I don’t know of any organization that does not want highly skilled, competent, engaged, and hard-working employees. However, I do know many organizations who hire highly skilled, competent employees and then do not invest time, energy, training dollars, or the efforts of direct supervisors toward continuing to grow, develop, and engage these employees.
Another mistake that happens is the organization places all of their learning and development focus on only specific job-related skills and capabilities for the current work the employee does. The reason this is a mistake is that the business environment, trends in technology, globalization, expectations of society, regulations and legislation, and competition is constantly changing. And the rate of these changes is increasing exponentially. To only focus on training job-specific skills, means that while employees may learn the newest methods, software, or tools for their work, they are not learning long-term growth oriented competencies that could make the biggest impact on the organization or the person.
Investing in relationship building skills, interpersonal communication, critical thinking and decision-making, big picture or strategic mindset, problem solving, and other learning and development needs of employees (sometimes call soft skills) is the type of training investment focused on by organizations with a culture of leadership. Employee’s knowledge, thinking and problem solving abilities, relationship abilities, flexibility, and other capabilities that are not specific to one particular job are the skills employees and organizations will need to be competent in any job. It makes sense in such a rapidly changing world to invest training and development dollars in these skills that will prepare employees for any position in the future and will help them be a knowledge asset to the organization versus simply a one-job/one-skill team member. Contact me to bring soft skills development programs to your organization.