Essential Skills for Employees
Jeffrey Yergler, PhD is a former colleague of mine from the Graduate Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. Dr. Yergler posted a link to a guest post in the CIO Blog at the Wall Street Journal. The blog post is about the essential skills needed for graduating MBA students.
The post is penned by Irving Wladawskw-Berger a former executive at IBM. Sadly, the op-ed is behind the WSJ's pay-wall. Wladawskw-Berger has posted a copy of the op-ed piece on his own website.
Wladawskw-Berger's argument is that engineering and management schools need to do a better job of developing "soft skills" in their students. Wladawskw-Berger points to recent research by the Third-Space project on the core soft skills need to be successful in the modern workplace. The Third-Space project identified five core soft skill which are:
ADAPTABILITY
Demonstrate mental agility and resilience in ambiguous situations; be flexible when handling change and less likely to rely on stale legacy solutions. Happily think beyond black-and- white to the gray areas, and ask expansive, unexpected questions that lead to better solutions.
360-DEGREE THINKING
Think holistically – be capable of seeing the big picture, recognize patterns, and make imaginative leaps based on those patterns.
INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY
Have a deep hunger to learn and grow. Show a desire to dig deep – to be creative and willing to risk and experiment in order to learn.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE
Have a capacity to think, act and move across multiple boundaries of functions, silos and global cultures, including the sometimes insular worlds of engineering, law, and business.
EMPATHY
Demonstrate strong emotional intelligence as well as effective listening and collaboration skills. Have superior communication skills. Be smart, ambitious, yet humble enough to be inclusive and consider the views of others across a variety of disciplines, cultures and perspectives.
The argument that soft skills are important applies as equally to MBA and Engineering students as it does to employees in most modern organizations.
Oddly enough, we just finished adding empathy as a new value at the organization where I work. Thinking forward for through the next decade empathy is a key skill the organisation will have to master to retain the trust and confidence of the New Zealand public.
Supporting links:
The Third Space. About Us (HTML)
The one-trillion dollar global talent gap: what it is, and what we can do about it. (PDF)
