Do you believe that you are unique in the world? Do you truly know who you are? In today’s collaborative society we are not only busy with our own tasks but also at some point we need to team up with other members in order to grow up and to achieve success. You might have a list of people you are in favor of within an organization and perhaps also a black list of people you don’t like. But what if you have no choice but to work with unfavored people, how to ensure a peaceful working relations? In this post I would like to guide you on knowing who you are in a learning cycle, how to keep good communication with others, how to give other feedback, and most importantly how to maintain good working relations based on who you are. Before we deeply dive into some soft skills, let’s first explore ourselves.
Learning cycle
Below the graph shows the learning cycle of human beings. What do you think where you are in the cycle? Some people think they are theorists while others think they are pragmatists. Take me for example, I recognize that I have a mixed type of theorist and pragmatist spirit, meaning that I like to think about the overall structure before I start to work on a topic. I like to have a system level overview to know why I need to do this work. After I thought about the general flow, I like to realize it to see if it works as expected. However, if somebody just asked me to do a work without thinking further ahead, it would be difficult to motivate me to execute that action. The purpose of identifying yourself in a learning cycle is to notice what your future development can be. The actions can be as follows:
- Find the most suitable position to boost your growth. In other words, you should search for the position which matches your native mode. This way you can maximize the potential.
- Be aware of your pitfalls when you are in the native mode. For example, sometimes theorists over think the problems without putting them in actions. In the end this has a risk to deliver the outcome on time.
- Try to play different roles if there is a chance coming. There will be different roles that you will see in your career path. If you want to broaden your view, experiencing these different roles definitely helps. However, not all of these roles would perfectly match your natural mode. Therefore, picking up that missing spirit to close the gap is something worth learning.
Communication
Have you ever experienced one thing that when you are saying A but your colleagues answer you in B? Or when you are trying to explain what your point is on this issue, he still gets stocked to understand you correctly. If you have seen these many times, then “yes” you just suffered from the communication problems. If you see the picture below, you know the communication itself is just a coding and decoding process. How to ensure you understand and they can understand you as well? The approach I can share with you is LSD which stands for the three following elements:
- Listen: When someone is saying their opinions, try not to interrupt their speaking. The same holds the other way around. If your colleague just interrupted you, ask him to first let your finish your statement.
- Summarize: Try to summarize what other people’s statement to make sure your interpretation is in line with his thought.
- Dig deeper: When there is any confusion between your conversation, do not hesitate to ask any question to clarify what they just meant.
Feedback
When you are working in an organization, have you ever noticed that some colleagues’ behaviors bring benefits to an organization while some of them bring disadvantages to you and the organization. Is there any way that we can shape our working environment towards a positive and competitive one?. Perhaps it is time to give feedbacks to the people around you. Giving feedback is an art, namely, we should not destroy the working relations between each other due to feedback. Here are some remarks when you are about to give feedbacks.
- make your statement descriptive not qualifications. Try to describe your perceptions.
- link your perception to a specific situation and behavior. Focus your perceptions on the situation and the behavior, not the person itself.
- select neutral words for the description.
Of course, feedback is not only one way but can also come from the other way. When you receive the feedback from others, perhaps these remarks can help you digest other people’s gift better.
- listen carefully and summarize. The purpose is to understand their feedback correctly. If needed, you can also ask questions to clarify the part which is unclear for you.
- accept the present and no defense. This way you show you will take this seriously.
You might ask why we need to accept feedbacks and how the feedback will help us? The graph below is a matrix which is how you know about yourself and how other people know about you. Feedback is a gift which enables us to unlock our potential. As we are human beings, sometimes we will not see our blind points. If others can point it out, you will recognize it and develop that potential afterwards. On the other hands, self revelation is a direction in which you show people your ability and competence. This direction can make you more visible in an organization and therefore you will have more chance in the future. If you can successfully develop your blind spots and make them visible to others, you do not only gain this competence yourself but also give the impression you have unlimited potential to invest in, making your career more successful.
Good working relations
In an organization we all have to drive our own business values to success. Under this process we should realized that We have different interests, values and needs with some people or groups, which could sometimes cause conflicts with other people. How good the working relations you can create depends on how you handle the conflict with others. Your attitude could result in the five scenarios as described in the figure below. If we always force the direction towards only to our side, perhaps the conflict will still come back with even larger amplitude. For ourselves, it is not acceptable to only sacrifice our interests for a long period time because this will only lead to frustration on the work. Since we are smart people we know that we should maximize the benefit on both sides. However, what are the tips that we can follow to realized a win-win outcome?
- Firstly, you need build up confidence and trust. You should be honest about what is important for you and understand what is the importance for others. In other words, not to exaggerate what both sides actually need. Otherwise, distrust can be the obstacle to block your communication.
- Secondly, be creative to find the connection between two sides and think about how the differences can be addressed.
- Thirdly, make good use of the communication skills you just learned
Of course you need a mirror to reflect what your current altitude is for solving these conflicts. Some questionnaires would help you to achieve this. Please feel free to search for them online.
Summary
In this post I have mentioned several topics related to your soft skills. These soft skills are very generic but very important in a group because success is not evaluated on a single person but on the whole unit. If you would like to have smooth career path, you might need to join some really hands-on trainings to practice these soft skills. For people who are interested more on the personality analysis and collaboration, MBTI type indicator is a good methodology to look into.