Complementary & Soft Skills

May’s Bid Bites topic was all about complementary and soft skills and how they can be essential for producing a successful bid, despite not always being ‘bid related’.

So, what do we mean by complementary and soft skills? Essentially, they are common skills and personal attributes that enable us to fit in at our workplace and include qualities like communication, time management, negotiation, presentation, organisation, creativity, persuasion, teamwork, multi-tasking, empathy, self-regulation, emotional intelligence and more. Soft skills are different to hard skills (also known as technical skills), which are directly relevant to specific roles and more easily quantified. Effective soft skills are very desirable in all professions, but for the purposes of this month’s Bid Bites article, we wanted to focus on why and how they can be particularly beneficial in the bidding industry.

As ever, we had a very constructive and insightful hour where we discussed pre-determined questions with the group, which were:

1. What complementary/soft skills are most valuable in bidding? What complementary/soft skills would you be looking for when recruiting into your bid team?
2. What complementary/soft skills do you think are generally lacking in the bidding industry?
3. How do you ensure the continual development of your own soft skills? What are some top tips for maintaining these skills in your bid team? Can you recommend any courses?

What complementary/soft skills are most valuable in bidding? What complementary/soft skills would you be looking for when recruiting into your bid team?

Basic soft skills

• Never underestimate the importance of basic soft skills within bidding such as multi-tasking, time management, communication, politeness, organisation, attention to detail, common sense, and understanding.

Being a good role model

• Being able to guide younger and less experienced team members to look after themselves by being a good role model is a valuable skill in bidding.
• Try to help colleagues be in the best mental and physical state they can be in - this is important in our deadline-driven and high-pressured environment.
• Encourage them to take regular breaks throughout the day including taking walks to get moving and away from their screens. Be a champion of all of this type of thing on a regular basis.
• Don’t forget that we are all human and not machines. We also must remember to practice what we preach!

Being coachable

• Being coachable encompasses a lot of things.
• This attribute means you need to be quite humble, disciplined, open to criticism and feedback as well as being committed to continual improvement and professional development.
• You need to look for the truth and leave your ego behind. The clashing of egos is a big thing in the world of bids and proposals.
• Continually seek feedback to try and improve, develop and expand your own progress.
• The ability to listen is really important when being coached.

Empathy

• Being empathetic is essential in bidding, especially in terms of SMEs and colleagues etc.
• We often work with people who have really demanding day jobs. We need to recognise this so that we get the best out of them and subsequently gain the information required.
• Ask questions and actively listen to the answers given so that you can understand more effectively. This will enable you to adjust things to empathetically cater to different needs.

Communication

• Being able to communicate effectively to people who are at different levels within organisations is vital for any bid role - from speaking to directors and senior management, through to operations teams and frontline staff.
• Being able to communicate successfully to procuring organisations is also really important, such as asking Clarification Questions (CQs) in the right way and presenting effectively to evaluation panels.
• Keeping everyone briefed and engaged on an on-going basis across the bidding period is also fundamental.
• Understand different people’s perspectives on their role in building the bid and then tailoring your communication to make sure that everyone stays engaged and on the right track.
• Acknowledge that people will respond and react differently. Some people will be enthusiastic and engaged, whereas others will be unreliable and stressed out by the whole process.

Positive attitude

• Having a positive attitude and making sure that the whole bid team is on board is crucial.
• Bidding can be stressful, however, if you are the bid lead and continue to be positive throughout the process, this will carry through to the rest of the team – even if you’re not 100% calm yourself for the duration. Think of the swan analogy - calm to look at but working hard out of sight!

Emotional awareness

• Taking on board how each team member might react differently to things is important.
• Understand people’s main workload when they are asked to contribute to a bid.

Virtual collaboration

• This has never been more important in recent times!
• We are all very adept at collaborating with people face to face, however we have all had to get better at meeting virtually instead of in person.

Cultural fitness

• It’s important that organisations fit with bidding professionals in terms of work ethic and doing things in a certain way.
• Change is sometimes good, even if it isn’t always successful.

Flexibility

• We don’t always just do one role within a bid team - it’s common to drift into doing other roles too. Flexibility and fluidity is key when this happens.

Patience

• Patience is important particularly when dealing with people who aren’t bidders and are could possibly have their own agendas.
• Everyone has their own perspective on time and so being patient is a valuable skill to have.
• When somebody isn’t doing what you need them to do, try not to get frustrated – hold your breath and count to ten and then deal with the situation.
• While taking that breath, you need to keep your tenacity and know that you’ve got to keep going in order to produce a high scoring bid.
• Try not to get too despondent if people aren’t responding to requests for information. Hang on in there!

Pragmatism

• Adapt processes and ways of doing things to suit specific bids.
• Being agile is important in bidding.

Persuasion & time management

• You have got to get people to do what you need them to do, when you need them to do it.
• Use logic, charm, and a pinch of guile to get what we need, on time.

What complementary/soft skills do you think are generally lacking in the bidding industry?

• It can be surprising how many people working in bidding don’t have basic soft skills!
• Negotiation skills are important in the bidding industry and are sometimes lacking. Negotiation in bidding can take the form of negotiating clauses in contracts, negotiating workload for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), negotiating escalation with managers, or negotiating client requirements. We tend to think about influencing skills going hand in hand with negotiating skills, however it goes deeper than this.
• Something missing from the workplace in general is showing a bit more gratitude. People aren’t necessarily rude; we sometimes just forget to be thankful for things. In the bidding profession, people are largely doing their best such as contributing to a bid when it’s probably not their day job. They perhaps haven’t been trained in the way that a bidding professional has. Therefore, we need to be grateful for the contribution to bids by SMEs etc. This is quite a big area of consideration.
• We can be too process-focussed and at times can forget about softer communication and people skills.
• There is a general lack of understanding of what bidding professionals do and their associated skills. This is particularly the case with people from outside the bidding industry. 
• People management can be lacking within our profession. Sometimes people within bidding end up in a leadership role but haven’t necessarily learnt the right management skills first.

 How do you ensure the continual development of your own soft skills? 

• Read, read and read some more!
• Internet, blogs, articles, newsletters, presentations, social media, podcasts, books, YouTube etc.
• Information from organisations such as APMP, Strategic Proposals and Bidding Quarterly (BQ)
• Learning from others including fellow bidding colleagues. You never stop learning no matter how much experience you have.
• Through reading, you will normally come across things such as soft skills that interest you from a bidding perspective. Finding things from reading will usually spur you on to do further research on the subject.
• Mentors and coaches

Useful Links

ARTICLES

It’s Only a Matter of Time by Sarah Hinchcliffe

Regular Bid Bites attendee Sarah Hinchcliffe recently wrote a fantastic article for issue 10 of Bid Solution’s Bidding Quarterly magazine - https://bidsolutions.co.uk/bidding-quarterly/issue-10/its-only-a-matter-of-time/. The article focusses on time and features soft skills such as patience, tenacity, empathy, communication, pragmatism and persuasion.

Sarah has also written a series of brilliant articles on her blog about the subject of empathy: https://www.i4salesperformance.co.uk/blog

BOOKS

Empathy: Why it Matters and How to Get It by Roman Krznaric

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empathy-Why-Matters-How-Get/dp/0399171401

PODCASTS & ONLINE CONTENT

The High Performance Podcast

The High Performance Podcast brings you an intimate glimpse into the lives of high-achieving, world-class performers who have all excelled in their field with first-hand experiences and lessons to share. Find out what non-negotiable behaviours they employed to get them to the top and keep them there.

Hosting every conversation is sports broadcaster Jake Humphrey and leading organisational psychologist Damian Hughes. Jake is currently BT Sport’s Premier League anchor and former lead presenter of BBC’s Formula One coverage. Damian is an author and professor who continues to work with leading sports organisations to create a high-performing culture.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-high-performance-podcast/id1500444735

How to be Awesome at Your Job

Get more fun, wins, meaning, and money from your job! This show helps grow your skills and impact at any job that requires thinking and collaborating. Each week, Pete Dalton interviews thought-leaders and results-getters to discover specific, actionable insights that boost work performance. Their stories and advice sharpen the universal skills to flourish at work. Boost your time/energy management, leadership, confidence, career opportunities, and fulfilment—while still getting home earlier. The show has 14,000,000 downloads and mentions in The New York Times, Forbes, and LinkedIn Learning. https://awesomeatyourjob.com/podcast/

Bid Solutions – Win in 60 Seconds

Accelerate your learning with tips and advice from the industry experts. Improve your chances of winning in 60 seconds. Insider tips, winning strategies, and timely advice from those in the know

https://bidsolutions.co.uk/win-in-60-seconds/

TED Talks

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug

LinkedIn

The Negotiation Club: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/the-negotiation-club/

The main point that came out of May’s Bid Bites is that soft skills should come quite naturally. If they don’t, then they need to be refined. This can usually be achieved by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone through doing something you wouldn’t normally do.

If you missed this month's session and would like to watch the recording, please follow this link and enjoy!

If you want to join our community for the next #BidBites session, please drop a PM to any of the Pipster team. Our next session is on Friday 25th June and will be focussed on PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plans in Public Procurement.

We are interested to know YOUR thoughts on complementary and soft skills - drop your comments below, along with tips to share with others.

 Thank you to all the regular attendees of #BidBites and #ThursdayThrong. Our bidding community is thriving - we are supporting and learning from each other at every session and your input is truly valued.