The “soft skills” associated with collaboration have gotten a lot more press lately. Without them, a great deal of talent gets wasted
They are the ways of thinking, relating, and acting needed for your multi-functional talent collection to work together effectively – whether your team is a 5-person startup or a 100-member consortium.
This list is by no means exhaustive:
- Listening
- Facilitation
- Outreach
- Idea generation
- Decisiveness
- Persuasion
- Critical thinking
- Optimism
- Courage
- Empathy
- Big picture thinking
- Detail orientation
While it’s necessary for every team to have these skills, it is NOT necessary for every team member to have them all.
Say what?
Every team project will require the above skills at different times, but not every team member will be good at every skill, nor should they be.
That’s where many collaborations get bogged down – expecting all members to participate in all parts of all meetings.
- Big picture thinkers being asked to sit through hours of operational detail. (agony!)
- Decisive people being required to sit through multiple hours of brainstorming. (for the love of god!)
- Critical thinkers discounting each suggestion from the idea generators. (grr!)
The key to keeping participants engaged and energized is to leverage the appropriate member strengths at each stage of a project.
Ok…but how do we do that?
- Start by identifying each individual’s strengths – There are many tools to help with this: Myers-Briggs, Strengthsfinder, Strengthscope, VIA Character strengths, etc. I like the Strengthscope™ tool because it specifically measures what energizes people at work.
- Pause at the beginning of each work phase to recognize the kind of work you are doing (idea generating, analyzing, deciding, prototyping) and the skills most needed to be successful.
- Pull in folks with the needed strengths (or excuse the folks whose strengths aren’t well-matched to the task at hand).
In most teams, this is already happening informally – people who are uninterested simply check out mentally and multi-task. Imagine how much more productive they would be, though, if they didn’t have to pretend to be engaged.
Bottom line
- Take inventory and make the most of your team members’ “bonus” skills.
- Free up time and energy by making it acceptable for meetings to be attended only by the people who need to be there for that stage of the project.
To learn more about how you can better leverage your team’s strengths, or to schedule a Strengthscope™ assessment, feel free to call – (512) 497-9097 or send an email: [email protected].
