“Our highly connected world demands that executive teams have a clear grasp of the implications of their actions, their words, and their perceptions.” – Bob Moritz, Chairman of PwC
The battleground of skills remains unchanged since 2017, when nearly 1,400 CEO’s across the globe took part in PWC’s 20th CEO survey, focusing on their workforce. The survey found that 77% of respondents viewed underdeveloped key soft skills as the biggest threat to today’s business. This statistic comes as no surprise since over 60% of hiring managers admit screening candidates for soft skills is challenging. While hard skills are of increasing importance in the digital age, competitive advantage demands a marriage of hard skills and soft skills (i.e., leadership, creativity and adaptability). The good news is that 78% of CEOs have changed or intend to change their people strategies to garner these capabilities needed by organizations to survive.
And even more positive tidings for those CEOs are that while soft skills are often innate, they can be developed, particularly in the face of adversity and in an employee led by individuals who embody them. And research does show that development of these skills can be promoted by changing an inhibiting workplace culture. According to Bob Moritz, Chairman of PwC, “how we lead needs to be reassessed as much as what we lead.”
In that spirit, here are some questions leaders can ask to determine how they may be contributing to this skills gap they perceive:
How are you creating a culture of leadership?
CEOs say leadership among today’s workforce is difficult to find, but millennials contradict this. They believe they can make a positive impact on the world through meaningful work — in a collaborative setting.
Indeed, the capacity and desire to lead is pervasive. Perhaps it is the difficulty hiring managers have of retaining the young workforce that has created a jaded perception of leadership skills in the workforce. Regardless, employees will model the behaviors managers and CEOs alike constantly display. So be clear about the leadership you wish to see. Be proactive about building relationships with your team — “grounded in integrity, openness, ongoing engagement, and above all, bring together an element of trust,” says Moritz. Learn about their lives and show interest in them, for example, and they will do the same with their counterparts. The little things will go a long way in cascading tendencies toward leadership.
Recently, I had the pleasure of sharing breakfast with Alfred Grace, CEO of Hawaii’s Polynesian Cultural Center whom I met on a family trip. A facet of his refreshing perspectives stems from his proactiveness in developing soft skills in his young workforce. Frankly, at the many CEO roundtables that I attend, I have found it a bit frustrating to constantly hear C-level executives complain that new hires fresh out of college do not appear at their lobby doors with a suite of soft skills. By contrast, Alfred focuses on helping BYU student interns develop the required skills to “compete effectively in the job market after graduation.” Preserving and portraying Polynesia’s culture to thousands of visitors annually demands constant forward thinking. Grace condemns “rigid processes that allow no room for creativity in getting the job done,” believing the adage, “’we’ve always done it this way’ has no place in a dynamic company where growth is a key indicator of success.”
Do you embrace problems?
Global problem solvers are in high demand. Employees who can resolve issues swiftly and effectively typically work for organizations that treat problems as opportunities for growth. Start by working with your team to solve a problem you would normally handle alone. Avoid showing any infectious feelings of panic and frustration. Instead, create an enjoyable, collaborative problem-solving environment that instills confidence in your employees to work together for the best solution. Day-to-day, it is also vital to arm your employees with enough information to make important decisions, tackle a range of issues and understand the needs of the organization. Having this information readily available will ensure empowered, self-starting, intelligent action. And in the end, a culture of collaborative problem-solving will foster a closer, more united and transparent workforce.
How are you encouraging risk-taking?
Along the same lines of empowerment, if employees don’t feel permitted to make mistakes, they will avoid taking risks for fear of failure. Creativity and innovation cannot exist in the presence of fear. Consider how you empower your team to take risks and, yes, fail. Are you actively encouraging them to take chances? If not, you could be causing your perceived lack of creativity. Deloitte Chairman and CEO Janet Foutty, a proponent of risk-taking, asserts that failure “is not as bad as you think” as long as you seek help and ask yourself the all-important question, “What can I learn?”
Encourage your team to stretch limits and take risks. If employees fail but also learn from it, they will be more creative and resilient. When your team knows you support them, fear will no longer keep their thinking inside the box. Capitalize on your missteps by admitting where you went wrong and what you learned. Your transparency and vulnerability will inspire the confidence and courage to implement their ideas and learn from their mistakes.
Exceptional leaders appreciate their employees’ immense value and invest in developing skills when a culture shift is necessary. Those looking to inspire change, invoke higher performance and develop soft skills need to be aware of how they may be contributing to the problem and be open to transforming the organization’s practices and their own. Doing so will improve the outlook for companies, their shareholders and employees. According to Moritz, focus on “trust, purpose and the interactions that can bring us closer together.”
This article originally appeared on Forbes January 3, 2018.
