Ep. 21 Hard-Hitting Soft Skills - Dirty Chai with Chio

In this episode of the Dirt Shed Podcast, the host discusses the importance of soft skills in professional success. Soft skills are the personal attributes that enable effective interaction with others. While schools focus on hard skills, such as academics and tests, soft skills are often overlooked. However, they are crucial for thriving in the workplace. The host emphasizes the significance of body language and nonverbal communication, as well as public speaking and verbal communication skills. These skills can greatly impact how others perceive and engage with us. Developing and practicing these soft skills is essential for holistic success. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirt Shed Podcast with me, your host Gio. It's the podcast where we focus on holistic, professional, and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today we're talking about hard-hitting soft skills. I had a bit of a chuckle when I thought of this topic for this episode because it's very reminiscent of my initial content when I started creating Career Tuesday on Instagram. I would talk about specific skills that I felt were not sufficiently highlighted when preparing people for the workplace or counseling people for the workplace or growing people for the workplace. Now, soft skills are your ability to interact with other people. I think that's the simplest definition I can come up with. From the time you wake up to the time that you go to sleep, you're surrounded by people. This could be in the workplace or this could be at home, but whether you're an extrovert or an introvert, whether you like it or not, whether it's intentional or not, you are actually forced to interact with people. Your soft skills are the personal attributes that enable you to interact effectively with people, that enable you to interact effectively and produce an outcome, whether it is simply to engage, whether it's simply to check on how somebody is doing, whether it's simply to coexist peacefully in the same space, that is achieved by your soft skills. What happens traditionally or what has to happen traditionally is the school system has focused heavily on giving us hard skills. The school system has made many of us accountants, lawyers, plumbers, whatever it might be, doctors, pharmacists, all of these skills are hard skills. Hard skills are measured by a test. You have a very clear understanding of whether you are good at something or not good at something, at least on an academic level, based on the outcome of the test. It's simple. Soft skills, however, not only are they barely talked about, at least in our school system, but they are so integral to getting you to the next level. So a hard skill will get you in the door. A company is looking for a lawyer. Am I a lawyer? Yes, that will get me in the door. Once I am inside the room, staying in there and thriving inside the room is heavily and almost entirely dependent on your ability to interact with people, in other words, your soft skills. I went to a talk given by, I'm trying to remember his name now, it was given by an extraordinary man at DLA Piper some two years ago. And one of the things, he ran a little audience poll and he says, what do you think matters more, competence or likability? And everyone gave certain answers. And I remember battling with it because my answer was, it has to be both, but there's a trick here, right? I need to understand what he's, but it has to be both. And his answer was, beyond a certain level of competence, likability matters more. In other words, the minute your hard skills can do enough of the hard work for you to be considered competent in your job, any success beyond that is entirely dependent on your ability to use soft skills. And if soft skills are so important, then why do we talk so little about them, right? And I realized that that's a big part of the reason why I developed a podcast like this. After that, I started paying attention to people around me with and without soft skills. And it is very evident once you know what you're looking for, how soft skills or the lack thereof, or, you know, it's not all or nothing. It's not like a person has 100% soft skills or 0% soft skills. Some people have a certain type of soft skill, others have less of that. It's once you understand what you're looking for, it's very easy to see the people who have been limited or are being limited by a particular behavior, despite having an excellent hard skill, and they may not even be aware of it. And so I thought for this particular episode, I would talk about the soft skills that I believe I must have, but not only that, the ones that I have researched and Googled and read books about that I think could make a world of difference to your success or your failure, your holistic success or failure, which is why we're here. Skill one is obvious but not obvious, body language and nonverbal communication skills. Once you are aware of this, this is a mind-blowing thing to observe. Even when you're not talking, you communicate through your body. And our words might lie, but our bodies do not. It's one of the most important soft skills for professionals. Your body language determines the way people perceive you, the way you lean in during a conversation or cross your legs. It sends specific signals to other parties you're conversing with. Rolling your eyes is a common metaphor for boredom and disagreement. Take a moment to think about what you would think, never mind what you would say, to think about what you would think if a colleague rolled their eyes at you. Take a minute to think about what you would think or how you would react if you approached a colleague's desk and their shoulders slumped and they took a big, disappointed breath. You've probably been taught to sit up straight, but as we grow up and we gain more autonomy, we start to let go of certain things and start to choose things that we're comfortable with. Now, sitting straight, pulling your shoulders back, etc., etc., you'll recall that there is a researcher from Harvard University called Amy Cuddy who went viral on social media and on YouTube back then for doing research that proved that certain poses affect the way that you perceive yourself. A popular example of the Superman pose is power posing before you have to speak. This is because what you do with your body has a physical effect on what your mind thinks you can do, but it also has a physical effect on what other people perceive that you can do. So one of the most underrated soft skills is the ability to sit and convey that you're paying attention, is to sit and to convey that you're interested, is to sit and convey with your body intentionally that I belong here, that I don't feel embarrassed to be here, that I feel that I am a part of this ecosystem. That is such a powerful place to start before you even open your mouth, and yet many of us are shuffling around, sighing deeply. We get irritated when people walk into our workspaces. Before we've even opened our mouth, we have communicated something that has already lowered the level, the quality level of our engagement with that colleague, and the more you do that, think about Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now Now, the more you do that, the more you create a string of nows, and if you think about the concept that there is, the past is already done and the future is not here yet, so whatever we're creating of the past is being created in this moment, this is what will become the past just now. Whatever we think of the future, the future has not been created yet, it is being created by the moment we are in now. So when we create a string of nows in which we convey a poor quality message with our body language to the people around us, whether at home or at work, think about it even in the context of a spouse or a lover. If you consistently communicate a less than quality message with your body, that adds up to months of communicating this way, it adds up to years of communicating this way, it adds up to years of damage, and that's how it works in the professional and in the personal space. So it is fundamentally important for you to pay attention to your body language, and if you find that you're struggling, get an accountability buddy who helps you to sit properly, to engage properly, reminds you to look the next person in the eye, that sort of thing. We often think that soft skills and this ability to engage with other people is something that falls out of the sky. It's not an easy skill to acquire if you don't already have it. You have to learn it the same way that you learn hard skills, you have to grow it the same way that you have to grow your hard skills, and you have to practice it so that the muscle learns to do this and it becomes a natural state of being for you. I've spent a lot of time on this one because it's a big one, and I wouldn't be surprised if I go on to spend a lot of time on the next one because it's also a big one. The second one is public speaking and verbal communication skills. So now we've talked about nonverbal. You've entered a room, your body language says nonverbally, I belong here, hi, I am warm, you can talk to me, I have boundaries. You know, this is now what you're communicating nonverbally. Now you must follow this up with your ability to communicate verbally. A lot of people do not know how to communicate clearly verbally. Again, a lot of us think that these skills are something that you should have, that somehow when you were in school, you should have learned this, et cetera, et cetera. But the truth is, in school, we're taught to write tests. We sometimes engage verbally, but it's not to the same extent that you're then required to do in the workplace. So glossophobia is a fear of speaking in public, and it is also one of the most commonly known fears. Many professionals, entrepreneurs, CEOs, people fear public speaking. People lose opportunities because they fear public speaking or because they lack public speaking skills and overcoming the fear of speaking publicly. Now, when I say public speaking, I don't necessarily mean standing on a podium. That's one part of it. But it's also talking to the person next to you. It's also talking to your colleagues. It's addressing people in a meeting. It's jumping in when you think maybe the conversation is going a certain way. It's jumping in when you want to add value. That is all public speaking. And if you find that public speaking and the thought of doing so paralyzes you, it means the second half of your ability to communicate in the workplace or even in social situations is compromised. And think of these two skills together. We've only spoken about two. Your body language, for example, let's say your body language says, I'm doubtful that I should be here, followed up quickly by an inability to express yourself verbally. What has happened here? People have not seen you or heard you at all. They've only experienced you as a person who is unsure that they should be here. When in truth, you have a lot of value in your head that is locked. It is a loss for them. It is a loss for you. Public speaking skills can be learned. You can learn these with a course online. You can learn this by reading regularly and practicing how you would like to convey stuff. Recently, I posted on LinkedIn a few examples of how to practice interrupting in a meeting or responding when a person is saying something to you. These are simple things that you practice, but you create the muscle memory to do it in real time. I'm learning French, for example. When I'm by myself and I'm running through a French lesson, I know exactly how it's supposed to go. When this is said, then this is what I say. But in real time, when a person… Yesterday, I'm in Las Vegas for a work trip, and we've been doing a lot of exploring. We were at a bus stop yesterday, and a gentleman says in French, do you speak French? I understood exactly what he said, but I froze. I couldn't answer him. And he said, I really thought you spoke French. Do you speak French? He repeats. And eventually, I answered him in English, and I said, I do speak basic French, but I'm struggling to respond in French right now. And then we proceeded to have the conversation in English. But it was a stark reminder to me of how practice is the only thing that can make you able to reach for a language or to reach for a habit with ease. Simply because I've learned it academically doesn't mean that I can now suddenly use it as though I use it every day. And in order for me to be able to use it as though I use it every day, I need to practice it every day. And that is really very similar to communicating professionally, verbally, and non-verbally. The practice of it is what makes it something that you can reach for very easily. And while you are learning it, have grace for yourself. Because you are already doing the right thing by being on track. And if you would already know the skill the minute you start doing it, or if you could figure out the skill the minute you start practicing it, it wouldn't be a skill. It's something that has to be learned. Then there's also social skills. This one makes me chuckle because I struggled really hard with this. I'm not a natural extrovert. I've learned to be with other people. I'm a natural introvert. And now as I'm approaching 40, I can be both. But I recall specifically feeling frustrated in the earlier years of my career because I wanted my skills to speak for me. I wanted my hard skills to do the hard yards in speaking for me in a room. And they did, but they could only go so far. And I would forever get into trouble for not coming to. So every time they would give me an option to not come to a conference or to not participate in a social event, I didn't. I stayed at my desk and I worked. I just did not show up. And I would get little nudges, you know, why didn't you come to the thing yesterday? Or why didn't you? And I would say something like, oh, I didn't see the invitation, or I wasn't invited, or that's not really my thing. And I'll continue to produce good work. And over time, over time, the value attached to my work would reduce. But I wouldn't understand why, because not only was the actual work not reduced, I was actually ramping up because I was spending all my time working until I started working at my current place of work. And my boss said to me, come talk to me. There's nothing wrong with the work output. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing. But you do need to spend a little bit more time talking to the team, etc., etc. This was entirely foreign to me, but I was open to learning. And I just thought, what would we be talking about exactly? That was my thought. I just thought it was weird. And I kept saying, is there something wrong with the work that I'm producing? And he would say, he was very clear. No, the work you're producing is excellent. But you do need to engage with other people. You need to engage with other people. OK, fine. I decided to try it. I started making an effort when I get to the coffee machine. I talk when I get because these are things that would typically be outside of my experience. When I see someone in the passage, I say hello. I pay attention to what's going on with people around me, and I share what's going on with me. And I will be honest and say the quality of my work experience has gone all the way up from there. Not only am I more engaged with my colleagues, they're more engaged with me. And I've learned something that I have learned in practice what I already knew in theory from the talk at DLA, which is that beyond a certain level of competence, likability is key. Think about how you respond when you receive an email from a colleague you like. And think about how somebody else might respond when they receive an email from you and they like you. Think about how people would interact, how you interact when you receive an email from an abrasive colleague. And how people would respond if they receive an email from you and you're an abrasive colleague. It really is. It's not a question of acting like you're a good person. It's a question of being a good person because you can't sustain an act. You cannot sustain an act. It's inauthentic, and people will know that that is what you're doing. They might not know it immediately, but they will work out that that is what you're doing. Don't manipulate people. Try and show up as a genuinely authentic, likable human being with boundaries. You don't need to pour out your whole life to the entire universe. You only share what you're comfortable with, and you also receive what you're comfortable with. But that is enough to create a nexus within you and the people that you spend most of your week with. Have a little intersection in which you are likable to each other, and you're able to create a symbiosis to do great things together. That is what it means to be a team. Then the next skill is negotiation skills. We talked about this either here on the podcast or in the newsletter. Negotiation skills. Most people think they have negotiation skills, but they really don't. This has also been a learned skill for me. And I can't teach you negotiation in five minutes, but I will tell you what was a game changer for me in understanding negotiation skills. Lots of people go into negotiations with the concept of a movie approach or a TV approach or a suits approach, which is, I'm going to do something. I'm going to say something. I'm going to drop my mic, and I'm going to win this debate. I've seen many people burn a meeting to the ground attempting to do that. What you actually want to aim for, in my view, is what Stephen Covey calls thinking, win, win. Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People taught me what has become the cornerstone of my engagements and negotiations with people, whether I'm negotiating with other lawyers, whether I'm negotiating with other businesses, whether I'm negotiating with regulators. This principle has been so defining for me, and that principle is think, win, win. A lot of people go into a meeting thinking, win, lose, as in I win, the other person loses, or lose, win, they win, and I lose, or lose, lose, like if I'm not winning, we're both leaving here with nothing. But there is also think, win, win. Everybody wants something. Everybody wants something. Everybody who enters a room to negotiate wants something, and you need the ability to work out what does this person want, what is it they would like to achieve out of this, and what is it that I would like to achieve from this, and where is the nexus, where do those two things meet? And if you can find that place and move the person you're negotiating to to that place where you both leave with the thing you came in the room for, that is first prize 100% of the time. Even in a lover's relationship, even in a partnership, even in a friendship, start with how do we both live with something beautiful in this interaction, and look at the quality of your negotiations go through the roof. It's not about fighting to win. It's not about showing that you're the right person. That's just what we've been taught from competing, from TV, from et cetera. But in truth, the number one prize you want in your head when you walk into the room is how do we both walk away with a win? And if you both walk away with a win, you both have something to take home and be proud of. But if one of you has to forfeit something entirely, the temperature in that room will change automatically. The temperature in that room is I am forcing you to fight me to the death or nothing. Just take some time. If you don't want to, you don't have to read the whole book. The book has been around for so long. There's a whole website dedicated to it. And there's a lot of material on YouTube on the book's official website and on Franklin Covey's website dedicated to breaking down the seven habits of highly effective people. And I think it's habit number four that is think, win, win or habit number five. But read the material around think, win, win and see how it changes your ability to interact with people for the purpose of achieving an outcome. And that takes us to the next one, which is conflict resolution. A lot of people do not know what to do with conflict, especially now in the modern age of therapy and therapy speak. Therapy speak is when people use language from therapy, but they don't really understand what it is is required of them. It's when someone announces a feeling and expects people to respond in a certain way, but they don't go on to articulate the feeling. Remember what we were talking about? How have you behaved? How have you behaved physically? So have you communicated the feeling? Have you communicated the feeling physically? Have you communicated the feeling verbally? Right. Do people understand what you're saying about your feeling? And once you've done that, have you communicated? Why have you communicated? And so why do you feel this way? What has happened? How did it happen? Okay. And now that all this has brought us to this point, what is the remedy? It's a very simple formula. A lot of people do not apply it. A lot of people get caught up in the this is how I'm feeling. This is what I'm feeling, but they do not take people with them the rest of the way to explain how we got here, why we got here, how we can remedy this, and what it is you would like the other person to do in order for you to feel this. That is communication. That is a superpower of a soft skill. That is the ability to convey yourself or to convey what you're thinking and feeling for the purpose of resolving a conflict. The feeling part is a lot more. It has a lot more gravity than personal situations, but it adds maybe a little less value in professional situations. So in professional situations, you might want to make adjustments. So you want to communicate, yes, maybe I felt this way and this was unpleasant, but don't dwell on that part. That part you dwell on when you're dealing with your loved one. Then you want to move on to this is how we got here. This is what would have been preferable. This is how I think we could have got here, right? And this is what I think we should do in order to get there. When you do that, you also then now need the ability to listen to the other person and hear how they got to where they are and run through the same formula. And in doing that, you will be able to pick out the important bits where you missed each other and are able to come together to produce an outcome. Conflict resolution skills are simply the way you handle a conflicting situation and it impacts your personal and professional and organizational success. It matters. This is why in a race or in choosing to promote two people with the same hard skills, employers will choose the person with hard and soft skills, even if the person with hard skills might be slightly less technically gifted than the other. But if they have those hard skills, competence, minimum level of competence paired with the ability to deal with people, to resolve conflict, to manage people, those are the soft skills that make you a leader. Finally, for the purpose of this episode, there's a lot more. Finally, let's talk about self-awareness, because this is very important. Many talented people fail at job interviews and even when they are hired, and they remain unnoticed at work because they lack self-confidence, right? People usually have low self-esteem because they fear being judged. This fear of being judged and the lack of self-confidence can inhibit your growth, right? But self-confidence really must be a balancing act. Shy managers can fall victim to imposter syndrome, right? Self-doubt and the feeling that they don't deserve all the praise or to be there. The opposite of that is when overconfident managers are affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias revolving around extreme levels of confidence that are beyond your capability or accomplishments. But you don't realize that because you don't have any self-awareness. Honing your self-awareness skills is helpful in building self-confidence and in achieving balance, right? But what is it? What is self-awareness? Jessica Douches-Willer puts it as, self-awareness goes beyond collecting information about yourself. It's also about paying attention to your inner state with a beginner's mind and an open heart. It's the ability to look inward and monitor your own thought processes for certain situations, and it makes you more prepared for similar situations in the future. It helps you develop your self-worth. But self-awareness fundamentally is the same way that you notice the behavior of other people and you think, oh, he's doing that because of this, or she's doing that because of that. It's the ability to do that with yourself. It's the ability to look inward and say, okay, the situation has come about. How have I contributed to it? It's the ability to say, oh, okay, this situation could have gone differently in a good or in a bad way. How did I contribute? Or what could I have contributed? How can I learn from this? How can I grow? Where's my blind spot? Oh, I'm really good at this. And you mean it genuinely. Oh, I'm really not great at this. I need to do better. It's the same way I repeatedly say, I'm not really, really great with managing my mailbox. It's not a natural skill. I'm not as bad as I was before because I've been actively working on it. In fact, I've improved a lot. But it's not my superpower. My superpower is when a person tells me something, whether it's a lot of emotional stuff or a lot of professional stuff. When I hear the full story, I can immediately tell you what the actual issue is and then talk you to a resolution. That's my superpower. But I am self-aware enough to know that that superpower doesn't necessarily mean I'm not good at everything else. It still means I need to actively work on managing my mailbox. It still means I need to actively work on bringing my best personality to work situations most of the time. I can't always do it, but most of the time. And on the days that I am not able to do it, I have learned to say to my team, I'm having a hard day today with A, B, C, D. So you might find me a little bit more quiet. It's not you guys. It's me. Right? And they know this. And the more I do this, the more they become aware of it. In authentic communication, et cetera, it's stuff that I've labored to make a fundamental part of my little team inside a larger organization. And I think one of the things that made me the happiest was when we got a new team member. And in the first couple of months, she said to me, your honesty is surprising to me. I didn't know people could be honest at work. And we had a little chuckle about it. And she was still very reserved and didn't say much for a long time. And I assume she's come from a place where sometimes being overly honest is weaponized, which is all right. But recently, I noticed that she's become very open. And she says what she would like to say. But she also appears generally happier. And one of my other teammates said also that they've been the most themselves, that they've ever been in their entire professional career. And they enjoy that ability because they work with me. So I might be sucky at certain things. But I am also good at other things. And there are some things I'm not even aware of yet that I am good at and maybe bad at and still need to work on either enjoying more or growing more. And that ability to just see yourself and be able to both acknowledge what you're good at without letting it consume you and acknowledge what you're bad at without letting it consume you and working on both is what self-awareness is. If you put all of these skills together, all of these skills together, you will be amazed at what it can do for your personal and professional relationships all around. I woke up a little bit late today because we hung out till late yesterday in a little bar here on the Vegas trip. And it's been an extraordinary few days courtesy of my employer. I think many years from now, maybe I'll listen to this podcast episode that I recorded looking over the Las Vegas strip with the Mirage and the Beatles and Cirque du Soleil prominently displayed on a billboard just outside my window that I was looking across at this beautiful range of mountains with a jet going over. It's just incredible to me that I'm looking down there and I can see Rio, that it's Caesar's Palace down there, it's the Venetian, it's Encore, it's Wynn Casinos, it's the Fashion Show Mall. It is such a surreal and incredible experience. And it is not lost on me that I am here because someone else decided that they would enable me to be here, that they would enable me financially and professionally to be in this space. And for that, I am truly and deeply grateful. Um, my professional experience has been extraordinary and I am just truly grateful. Have a beautiful week. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like, share, subscribe, leave a comment. I truly appreciate all your feedback. I absolutely love hearing from you. Thank you so much. Um, you find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, which I believe is on its way out. It's iBooks, it's everywhere, really. Thank you and have a beautiful week.