The art of success

Soft skills are crucial to success, yet not all problems can be solved through these

By Hiren Shah

There is a famous saying in Hindi “Zabaan ki chot talvaar se zyaada lagtii hai”. The same line translated in English would imply “Evil words cut worse than the sword.” As one goes through life and interacts with more and more people in the office, social sphere and elsewhere, one realises that the reverse is equally true: A drop of honey catches more flies than a bottle of vinegar”. It is perhaps for this reason that lately, one comes across so many institutes specialising in training in soft skills like communication, presentation, assertiveness, teambuilding, business etiquette, etc. Though it has always been acknowledged that at higher levels of management, people skills are more important than technical skills, there has been a surge in the demand for soft skills in the recent past as it is not properly covered by the conventional education system. It is, however, debatable, whether a few hours of training can make any impact when the person has lived with the personality traits all his life.

Some management institutes have started imparting soft skills training in tandem with training institutes. Though these days, it is imparted at a relatively junior or entry levels, no one can really remain immune from them. In the book, Business the Bill Gates Way, author Des Dearlove says, “Gates’ own direct, slightly impatient manner and his unwillingness to suffer fools can also make him appear rude. On a bad day, he can be downright abrasive. At company meetings, he goes ballistic, throwing things and shouting, ‘this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of’, a familiar phrase for those who work with him. Journalists who interview him are lucky if they don’t ask something that Gates regards as a stupid question.” In another portion of the book, the author adds, “There are signs however that the techno tyrant is mellowing with age.” This is what his friend of 20 years and now, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballamar has to say about him, “Part of Bill’s style of presenting, clarifying and challenging ideas is to be very blunt, and a little dramatic and some would say a little rude but he is a lot less rude than he was 10 years ago.” I read elsewhere that after some of the negative publicity that his company, Microsoft received on antitrust legislation, he has been circumspect in dealing with the media as well. So no matter how rich or influential one may be, one cannot really do without soft skills.

Success quotient
That apart, having soft skills can be a big advantage. Shah Rukh Khan was only known for his serial Fauji in 1991. On seeing him in real life, someone remarked “He looks so smart on screen”. What she probably meant was that he appears smart on screen. In those days, he would hardly have made a great first impression on looks alone. However, the moment he starts speaking, he is a man transformed whether off screen or on screen. Call it a communication flair, a gift of the gab or a knack for wit and repartee, he always seemed to have it and it must have also played a critical role apart from his acting to achieve the kind of success that he has achieved. The aging superstar, Amitabh Bachchan has the ability to bond and connect with people in his own way as evident from the success of Kaun Banega Crorepati. In my view, both the contemporary superstars, Amitabh Bachchan and Sunil Gavaskar, are impressive in the way they communicate and conduct themselves — with a certain dignity, finesse and sophistication which has probably added considerably to the success in their respective fields. In the recent past, one could see how India’s cricket captains, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid are far more impressive in post match conferences than their Pakistani counterparts and therefore impress a wider audience both at home and abroad. We may not always have the appropriate answer to their terrorist attacks but we are at least better at what is called the soft kill — connectivity.

One cannot be certain how the politicians behave in private but at least in public, television and transparency have forced them to behave amicably than they otherwise might have been. In the recent US Presidential election , one could see both the candidates debating their points with grace and dignity. In fact, one of the reasons for Barack Obama’s success is his calm and unflappable temperament, which enabled him to respond with correct and relevant facts rather than react emotionally in his numerous debates with opponents. One of the all-time great communicators was US President Ronald Reagen. After his death, this is what his wife Nancy had to say about the importance he attached to soft skills “Ronnie(Reagen) always told his children, ‘If you go into a store and feel that the clerk is being rude, stop and think that she may have had a tough day, and put yourself in her shoes.’ I remember that he told his son, ‘A gentleman always does the kind thing.’ Yes, Ronnie could be stubborn — but always with a smile.” Indian politicians may not always match such standards but cannot afford to be the other extreme as well.

Argumentative species
Even without the above examples, it is obvious that inter-personal skills are an added bonus in all walks of life. Avoiding verbal rifts can be very healthy as well. In the book Mental Tension and its cure, the effects that arguments can have is very vividly described: “One person is speaking and putting forward an argument. You decide that as soon as the speaker finishes speaking, you will get up and start speaking your views as you feel that you can explain the argument in a better way or give a good counter argument. Did you notice that as soon as you decide to speak, your heart beats faster, the pulse rate goes up and you shift your seat frequently. Now in your mind, as you start framing the sentences, the heart starts thumping in your chest and the pulse rate rises further. Your palms become wet. Your jaw is clenched and if you put your palm at a place just below your ears, you can feel the muscles clinched and vibrating. What the speaker was speaking hardly registered in your mind. When you did get to speak, because of the poor physical condition, you spoke in a slurring, disjointed fashion which did not have the kind of impact it was deigned to have.”

Talking of argument reminds me of Dale Carnegie’s famous words “You can’t win an argument”. When I was doing my management course at the International Management Institute in 1991, I once discussed it with one of our best professors who went on to teach at IIM, Bangalore. He told me that what Carnegie said may seem right to me at my age but practical life could not always be lived that way. He was right because there are situations in life where one has to take a stand and therefore argue tactfully. A few months ago, I read a blog where somebody commented that he used to hear the audio tapes of Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People in his car while going to and fro from office to remind himself continuously of what Carnegie had said. I read the book for the first time in 1979 and even after 30 years and reading so many other books apart from formal management education, I feel that it is one of the best books imparting simple techniques to deal with inter personal situations in day-to-day life. Though emotional intelligence, which depends on self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy and adeptness in relationships aims at better people management, in day-to-day life, since one cannot go around carrying all the knowledge in one’s head like some mini-internet, it is important to remember some of Carnegie’s thumb rules:-

Questions as cure
All of these were primarily designed to prevent arguments which according to Carnegie are best avoided. These days, there are variations like agreeing with the point of the other person’s argument, admitting it is a reasonable argument, appreciating their feeling, raising objections as an afterthought etc. Though there are new techniques which are either original or a variation of Carnegie has said, it is impossible to keep all of them in mind all the time. One technique which deserves elucidation is asking questions. Well-known Management consultant Ram Charan has said in his book Know How, “ People normally leave companies for two reasons; they don’t like their boss and they don’t feel appreciated. Teaching managers to be coaches rather than bosses — asking questions rather than just telling people what to do can go a long way to solve the first problem and embedded processes that recognize people’s contribution can help with the second”. Asking questions in a manner that the subordinate comes out with an answer on his own is certainly better than telling him bluntly what to do. In the United States, the essence of business and other types of coaching is appropriate questioning which is similar to the technique used by the famous philosopher Socrates who used continuous questioning to get to the root of the problem. Some people use questioning to deflect other people’s arguments back on them with queries like “Why do you think that is?” or “So you’re saying you’d like to feel free to disregard my requests if you don’t agree with them. Is that correct?” or “Is this how you’d like to continue to feel about this situation?”

Not always soft
I must add here that whatever the technique maybe, if there is a management problem that is misread as a lack of soft skill issue, that would be like missing the wood for the trees. For example, if there is a workplace bully or a faulty management control system that in causing confusion and conflict, expecting soft skills in such situations is as absurd as expecting all cricketers to respond to Australian sledging like Dravid or Tendulkar rather than taking the stand that sledging is fundamentally wrong and taking steps to eliminate it which is the stand taken by Sunil Gavaskar in various articles. In a recent interview to Time Magazine, President Barack Obama said that anybody who had worked with him knew how he despised turf battles and office politics. He was inclined to put a stop to it straightaway. Rather than attending to and altering such situations, expecting soft skills to work could be both deceptive and even counter productive. In the Second World War, Winston Churchill had a special department created for information to come directly to him rather than through various channels which can cause both confusion and friction. Bill Gates used email effectively for similar communication to different levels in his company. In his own words, “In a highly iterative business, when things change so rapidly, we often need to change course midstream. So we must have an efficient feedback loop. Our email system with its lack of hierarchy ensures that everyone who needs to know about a problem is informed within 48 hours”. Soft skills cannot be effective if the primary communication system is faulty or inadequate. Looking at this from an individual’s perspective, some people simply cannot say no where it is warranted and then, when it creates a whole chain reaction of negativity, hoping to cope with soft skills can be misleading. To understand the root of the problem and remove it is as important as knowing and implementing soft skills.

Getting to the essence
If one looks at the essence or common element in various soft skills, it is the ability to establish a rapport. Rapport implies a state of connectedness, where people feel that their values and beliefs are recognised and accepted, even if partially. People tend to communicate openly if they know that their views won’t be criticised or attacked. Building a rapport means to understand what is important to the other person. This means bonding with other people using their language and style and acknowledging them without any blame game. Once this connection is established, you can prevail upon them to look at a situation differently and objectively.

Rapport is also achieved through demonstrating empathy, active listening, questioning, silence etc. This is normally done through responding to conflict situations in a calm and collected manner and trying to prevail upon the other person with facts, logic and appropriateness of the argument or point of view when the person himself has calmed down. To enable this calmness, one has to respond instead of reacting emotionally. Among the three main behavioural patterns — passive, assertive and aggressive, it is the assertive behaviour that is generally desirable.

Word’s worth
If rapport is the essence of interpersonal skills, verbal communication is the means that is inevitable in all the soft skills. I read somewhere that 70 per cent of all the hassles in management are due to lack of proper communication and anybody who has reasonable work experience in line management would have experienced that. You might think that you are saying something, but actually say something else. Someone else might think you said something but actually hear something else. He might then think that he has responded to you in a certain way but may actually respond differently and you might think he has responded in a certain way even though you actually heard him say something else. No wonder George Bernard Shaw had this to say about communication, “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” To put it in a nutshell, what you intend to convey and may end up saying maybe drastically different. To avoid misunderstandings, as a day-to-day thumb rule paraphrasing what you are saying maybe a good way of getting your message across from different perspectives. Similarly paraphrasing and crosschecking what others have said is a good way of ensuring that you have got the essence of what they are trying to convey. Though some people are of the view that written communication can be one sided and there could be misunderstanding because of lack of gestures and tone, for detailed explanations, it can be very effective. It would take exemplary soft skills in oral communication to ensure the kind of rationality, detachment and objectivity that is possible in internet discussion forums.

Talent management expert Marcus Buckingham has said that it is not sufficient to just go around saying that you are a people’s person. One should be specific in what one is good at — do you like and are good at selling to people, serving people,organising people, challenging people, invigorating people, leading people or analysing people. One can be more sure and confident about one’s soft and sometimes other skills in this way. In his book, First Break All the Rules, he defines, three kinds of talents — striving, thinking and relating talents. Striving talents explain the ‘whys’ of a person — is he altruistic or competitive or both, is he task-oriented or result-oriented or both? Thinking talents define the ‘hows’ of a person — is he a linear or a lateral thinker, is he disciplined or carefree etc. Relating talents define whom he relates with, confronts or ignores. The last one pertains most to interpersonal skills. Based on the above three main talents, the Gallup organisation, where Buckingham used to work earlier, has developed 34 themes or talents to or strengths and they strive to bring two people of diverse talents work together so that one person’s strength can balance the other person’s weakness. Among the strengths that are directly related to reducing conflict are adaptability, communication, connectedness, empathy, harmony, relator etc. However good relations are not considered an end in themselves and they are encouraged to team up with people of opposite talents — achiever, activator, command, competition, focus. This way both inter-person and intra-person conflict can be reduced and one can practically achieve the balance between being task- and relationship-oriented, which is taught in MBA schools.

Training on soft skills becomes all the more relevant in a country like India where the education system does not delve into personality development. Considering the importance of soft skills, they should start being imparted at high school itself and to the extent possible in the family and social environment. Lack of such skills can make life cruel and hard; the earlier the better if one is on one’s guard.