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and soft skills be measurable quantifiable this has been the bane of the sage presence existence for years until recently because we deal with this elusive quality this ethereal presence which actually has a profound impact on how we lead how we sell how we grow grow relationships how we create our client experience our presence in Professional Services defines so much of that it is hard to follow the unfollow it is hard to grasp the brand through someone who’s not brand consistent it’s hard to build relationships with those who are transactional and it’s hard to win the business without winning presentence so this thing is both Elusive and tangible at the same time and I want to suggest as you look at soft skills that you see the connection between this seemingly elusive thing and the quantifiability of measurable and observable so at Sage presence now partially due to some injection of new thoughts through new team members such as Ellen Reuters who’s one of our team now we connected to her initially because she was so committed to the the measurable difference the measurable impact and if you look at soft skills and you look at training you look at teaching you look at culture change all the all of these things so often fade you teach some and they learn it it fades it fades it fades it fades and that’s because it’s missing the equation of sustainability so here’s the equation that I’m talking about soft skills which are behaviors or communication steps and methodology it has to be observable meaning someone has to be able to see it if you’re doing that thing making deep connections I need to see that if you’re more confident I should be able to see it so we want to make sure we Define the behaviors and our soft skills from the perspective of observability you have to be able to see it secondly there has to be some way to measure it like I’ve seen you in three sales pitches and you always come across confident we’re trying to deepen the qu uh the the the relationships and I see you empathizing in the last series of meetings so someone has to be able to spot it we have to be able to to tell the person or track somehow that we’re seeing it and if it’s observable and it’s measurable it takes you to the next two key ingredients of the equation because the next ingredient is that it’s recognized now this piece is why so much of the past work that I’ve done I saw fade away because it wasn’t recognized it’s not that it wasn’t there it’s not that it wasn’t observable but nobody was recognizing it so leadership who also sends us often sends us down here to work fix these people doesn’t recognize the fixes that we’ve made we hadn’t been teaching them to model and spot and recognize and affirm those behaviors but now imagine let’s say let’s say I was struggling with confidence and I learned that was showing up in interviews or presentations or you know sales pctures or where wherever it was needed client presentations and I was now sent to have some that soft skill taught confidence now I’ve been confident now I’m showing up confidently you can see it if it’s not recognized up here it fades away so if you’re going to invest in your people’s soft skills you need to include the observing of the measurable or the the recognizing of the observable skill so that they hear that someone sees it and it is the recognition that makes you say oh this is working oh this is taking it helps you cure that into you so that it remains and the last piece which in some ways comes down on the importance compared to recognition it’s rewarded if I’m rewarded for what I’m recognized for we have completed the equation by giving the certainty that it matters and the reason I said it comes down a bit is reward depends how you define it for a lot of people recognition is the reward I just took on a behavior and it was observed and recognized and I feel rewarded but there also are rewards like I don’t mean like bonus somebody for being competent but you know you move up there’s positional increases there’s more responsibility there’s more meaning in your work there might be shifts that you doors that you open up by suddenly having arrived at you ing the soft skill but let’s stick with the point here if the Soft skill is somehow observable and it is measured and recognized and there are rewards for it it stays and the good news for those of you who need soft skills and the good news for those who teach soft skills is if you just run your skill set your training your teaching through this simple formula which which is it must be observable it must be measurable it must be recognized and it must be rewarded you have the ability to take a soft skill and embedd it into a person into a team into a culture into an organization so that that soft skill is no longer ethereal but it gets locked into behavior and action and becomes a sustainable value [Music]
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