27 Aug Why soft skills are in fact the new power skills
I’ve never liked that most of what we do in OD is referred to as soft skills. It makes it sound fluffy and not important, it is not! And when training budgets are cut in hard times, these are the first to be put on the back burner, which we believe is a mistake!
The sudden switch to remote and hybrid work brought with it a plethora of new skills and ways of working that needed to be figured out. Not being able to interact on a face-to-face basis meant that we had to learn new interpersonal skills, such as building trust, enabling engagement, showing empathy and virtual collaboration on a new level.
We like the new term “Power skills’ because nobody can cope without them anymore, we need them to adapt to change, be agile, listen actively, and lead effectively. Even when digitisation is the biggest drive, those that do the work still need ‘human skills’.
The “Future of Jobs” Report suggests that skills such as creativity, people management, emotional intelligence and critical thinking account for half of the top 10 skills listed in the report. (weforum.org)
We at WVA have more than 20 years experience in building ‘Power skills’ and have adapted to what the now-normal calls for.
Here are a few ways we can help:
Teams that Talk: From a powerful short 2.5 hour team coaching workshop that immediately starts working on EQ and then customised to focus on specific issues such as change leadership and the popular ‘Energy and Resilience’ workshops.
Leadershift: Making the shift from team member to team leader, empowering team leaders with power skills like having difficult conversations, active listening, developing their teams and to lead change effectively, 6 x half days over 3 weeks, starting on 21 September.
Change Champions Workshop: understand the basics of change, how to navigate it and how to work with resistance, 4-hours online, 9 September.
Fundamentals of Organisation Development and Change Management: we make it practical and enable our students to use change frameworks in different levels of complexity, 5 x 6-hour online sessions over 3 weeks, starting on 22 September.
Certification in Employee Engagement and Experience: in partnership with Willis Towers Watson, we take our delegates through building the case for EEX, developing an EEX strategy, EEX listening and implementing EEX. 5 x full days over 5 weeks, starting on 26 October.
Send me an e-mail if you would like to chat about any of these and hear more about how can help you build power skills in your organisation
OD Talk with Dr Joseph George
Boundaries of Effectiveness
Dr Joseph George from India will be our guest speaker, he will take us through his thoughts and experience in working with the Boundaries of Effectiveness. We will explore organisations as ecologies and concurrent and emerging ways of working outside of the traditional organisational boundaries to show up in humane ways.
As a founder partner of Workplace Catalysts LLP, Dr Joseph works on individual, group and organization level application of behavioural sciences. Clients such as Asian Paints, Computer Associates, Société Générale, IBS, Crayon Data, Elastic Run, Fujitsu Communications and Salesforce have engaged him on various aspects of human measurements and development. Formerly, he was General Manager Corporate HRD at Wipro.
His thesis was on the evaluation of organization development (OD). A NTL certified OD practitioner, he is an active member of the OD Network USA on its listserv group and has been teaching OD for postgraduate and working executive students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He also guides Masters level theses projects.
Sign up for free and join us for an hour and a half of straight talk about OD. Join the discussion on Wednesday 15 September from 09h00 – 10h30.
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