Essay on soft skills in management

Introduction

Soft skills are such skills in a person that can win others’ heart and mind emotionally and psychologically. It personifies a person’s abilities, qualities, habits and dealings which lead to his personality development and conceptual approach. There is a very common saying that common sense is not that common. Soft skills are exhibited by a person’s EQ level that is Emotional Intelligence Quotient which is embedded in his personal dealing, conflict resolving, friendliness etc. While it leads to hard skills which are related to person’s IQ level that is Intelligence Quotient, it becomes an integral part of mind by exercising the soft skills for a long time .
In this paper an analysis of the preposition “ If you don’t have self- insight and can’t develop yourself, you won’t go far” is carried out. Nowadays, being part of this complex global environment, every individual who wants to excel and grab out the heights of continuous success has to be very proficient and effective in his soft skills and public dealings. Personal attributes like honesty, courtesy, fair play, interpersonal skills can not only heighten one’s public relations, relative reputed recognition and future job prospects, but also get him an honorable place in the society. On the other hand, hard skills just personify the capability of a person to complete a certain task timely and effectively depending upon his hard work and core competencies .
Soft skills are not only important for progressive career development of an individual but these skills are equally vital to an organization’s robust transcending. Almost every organization has to deal with customers directly or indirectly; however, the firms, in particular the one’s dealing directly to the customers, badly need such individuals who are highly competent and proficient in soft skills and professional public dealings. Highly professional and trained individuals are the backbone of every large firm which depends on its managers for yielding a healthy annual profit rate. That’s the reason for which soft skills are equally crucial as the standard qualifications and competencies .

Brief Comparison between Softs Skills and Occupational Skills

Soft skills are usually compared with the occupational and technical skills on several basis. There stand a number of viewpoints on the importance of soft skills relative to core competencies and trade specialties; however, these may differ for different professions. An example for clarifying this point could be in teaching profession, the technical knowledge and occupational skills are more effective than the soft skills and excess of soft skills presentation can lead to non-serious behavior by the students. In contrary to that, in legal profession where a lawyer has to deal with the people politely and effectively, focuses more on softs skills comparative to the use of occupational skills because mere use of technical knowledge cannot win him an argue effectively. Communication skills and interpersonal skills are just another name for soft skills. It also includes, public dealing, influential skills, motivational skills, team building, conflict resolution skills, jolliness, creative writing skills, emotional dealing, soft spoken skills and self-supervisory skills etc. .

Some of the Basic Soft Skills

Now, a brief examination of some of the soft skills will be made which a manager needs to acquire in order to have an honorable position both inside workplace and outside the organization. Awareness of how it actually works is regardless of the fact that the shop-floor working or manufacturing, being done in an organization, is related to a specific qualification or not, a person should be familiar with the flowcharts, process sheets and working procedures undergoing down there at shop-floor level. Almost all MNC organizations are having in their standard operating procedures that every newly inducted manager should undergo at least three months basic and essential training at shop-floor level with the workers because this thing helps him in many aspects later on when he will be working as a manager. This not only gives him a brief insight of the process and the departmental level technicalities, but also gives him a lot of time to get acquaintance with the intellectual level and psychological behavior of workers and subordinates .
Firms with high motivation and positive intent not only prove to be a firm with fun to be part of, but usually are more advantageous, advanced and progressive, yielding many times than a firm that is struggling with motivation. A good manager keeps his team self-motivated and progressive by providing them intuitive supervision in their tasks, devising constructive work policies, providing them job and workplace security with healthy and deserving wages, regards the competencies and hardworking of the team members and leading them as a role model to effective working. Workplace should manifest such an environment and culture that is intuitive to excel .
Non-verbal skills have a great influential power. Let’s talk about the importance of eye contact during conversations with colleagues, subordinates or any other senior manager. Body language can win the hearts and minds of the audience if a person knows how effectively and timely he can utilize them according to the context of matter. Many of the people regardless of the fact that they acquire some very good technical knowledge about something remain unable to convince others, and the reason is our ineffective and effete non-verbal communication skills. There is a great saying that a person speaks from his eyes. Whenever a person is in a conversation with someone it’s very important that he should be in firm eye contact with the person so that he might not get un-focused and bored. Eye-blinking and unnecessarily starring can cause loss of influential and convincing abilities .
Emotional intelligence is another prime ability of a successful manager. Emotionally intelligent manager can read what his subordinate’s emotions are telling him, because he can feel the internal thoughts and sentience, and don’t make his own negative emotions limned to the listener. He will make his subordinate feel comfortable talking to him will not interfere in between and then will treat him accordingly. Giving spontaneous reactions and allowing one’s bad emotions to get over the soft conversation is never considered a wise thing in Management science. This is a technique which serves as a pre-requisite to efficient management skills .
Efficient Writing Skills are one of the core competencies that a good manager must acquire. Unfortunately most of people around us do not consider this skill so vital because debatably usually many readers are also not that much proficient in spelling and grammar so it goes unnoticed but one must consider it seriously while writing to senior manager and higher officials because they will surely notice this and will not accept it as an excuse. Writing skills directly personifies personality to other colleagues, boss and subordinates, the better a person communicates to them in written context the better the impression they will get of him, and he never knows the worth of this impression made. Because in this work overloaded world, nobody has enough time to waste on understating official letters, full of verbosity, and they don’t bother too to consider his brusque manner written letters which to be clarified and explained at every line . So this is a soft skill, if not acquired properly, will not affect directly but in fact will depict the scope of qualification and competency to the readers. Whatever a person communicates in writing should be very clear, precise and complete. Firstly, the format and outline of the letter should be very clear in people’s mind, according to audience-type people are communicating with; either it’s a friend, a subordinate or some higher management.
A person cannot write to everyone in the same tone. Once the writing voice is defined and appropriate outline is adopted, then the person has to concentrate on writing style applying Attention-Interest-Desire-Action formula. Furthermore, he must mention the main theme or subject of the letter so that only concerned audience should consult to it and take help of using very simple language unless and until a person has been said to write some scholarly article. And in the end, proofreading is a must do thing, give a few seconds to recheck his writing regarding any type of grammatical or spelling mistakes, because a little haste in proofreading can spoil his all hard work .
Manager with some vision always appreciate knowledge, devotedness and self-competencies of his subordinates. A person with mere knowledge of some process and just following the action as directed cannot be regarded the same as someone who has a deep insight of the flow-process going on, extensive grip of command over his work area and always trying to prove generative for his organization. An innovative worker can assist a person at many stages, and in many ways, to meliorate his process in terms of identifying some real-world hurdles in the workflow, suggesting some fruitful excogitations and proffer appropriate remedial measures in problem solving .
Negotiation and persuasion skills have a great essence in gauging a smart manager’s influential and convincing abilities. In daily life you’ll see that many a people around a person lacks this ability to convey their message, emotions or interests effectively and clearly just because they don’t know the influencing psychology and appropriate way of getting attention, consideration and interest of the listener. Besides that you’ll also come across the people who are well aware about the knowledge of persuasion and negotiation but, due to lack of experience in personal dealing and proper use of those convincing arguments in daily life, remain unable to win the gesture and get the expected outcomes from the listeners. Dealing with the emotions of the listener rightly and tactically depicts his strong persuasion skills and convincing abilities. If a person can read the emotions then a person can win the argument quite easily. Bargaining is another simplest way to negotiate, here a person just projects his intuitions on the concerned matter and need not to be that much influential but yes a person should be a good story-teller and integrative bargainer in order to get the expected. Sometimes a person has to be logically strong and for this a person should acquire some exceptional convincing abilities because a person can’t be logical merely by influencing powers. Effective use of facts and figures can make a person wins the case very conveniently and if a person fails to convince and a large business is at stake than showing gamesmanship and making comprise is the last resort to settle the matter happily and gain some advantage. Amateurs have to sacrifice their rewards and payoffs .
Conflict resolution is another essential to a good manager’s health. Resolving the conflicts smoothly whatever the state of mind is been developed. Conflicts and Arguments depict a healthy organization working provided they are resolved effectively. It’s quite natural thing that in achieving the diversified milestones team members can have different minds and suggestions but it’s the prime responsibility of a manager to gather them all at one table, actively listen to everyone’s argument and then resolve the matter in an effective way that is acceptable to all stakeholders. Effective conflict resolution ability can be acquired, firstly, by acknowledging the type of conflict and then following the appropriate procedure to resolve it by effective brainstorming, convincing his argument and negotiating a workable solution .
A good manager should be willing to take instructions and responsibilities on himself regardless of the tense working environment. Usually a good boss takes up the core work responsibilities himself and delegates the other tasks to his subordinates according to their core competencies and technical abilities. He never bother his workers regarding the tasks not related to their capacity in fact supports them in their workflow and backs them up whenever some anomalies occurs during working .

Personal Evaluation

This paper will prove very fruitful and efficacious in my professional life. As this will not only allow me to apprehend the major soft skills needs to be acquired by a good manager but it will also help me to create general understanding of these capabilities and strengths. Furthermore it will also help me to create an understanding of where and when I can utilize these soft skills for effective and efficient personal as well as professional grooming. Effective and proficient writing skills can be that much impactful and result oriented, I slightly have an idea, but now I am sure it will serve as a prime factor in my future carrier development. One grammatically correct and closely proof-read letter written by me to my boss can make me gain his long-lasting trust. Surely, now I will especially take into account that public dealing skills which will make me get acquaintance with the basic workflow and all the technical terminologies and procedures that needs to be considered firmly and followed according to the book.
As a young manager, soft skills like understanding the actual process on shop-floor , ability to follow regulations, reporting workplace on time and not expecting to become a supervisor in the first six-seven months will prove quite handful to me. I was never that much willing to expose myself to the newly joined organization at least for the first few months now I am keen to have long sittings at the workplace beyond the traditional working hours just to have an in-depth knowhow of the standard operating procedures that are being carried out. Furthermore, the sense of applying positive work ethics among the workers and winning others’ heart and minds by good attitude, these are little things which will yield me great satisfaction and contentedness in my work.
This paper has also helped me get acquaintance with use of effective non-verbal communication skills like eye contact, active listening, positive body language and showing appreciative gesture by taping someone at his shoulder as a result of some good work. It also gives me an insight of the fact that how much importance should be given in recognizing the appropriate man for each job and how to appreciate the core competencies of the innovative chaps under his supervision. As I look around me, mostly people are lacking these gemstone skills that’s why we cannot enjoy a healthy workplace environment and struggle for morals, but now I am quite hopeful that not I’ll carve up these habits in me to get differentiated amongst others to seek my senior management’s trust but effective implementation of these traits at my organization will also boost up happy working environment and better career prospects. All this can only be possible if these soft skills will be carried out in an appropriate way.

Conclusion

In the context of above mentioned and briefly discussed some of the soft skills, this paper ends up supporting the argument that “ If you don’t have self- insight and can’t develop yourself, you won’t go far”. As anyone can see that all these personal traits and interpersonal communication skills serve quite effectively to groom up personality and professional carrier in future. Many of these skills I didn’t use to consider seriously before reading this article but as now I have quite an extensive insight of them, it persuades me to apply them to my personal life because of the effective outcomes that are hidden in our lives just due to lack of these soft skills.

References

Flannes, S. & Levin, G., 2005. Essential People Skills for Project Managers. New York City: Management Concepts.
Gold, J., Thorpe, R. & Mumford, A., 2010. Gower Handbook of Leadership and Management Development. Farnham: Gower Publishing, Ltd..
Klaus, P., 2009. The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Soft Skills for Succeeding in a Hard Work. New York City: HarperCollins.
Kloppenborg, T., 2011. Contemporary Project Management. Stamford: Cengage Learning.
Lundy, O. & Cowling, A. G., 1996. Strategic Human Resource Management. London: Routledge.
Mabey, C. & Finch-Lees, 2008. Management and Leadership Development. London: Sage.
Mumford, A., 1986. Handbook of Management Development. 2 ed. Farnham: Gower.
Porter, C., Bingham, C. & Simmonds, D., 2008. Exploring Human Resource Management. Bingham: Cecilie Publishing.
Porter, K., Smith, P. & Fagg, R., 2012. Leadership and Management for HR Professionals. London: Routledge.
Ramesh, G. & Ramesh, M., 2010. The Ace of Soft Skills: Attitude, Communication and Etiquette for Success. Mumbai: Pearson Education India.
Rao, M., 2010. Soft Skills – Enhancing Employability: Connecting Campus with Corporate. Dubai: I. K. International Pvt Ltd.
Sadler-Smith, E., 2009. Learning and Development for Managers: Perspectives from Research and Practice. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Stewart, J., 1999. Employee Development Practice. Illustrated ed. London: Financial Times Prent. Int.
Tannahill, G. K., 2007. A Study of Soft Skills for IT Workers in Recruitment Advertising. Michigan: ProQuest.