when an individual is on their way to burnout, they’re so deep in the toxic surroundings of that, that it’s hard to ask for help.” But “none of us are working alone in silos — even if you are an individual contributor or you’re not on an actual team, you still work in some capacity where you’re relating to others or communicating with others,” and that we are all responsible for assisting in the wellbeing of those around us. “It’s not just a manager’s job to check in on people”. We should all check in on our peers and make sure to make time for that, even if it’s something as small as a “virtual cup of tea” or a “10 minute walk”. It’s okay to show empathy and “call out when someone is swamped” and ask “what support do you need.”
But for the person in need, on the way to burnout, they should try to speak to anyone about it as it can be very isolating. Version 1 has a “group of trained [burnout] first aiders” and counsellors who anyone can book a session with at any time if they feel they need support (“unhappy”, “overworked”, or “unwell”). If someone isn’t at Version 1, colleagues and loved ones are invaluable to even just speak to or vent about.
The Takeaway
I ask what someone could work into their daily routine if someone isn’t at Version 1 and doesn’t have these rigid support structures, but requires a change in mindset. Anna thinks for a while and says one of the most important things you can do is to aim for a “growth mindset”. Just because something is “[your] thought and belief about the world doesn’t mean it’s true”, and that “communication is crucial to what we do here at OrgDev but also the world”. She tells me it’s important to “communicate out” (i.e. make yourself heard if you are suffering, communicate your point of view and feelings) and to “communicate in”. Anna clarifies that this is “listening to others and allowing their communication to land with you”.
She reminds me about the “daily reframing” practice from earlier and also a very important emotional intelligence exercise: simply “check in with how you’re feeling today.” Whether it be “approaching a meeting” or “talking with a client”, asking yourself “how am I feeling towards this?” Anna tells me it can “increase your self awareness”, “increase your energy” and “decrease negative feelings”. It sounds so simple, but I realise that I almost never stop my day just to check in with myself and how I’m feeling. I can fool myself into thinking “I’m fine” and coast along. But that act of stopping and giving yourself that time to check in “mentally, emotionally and physically” is so key to understanding yourself and working to improve your professional and personal life.
Important Takeaways
At the end of our chat, I’m ready to shoot off and start my next task but Anna stops me and makes sure to ask about how my day and work are going so far (as I am new) and the practices she has spoken about. The idea of making time to have empathy for your peers and stopping to recognise your own feelings suddenly becomes real and I understand how useful it can be. We have a lovely little chat to end the call and I take a second to check in with myself after.
I hope these examples can be helpful to anyone who is struggling with work-life balance, impostor syndrome, or burnout, and you can take some of these exercises and thoughts away and implement them in your lives and your organisations.
About the Author
Ben Howarth is a Senior AWS DevOps Engineer at Version 1.
