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• June 2012 Issue
• updates
  • CAs(SA) - proudly South African: commited to maintain IFRS
  • Dictionary of accounting: Cutting through the confusion
  • SAICA advises accountants not to misinterpret the dti and SANAS communications
• commentary
  • Africa - the forgotten giant offers an untapped market
  • Full stop: on his high horse
• focus
  • Developing the soft skills of professionals: the hard part of talent management
  • Effective credit risk management: vital for business survival
  • Effectively managing your fixed assets in Ten steps
  • From local to global: the South African way
  • How to lead: by SA's most admired leaders
  • Leadership lessons: nurturing the future
  • Managing change: is it about compliance, or a new process?
  • Sustainability management - industries can tread more lightly on the planet: A case study
  • Sustainability management: the next big challenge
• analysis
  • Basel III - Liquidity risk and SA Banks
  • New companies act: key features of non-profit companies
• life
  • Coaching: unconventional thinking for business success
  • Motoring: Mercedes-Benz CLS 500, BMW 640d coupé
  • Tribute to Julius Feinstein: doyen of the South African accounting profession
  • Wines that guarantee lingering impressions
• CPD Verifiable Articles
  • New companies act: key features of non-profit companies (30min)
  • Basel III - Liquidity risk and SA Banks (30min)

“Team leadership requires the use of many soft skills and unfortunately few young professionals are trained in such skills before taking up their leadership roles.”

Developing the soft skills of professionals: the hard part of talent management

Organisations today need to be staffed and led by people with high levels of expertise, professionalism and leadership ability. Corporate failures, technology change and social development have highlighted the adaptive challenges that organisations face.

In addition, organisations today cannot afford to waste any of their valuable people resources, but often experience such wastage through the loss of experienced professionals to other organisations, or low levels of employee engagement amongst these professionals. This turnover and lack of engagement are often due to the perception by employees that the organisation cannot offer them the opportunities for development and fulfillment in their work that they need and want.

Such problems can often be traced to a lack of soft skills amongst managers at all levels and also amongst non-management professionals. So it could be said that talent management is about managing soft skills development.

Professionals need soft skills
Wharton management professor Peter Capelli believes that professionals (he uses the example of accountants and lawyers) bring ¡§a standard set of solutions to a problem¡¨, which is what they are trained to do. By contrast, he describes ¡§general purpose business executives [who] are trying to figure out what makes sense for the organisation ... rather than turning to a standard tool kit and rolling out an accepted solution.¡¨ Ron Heifetz of Harvard¡¦s School of Government distinguishes between a technical problem (one that experts know to which to respond, since the knowledge and capacity to solve the problem already exists) and adaptive challenges (ones for which the experts and authorities on the issue have not yet developed an adequate response). In order to create the new knowledge and skills to address the problem, the existing system itself may need to undergo change.

It would seem, therefore, that it is only when professionals become generalist business executives, operating at strategic levels of the organisation, that the balance between the technical skills set and the more complex, systemic thinking skills of strategic leadership needs to change.

This viewpoint, however, does not take into account the other ¡§soft¡¨ skills that any professional needs. Professionals at any level need to have expertise in their specific field plus a high level of professionalism. Professionalism includes behaving in ways that demonstrate to others that you:

• are knowledgeable in your field, can see the bigger picture and are able to apply your knowledge to the situation-specific problem or issue;
• lead others through the willing contribution of your knowledge and expertise to others in the workplace, seeking to integrate your specialist knowledge with other organisational specialties to create effective and sustainable systems and processes;
• have integrity ¡V you deliver on your promises, abide by all legal and organisational requirements, and act ethically both in terms of your professional code of conduct and in terms of the employer¡¦s code of conduct; „¯
• deliver work of a high standard, on time, to meet or exceed your internal customer expectations;
• continuously update your professional knowledge and personal leadership skills.

These professional behaviours imply that moral judgement is brought to bear on what could be seen as purely technical issues.

In many professions, people are asked to lead a team very early in their careers. Team leadership requires the use of many ¡§soft¡¨ skills and unfortunately few young professionals are trained in such skills before taking up their leadership roles.

Development options for soft skills
Traditional methods for leadership training have centred around business school education and other formal leadership training courses. These, however, are not the best ways to develop soft skills, because soft skills deal with behaviour and inter-personal relationships. In many cases, the new (or established) leader needs to modify behaviour in order to improve, for example, communication or team working.

Behaviour change is hard to achieve, it is a personal growth area and can involve the reshaping of attitudes and habits that have developed from each individual¡¦s personal life story. Some business schools have realised this, and incorporate supplementary methods of leadership development, such as mentoring, coaching, action learning and peer review groups. Many corporate leadership development (and talent management) programmes also include such types of development support.

Successful talent management programmes are based on personal development plans for each individual, with a time horizon of three to five years. These plans should be based on an accurate gap analysis of where the individual is versus a carefully prescribed career path profile, describing the technical and soft skills required for each step along the career path. Companies with well developed programmes have clear competency models, with detailed descriptions of the competencies required. These then enable objective assessments to be made of where the individual is against the required competencies. Such assessments should be linked to the performance management system, and can also be based on tools, such as a 360¢X feedback survey or assessment centre processes.

Once the gaps are established, actions to fill the gaps need to be planned by discussion and agreement between the line manager and the individual, possibly assisted by a specialist from the HR department. This discussion should look at several options to fill identified gaps, as shown in the table below.

Conclusion
Managing professional and personal development is perhaps easier within larger organisations that devote considerable resources to supporting processes such as the ones described above. However, the principles can also be followed by smaller companies and organisations with fewer resources. The basics are:

• an atmosphere conducive to an honest discussion of performance and career development,
• agreement on a realistic and achievable personal development plan with short, medium and long term horizons,
• finding suitable resources within the available budget to carry out the plan. For example, mentoring is a low-cost option, as are on-the-job coaching and self-study,
• follow-up on the plan, celebration of successes and re-planning where required,
• development of soft skills is more complex than the development of hard skills. But if a careful process of planning and implementation is used, visible results can be achieved. For example, surveys of the results of coaching carried out both locally and internationally, consistently report good results achieved in soft skills such as communication and team work, as well as less visible, but equally important, results in improved self-awareness and self-confidence. asa

Author: Penny Abbott, M Phil., MHRP, is the Head of the HR Research Initiative at the SA Board of People Practices.

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