It’s past time to rename “soft skills.” Soft skills, as we all know, are people skills: getting along, communicating well, exhibiting interpersonal finesse. Calling them soft skills has been a way of differentiating them from hard skills, although no one really uses that term. Hard skills are those associated with numbers: quantitative analysis, efficiency and making hard decisions “based on the numbers,” while you set aside your feelings. Read More
Lunch & Learn at the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development. I’ll be teaching a workshop (click here) on “Communication Styles In The Workplace.” We’ll be at the University of Southern Maine campus, July 17th, where the technology will allow us to share the workshop experience in real time at other UMaine campuses.
Learn about team collaboration and creativity through the Communication Styles Framework.
Donna was feeling bogged down by her lack of organization, as she put it. “I have so much stuff in my life (things!) that I can’t seem to organize, and it feels like it holds me back.” This is surely a common complaint and frustration for many people. From the outside, it seems like an easy problem to solve: devote small amounts of time regularly, sort items in boxes, and handle disposing of or packing for storing the easy stuff first. Donna, of course, knew that drill and had tried it many times without success. She had just turned fifty and wanted to “put her house in order,” literally and figuratively, but she was frustrated and discouraged. Read More
Kelly speaks and writes well; his linguistic strengths are evident. He cares about words and their specific meanings and works diligently in conversation to be thoughtful about the language he uses, while respecting others who are not as linguistically oriented. If there is a lack of connection or understanding in a conversation, Kelly works even harder to find a different tack to create an understanding. He’s very careful not to just chalk it up to the other person’s failings. At times he takes this to extremes, especially when the other person isn’t truly engaged. Kelly keeps trying and trying and trying and winds up discouraged, feeling that he has failed. Read More