A few years back I decided that I wanted to learn to play the drums. It had long been something I wanted to try and I listened to the drum elements of songs thinking, I wish I could do that.
After lesson one I had ticked off the first part of the process because I could play, left, right, left, right in some form of rhythm and I could play the drums! I had some knowledge, very little skill and next to nothing that I would class as drum playing behaviour. I was a long way from generating the drum beats that inspired me. Getting to that level was going to take time, commitment and practice.
It is the same when it comes to soft or people skills. Virtually everybody has some ability and knowledge when it comes to these skills! They use them to a lesser or greater extent everyday in their lives, they just might not recognise it. Very few are proficient, will practice and recognise the value they bring.
Once again in this article by the BBC, these people skills are increasingly written about, the survey results tell us companies are increasingly craving and searching for them in the hiring process, yet still not enough is generally being done to develop them.
We often use the Henry Ford quote, “If you always do what you have always done, then you always get what you always got” yet people seem loathe to change their approach and investment in this area of developing people. Whatever is currently being done clearly isn’t delivering the results in the capability of candidates that employers need or the team work that is essential.
The world is also changing how and when we communicate, it doesn’t want to talk to us, it wants us to use the banking app, transact via the website and pay at the pump while at the same time bemoaning that people haven’t kept their communication skills sharp!
Whilst trying to recruit this capability, businesses are not investing enough in developing their own people in this crucial area. Through our work with companies we have seen:
- Hours of staff time being burned, creating long email chains for little result when 5 minutes in a room have brought about decisions and go forward solutions.
- Projects that are stalled because objectives were not clearly communicated, with teams that cannot work together because they don’t understand the individual dynamics or their impact on others in delivering the objective.
- Leaders or managers who simply cannot motivate or inspire their people around their strategy.
John D Rockerfeller famously said that “the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee” “and I will pay more for that ability” “more than for any other under the sun!”
Development of people is not easily measured but is worth its weight in gold and is proven to help people go further, faster within an organisation. This development activity is the focus of the Triangle of Potential, at the heart of the PYP methodology and focuses on the three areas of Communication, Personal Brand and Personal Development.
It therefore comes as no surprise that we say, if you want to truly want to Power Your Potential, power the potential of your people and let the drums and the good times roll!
share this
