| By Larry Wang
Besides having a strong sense of the high value-added areas that contribute to your success as a manager in a world-class company, you also want to have is a good understanding of the capabilities and qualities that allow you to perform well in these areas. Especially, for mainland professionals who wish to advance into their company’s management ranks, strong soft skills are the key.
In addition to recruitment services, my company also delivers management development training that targets high potential employees and first-time managers of multinational companies. Before one workshop delivery, a client asked us to interview several of their senior managers to find out what they wanted us to impact most within their participating staff. More than anything else mentioned, they hoped that we could raise the understanding within participants of what is required to perform successfully as a global-caliber manager. They also wanted us to get participants to adopt a more proactive approach to developing good habits and approaches to doing things that could improve their capabilities and performance as managers. The areas in particular that they wanted our workshop to address included:
§ Improve professionalism
§ Greater support and cooperation with teams across other functions,
beyond just their own team.
§ Increase understanding of their career development needs and
approach to responding to those needs
§ Improve their communication effectiveness
§ Coach/develop people - not all the managers even realize its importance
in their management success.
§ Bigger picture outlook not only on the business, but also in their overall
view of their skills and performance.
§ Set higher standards for themselves
§ Take greater accountability
§ Leadership and ability to motivate others
§ Greater sense of reality regarding what is happening within China’s
overall talent market.
The capabilities and qualities (essentially, soft skills) highlighted by this particular client provide a good snapshot of what multinationals want their high potential, mainland staff to do more of and better in order to perform more effectively in higher-level, management roles.
For instance, to support your team’s efforts to develop its capabilities and achieve its objectives, you need to have strong people and communication, leadership, and team-building skills. To be able to identify new opportunities and deliver solutions to your company, a big picture perspective, initiative, resourcefulness, strong problem solving skills, and the ability to think strategically are a must.
At senior management levels, your soft skills need to be even more developed as the emphasis of these roles evolves beyond that of a team to that of the overall organization. Given the scope of responsibilities at these levels, your communication skills, big picture perspective, the ability to think strategically, and leadership skills become more and more critical.
The Highly Sought Soft Skills
Mainland professionals have long been brought up in an environment that stresses IQ as the overwhelming determining factor for their success in life. As they become corporate professionals for an international company, however, their ability to take on and perform well in higher-level, management positions becomes rooted not only in their IQ, but in the strength of their soft skills, or EQ (emotional quotient), as well.
When Know The Game, Play The Game came out five years ago, mainland professionals were just beginning to hear of the fundamental importance of developing strong soft skills for their career success. Today, many recognize their necessity for advancement into higher-level roles. For most mainland professionals, their main challenge is now in figuring out how to go about developing them.
Highly Sought Soft Skills For Global-Caliber Managers And Executives
Professionalism People Skills
Accountability Big Picture Perspective
Initiative Leadership
Effective Communication Problem-Solving
Open-minded International-Oriented Thinking
Right Attitude Good Coach
Team-orientation/attitud Resourcefulness
Values
Developing Them Easier Said Than Done
Developing strong soft skills though is a major challenge for anyone. They do not come about overnight, and there are really no quick-fix solutions to acquiring them. They require you to make fundamental changes to your mindset and approach in the way you handle situations and do things. They also involve identifying good habits that are developed through a process of repeated, ongoing practice, until these habits become a part of your normal behavior. For most, this process takes a long time.
How strongly you possess these qualities depends entirely on the degree to which they are viewed or acknowledged by others. For example, you are seen as someone who has a very strong or a not very strong team-orientation, or some degree in between. You come across to others as being highly professional, somewhat professional, or not very professional. If your boss or client does not view you to be an effective communicator, then no matter what you may think, you are not considered to be a very effective communicator.
Improving in a soft skill does not come about just by attending a workshop or by reading a book on the topic. Certainly, these can help you gain a greater understanding of what you should do to become stronger in that area. But your ability to develop any soft skill requires ongoing practice on your part. So if your aim is to improve your problem-solving abilities, then you need to identify and develop effective techniques for doing that well. By repeatedly applying them to problem-solving situations and through the feedback you get and even mistakes you make, your capabilities in this area will improve over time. Similarly, to become an effective communicator, you need to identify and learn good communication habits, and then apply them continually in the communication situations that you are a part of.
As much as any factor, the lack of strong soft skills is why many mainland professionals end up not being selected for the middle to senior management openings that we work on. Even in cases where a mainland candidate may have better local relationships and market knowledge, solid functional skills, and good English abilities, we still see them get passed over if their soft skills are not strong enough. For those making hiring and promotion decisions, the strength or weakness of your soft skills relate closely to how your professional maturity and overall capabilities are viewed.
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