Do you need to toughen up your soft skills?

In the current business climate where numerous transactions of various forms take place every day of the week it could be a fair bet to state that 'business won' is determined by some key factors.


As an Executive or Owner your key objective is be to be 'out there building relationships' to get the business to grow. Your role in making that happen is to communicate your business message and listen to others and understand needs. How you do that will determine the success of the relationships you form at whatever level and will create profit or losses. To some people you may be accepted, to others you may form stronger bonds and knowing that people buy people, your ability to adapt to the differing types, characteristics and styles is paramount to 'your name being in the frame' when the time is right.

Think about it. Your 'presentation of yourself' i.e what you wear, your level of confidence, or any other 'state or feelings' you experience at the thought of having to go up to people and start conversations, make big telephone calls, approach difficult tasks and your 'behaviour' whilst you do that along with the words, sentences and value you attach to the style of your delivery, is the recipe for success and the business executive and owner of this era can survive the storm by following a few simple guidlelines that for some might constitute a personal development plan. However, most, I'm sure, will view this as an opportunity to think about how improvements, large and small, can enhance their skills dramatically to create more business for you.

Some people find things that you find challenging easy

Your softer skills, that is your behavioural patterns, your personal presentation skills and your style are so important when you think about it. How you 'deliver' is down to you and growing in these areas should be high on anybodys list of requirements. The way you think about business, the challenges it throws, the parts of it you 'like' and 'dislike' are all deemed that way because you have given those tasks those 'labels.' For example, there are people out there who find it easy making cold calls and others who have no problems attached with just going up to a group and requesting to 'join in'. The way you approach these tasks with the sometimes 'half heartedness' or even 'fear' means that their success is diminished and business opportunities lost because of how you feel about them. However, things can change.

Those feelings you experience when you think about a challenging area of your business are as a result of what goes on in your visual field i.e what you see or sense as you manouvre around the world of business. That in turn goes through a number of processes that creates a feeling that you may refer to as 'productive or counter productive'. That feeling then determines if you get your outcome in that task or not and in the style or manner you would want to. Either way, it contributes to the outcome.

Some personal development techniques that are in use by companies large and small today enable those who choose to get involved, with an opportunity to experience how to play with their sensory based channels. By restructuring the elements of the sensory channels changes how you think and feel about your challenges so a person can move on and experience 'preferred feelings' associated with a once challenging task. You can now approach people easily with a different level of confidence that enables you to join in, make those calls and present easily with the style which is appropriate for you. This is soft skills development.

Think of a dog, then a solicitor

And language is also a very important factor to take into consideration. The language you omit provides the listener with an experience of what it is you do based on how they compute that information given to them. As you speak to another that person reference checks the words you issue against their own 'internal dictionary' that is linked to the sounds, images and feelings that they, associate with those words. For example. if I say to you 'think of a dog' a particular style/type will come into your visual field. It may be a dog that carries some sort of experience or emotional attachement with it and those feelings may come to the fore as you think about that dog. What happens when you say 'solicitor' or 'printer'. What happens then? Do you view a solicitor you know or does it draw up other types of experiences and feelings associated with past experiences? Different people experience different sensations internally when they experience the words you use and 'how' you say them.

To illustrate the point, think about how scalable language can be. Are you effective at what you do, very effective or exceptionally effective? Do you provide services, good services or fantastic services? Are you feeling OK about the future, confident about the future or not looking forward to it at all?

Calibration - that's what you need.

We all have a preferred way of communicating and the ability to 'calibrate' to another persons way of accepting communication on their 'wavelength' is a key skill in communication. These skills are available to be learned, just like anything else like sales, accounts packages and SEO, and are absolutely paramount to the success of you and your business.

So. Sharpening your soft skills should be a part of any business persons list of needs. Having the right behavioural characteristics for the task in hand so you feel tuned to do it mode,' coupled with the communication skills to paint the right pictures means you'll soon be on your way to achieveing your goals and objectives.