Poor non-technical (soft) skills can damage a career or company

I used that headline because recently, someone of high status has been placed in the media spotlight, and there is something quite interesting about it. Specifically, when there is a discernible lack of training in good non-technical (meaning soft skills or human) skills, problems or issues may spiral to a point where either the individual resigns or has their reputation tarnished. The incidents that are documented in the media are typically those involving individuals with a higher profile

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Belief that you can just do empathy or problem-solving because you have lived as a human will not help much when the crunch comes and you are unprepared.
2. The massive focus of resources on hard skills training can be rendered ineffective when a problem spirals out of control due to untrained communication or non-technical skills.
3. When a leader utlises just one of the many non-technical skills well, engagement at work or the freedom to innovate can increase by 200% or more.

GOOD NON-TECHNICAL SKILLS WOULD BE HANDY NOW AND THEN

Neurosurgeon Dr. Charlie Teo AO was in the news again this morning under the headline: "Charlie Teo should be ‘rejected as a witness of credit’".

The guy has an amazing hard skills CV:

• he had developed an international reputation in the field of minimally-invasive (or ‘keyhole’) neurosurgery.
• he has been an invited speaker and visiting professor in more than thirty-five countries.
• he treats children from developing countries with neurological conditions.
• he founded the Cure for Life Foundation.

And now he is in the news, not because of these hard skills or his international charity work, but the non-technical skills.

Here are some of the non-technical skills allegations made against Dr. Teo.

• Claim a patient’s husband was ‘hoodwinked’ into making a complaint against him showed ‘lack of empathy’, inquiry told
• Richardson accused Teo of being “opportunistically untruthful” throughout the hearing in regards to the risks involved with the surgery and how he conveyed that to the patient, arguing he should be “rejected as a witness of credit”.
• Brain surgeon Charlie Teo slapped a patient across the face in front of family members in an attempt to rouse her following an operation, a disciplinary hearing has heard.
• A brain cancer patient who never recovered from surgery performed by Charlie Teo thought of the star neurosurgeon as “God”, a disciplinary hearing has been told.
• The Health Care Complaints Commission is arguing Dr Teo did not properly communicate the high risks of operating and has already placed him under practising restrictions in Australia.

I don't know if any of these accusations are honest or correct, and I hope they aren't. It is possible that these mistakes anyone could make when under stress.

However, I highlight this case because it shows that it is the lack of good communication and connection abilities which can get you into major trouble, along with the results of his actions.

BELIEF THAT HARD SKILLS > SOFT SKILLS

What would Dr Teo's legal state be had he had fantastic non-technical abilities?

NON-TECHNICAL OR HUMAN SKILLS TRAINING CONTINUOUSLY ATTRACTS LESS RESOURCES

The reasons aren't obscure.

1. Hard skills are often seen as more tangible and measurable, while human skills are often more abstract and difficult to quantify. Hard to justify when money is tight.
2. There are many belief misconceptions about human skills, like they are just innate and cannot be credibly taught.
3. Human skills are less important than hard skills.
4. Many educational institutions focus primarily on hard skills, leaving human skills training to anyone else. There's now a gap in human skills training.
5. Hard skills training provide a more immediate return on investment, such as increased productivity or cost savings. Human skills training takes longer to show results, and may be more difficult to measure.
6. Lack of standardisation: Hard skills training often has established standards and certifications, while human skills training may not. This can make it harder to assess the effectiveness of human skills training and may discourage investment.

Here's an even simpler translation:

1. It will take more money to work out if human-skills will be a pay off immediately. If it doesn't pay off, my credibility decreases.
2. I get on with people well - don't tell me how to be me!
3. Anyone can talk well with others, but learning how to fix particular machinery or fix someone's health, that takes real application.
4. From an early age, it was about what you can do and how you do it, not if you get on with people.
5. I want results now, not in 6 months.
6. How do I know someone is 'good' at human skills and how do you know they're not pulling a fast one over you. If you can drive a bus, we can see it. Fake that, and the bus crashes.

RESULTS OF A LACK OF INTEREST IN DEVELOPING NON-TECHNICAL SKILLS

It can be very hard, especially when an organisation is in survival, to get any interest in training. And it is during these times when non-technical skills training comes in too late or used to clean up someone's behaviour (which was until recently, overlooked or even celebrated). This lack of training can have real world effects.

Choices are made to repeatedly, day after day, invest in and even identify with poor or fear-driven communication.

However, just because there is a lack of training, it doesn't mean that time and resources aren't dedicated to non-technical 'strategies.' One of the main strategies employed through the centuries has been to prioritize command-and-control management or authoritarian-style systems. There are several factors that explain why this was the default mode of relationship management until recently.

The difference here lies in whether these approaches are compatible with current workplace and retention trends. Moreover, it is worth considering whether the choices made are simply a continuation of average or incurious parenting or cultural styles learned at an early age, reinforced by peers, and demanded by those focused solely on numbers and financial returns.

If a well-socialised and emotionally intelligent leader (of any type) had to learn two style of leadership or relationship-building from scratch, one being authoritarian and the other being collaborative or empowering, would they deliberately choose to enact the authoritarian style that ultimately leads to wellbeing issues and high turnover rates?

The following three examples are from "James Thomson, Tony Boyd (23/12/2021), 'The new rules of CEO behaviour', Australian Financial Review"

Cleanaway CEO Vik Bansal stood down by mutual agreement with the board. This followed a series of accusations about his behaviour that saw Bansal concede his management style had at times been inappropriate – too focused on results, too impatient and too rooted in the rough-and-tumble world of a heavy-industry company.

Oil Search boss Kieran Wulff retired, apparently for health reasons. But the company also said Wulff had “behaved in a manner inconsistent with the standards expected by the board in relation to his management style”.

The CEO of biotech PolyNovo, Paul Brennan, resigned suddenly; chairman David Williams revealed there had been “increasing differences with the board in relation to Paul’s interaction with the company’s senior management team and his management style”.

“For these things to reach the point of a formal complaint there’s usually a much deeper problem with culture,” a former tech director says.

"In 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spent $200,000 on an empathy consultant designed to advise MPs on how to best show compassion toward drought-stricken farmers."

Granted, these are high profile accounts of leadership gone wrong, although we can think of hundreds of examples from our own life of leadership done badly at more of the coalface of work. And in many of the cases, the lack of developed non-technical skills helped perpetuate the problem.

CONCLUSION

I understand that the majority focus in training will likely continue to be on hard skills. However, in 10-15 years, what percentage of non-technical skills will remain non-automatable?

Non-technical skills may be hard to measure, but we need to prioritize improving them. By positioning it as a personal growth exercise, we can better prepare ourselves to weather unexpected challenges and keep the ship running without losing too many people or resources.

???? THANKS FOR READING THIS FAR

Please share this article with your Linkedin and professional network, as each article will build on each other to present a coherent template to help change HR, your culture, and your organisation.