Among important skills for a modern-day leader are human skills. There should be a right balance of it and we can develop it. There are certain human skills that we can focus on.
Katz (1955, as cited in Northouse, 2018, p. 44) suggested that effective leadership depends on three basic personal skills that can be developed: technical, human, and conceptual. He argued that human skills are imperative to any level of management in an organization. “Human skill is knowledge about and ability to work with people” (Northouse, 2018, p. 44) when pursuing organizational goals. The questions is can we improve our human skills?
In order to answer the question, we can look at the research findings, Crosbie (2005) concludes, “Learning takes time and the learning of the complex personal and interpersonal skills of leadership takes even more time “. The important takeaway here is that we should be patient with ourselves and the ones we want to teach when it comes to development of human skills. Once we have this mindset we are ready to approach the next step.
According to Pant and Baroudi (2008) there should be a balance between ‘hard (technical) skills’ and the ‘soft (human) skills’. Indeed, it is an important consideration in our digital age. Especially when we are geared with the following data, “By 2020…48 percent of the new jobs, according to Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, will emphasize a mix of hard and soft intellectual skills, like active listening, leadership, communication, analytics, and administration competencies” (Weise, 2016, para. 1). It is up to us to define what is the right balance, where the technology improves the quality of our life and out interaction with people.
Some of the important human skills we can focus on are: The ability to relate to others, strong communication skills, patience with others, the ability to trust others, knowing how and when to show empathy, active listening skills, genuine interest in others, flexibility, good judgment, the ability to persuade others, negotiation skills, the ability to keep an open mind, a great sense of humor, knowing your audience, honesty, awareness of body language, proactive problem solving, leadership skills. good manners, the ability to be supportive and motivate others (Smith, 2013). We can begin using those in our daily routines.
Human skills are possible to develop, so we should take advantage of that by finding the right balance between skills and developing ones that can benefit us and the ones around us.
References
Crosbie, R. (2005). Learning the soft skills of leadership. Industrial and commercial training, 37(1), 45-51.
Pant, I., & Baroudi, B. (2008). Project management education: The human skills imperative. International journal of project management, 26(2), 124-128.
Smith, J. (2013). The 20 people skills you need to succeed at work. Forbes. Retrieved February 15, 2018 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/11/15/the-20-people-skills-you-need-to-succeed-at-work/2/#615dfd5a3ce8
Weise, M. (2016). We Need a Better Way to Visualize People’s Skills. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved March 15, 2018 from https://hbr.org/2016/09/we-need-a-better-way-to-visualize-peoples-skills