AI Will Never Replace a Leadership Manager Who Masters Hard Skill Competencies of Management!

From GW’s AI Executive Workbench….

The Secret of Becoming an Executive:

“You’ll need mastery of some soft skills to get the job; but mastery of the hard skill competencies to keep it.”

Steven Kaplan, Professor at U. of Chicago, Booth School

Every year, the Society of Human Resource Management, SHRM, survey thousands of their professional HR managers, and they question them whether their companies are developing leadership managers. In 2023, over 74% of the respondents said NO, they were not.

Then why don’t HR managers “fund” development of the hard skills required to become an executive in the long term?

Most leaders and HR Managers, do not have a firm grasp on the need to master the hard skill competencies of management, and usually believe that leadership is all about being kind and empathetic to your direct reports.

Those are called the soft skills, or interpersonal skills, and while important to becoming a well-rounded executive, they are not as important as mastering the hard-skill competencies like Decision Making, Problem Solving, Action Planning, Delegation, and 75 other hard-skill competencies.

The introduction of AI into company departments, particularly the line management areas like sales, marketing, engineering, R&D, and others, is proving that without mastering the hard skill competencies of leadership management, a department manager is at the whim of the model it is using.

Our studies of leader workloads in optimizing supply chains at high-growth companies show that hard skill competencies in the leadership management functions of Strategy, Planning, Organizing, Leadership, Teamwork, and Control are required over 90% of the time, while soft skills are needed only 7% of a leader’s workload.

Perhaps the guru of soft skill use is the renowned Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a trillion followers and has written books on soft skills (Twelve and a Half). I always mention to my clients that they should not allow HR to fund a “coach” in soft skills, save your money, and subscribe to Gary’s LinkedIn feed for free. He’s the best at using soft skills in managing.

Where should an HR manager go to fund training on the “hard-skill competencies” of executive management? That coaching expertise does not exist on a complete scale, as HR coaches have only added a few hard-skill competencies like “communications” to their soft skill repertoire.

So while it is very important to understand and use Artificial Intelligence in the form of Agents and Assistants, the department manager needs to master the hard skill competencies to referee whether those agents are truly providing value for the department and the company. This requires the implementation of metrics with goals and KPIs.? If the department manager is not aware of the tenets required to use them, the hallucinations will become the reality.

It’s mastering the hard skills which make a difference, and we’ll be hosting Executive Management sessions in September to help you out there.

Suivez-Moi

Gw

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