contentsThe Importance Of Being Earnest
While technology forever changes, the need for old-school charm and social graces remain as essential as ever, according to the head of one of Australia's biggest projects and a leading behavioural consultant.
The ability to communicate ideas to others effectively is an essential requirement for technical and engineering professionals, as the nature of the industries make them dependent upon shared knowledge. Communication skills are emerging as the deciding factor in determining an engineer's career progression.
It's not good enough to simply be technically qualified. People skills are now just as important as your technical aptitude.
Lisa Gavin, University of Western Australia student representative for PESA, said that, from the perspective of a PHD student such as herself, soft skills are of critical importance, especially considering the technical nature of her work.
"It is imperative that I am able to communicate my research and explain what I have done, which at times can be difficult as it is rather technically complicated. I need to be able to present my work in a way that people can understand", Gavin, age 22, said.
Positive staff conduct and good working relationships contribute to making an organisation a good place to work, which can positively impact on quality of work, productivity, creativity, individual staff wellness and, most importantly, the bottom line.
The only formal training Gavin received in this area was in her first year of university when she completed a unit in communications, which included learning skills in report writing, working in groups and presentations.
Soft skills - emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, social graces, communication, language and friendliness - are all terms we are used to hearing. However, we rarely consider just how important they are. Antoine Serceau, seconded by French major Total E&P to be Managing Director of INPEX's $34 B Ichthys LNG project, said he was warned early in his career that unless he fixed his attitude, he wouldn't get very far.
Meanwhile, Barbara Abbott, Principal Consultant at Behaviour Matters which helps organisations protect themselves against the liability of staff members' poor conduct, backed this up with a warning of her own: that without people skills (soft skills), the rest of their educated (hard) skills could potentially go to waste – especially in highly technical jobs like engineering.
Without good management of people and behaviour within the workplace, groups and projects can be derailed entirely. The possibility of human behaviour leading to the termination or failure of a project is more likely than a diminished capacity of technical skill, "because technical skills can be acquired quickly, topped up with education or training", Abbot said.
"A group project could be moving along swimmingly and all it takes is for one nut in the workplace to make it incredibly difficult to manage. So the range of soft skills required is far more broad.
"Typically we notice someone's behaviour being a little odd. Perhaps they are aggressive on occasion, like in a meeting for example. The response from co-workers is often to dismiss it as a normal characteristic and we hear things like; 'oh don't worry that is just Fred, he is like that'".
However, this actually allows Fred to continue to behave badly and the issue fails to be addressed, she explained. This builds up over time and when not dealt with can become a work place performance issue because it may be impacting the client, or other people in the workplace and can diminish the output, efficiency or effectiveness of the team.
When it becomes a performance issue, these type of situations have the capacity to spiral out of control because Fred's issues have not been addressed. In turn, he reacts badly and becomes more aggressive and then others react poorly to him. All of which stems from one small issue that Fred had and if it had been addressed immediately could have be avoided.
"If someone's conduct is not appropriate in the work place it needs to be addressed and we must not say; 'oh that's just Fred'", Abbott said.
The problem with soft skills is that they are difficult to measure, to place a 'real' value on. We know they are important, but how important are they? Is it something one is born with or can the 'gift of the gab' be learned?
Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the basic requirements of work and other facets of life. Soft skills are an important part of an individual's contribution to the success of any organisation. It is understood that if an organisation trains or educates staff to use these skills it can yield significant return on investment for an organisation. This is why soft skills are increasingly sought by employers in addition to standard qualifications.
"Although the term 'soft skills' is not one which is really used these days, I remember it being used some years ago. Most of the oil and gas industry today would refer to it as 'people skills' or 'communication skills'", Abbott said.
Serceau posits that soft skills may be more important over the long term than occupational skills. This is not exclusive to the petroleum industry. The legal profession is one example where the ability to deal with people effectively and politely, more than their mere 'occupational skills', can determine the professional success of a lawyer.
Soft skills are personal attributes that enhance an individual's interactions, job performance and career prospects. Unlike hard skills, which are about a person's skill set and ability to perform a certain type of task or activity, soft skills relate to a person's ability to interact effectively with co-workers and customers and are broadly applicable both in and outside the workplace.
So how does this relate to you? Your technical skills are important and you should develop your expertise, however the outlook for technical experts who also have good soft skills is that they will always be in demand.
A blog produced by NES Global Talent, a global recruitment company that works alongside many of the 'blue chip' majors, said that to climb the ladder you need to be able to clearly and concisely share your technical expertise with your colleagues - "this is non-negotiable".
Abbott believes that these skills can be learned. While some people are more naturally talented than others, people skills must be acquired and experienced. They cannot be developed by merely reading textbooks.
Abbott said that her company runs a lot of education programs which are called thus for good reason. "I prefer to call them 'education' sessions rather than 'training' sessions, as we are educating people in effective communication strategies and people skills", she said. "Often the reactions from managers who take these programs say, 'Why was I never told this before? Why have I not learned the effectiveness of these strategies before?'"
Failure to recognise the growing importance of soft skills could result in missing out on excellent opportunities, failing to keep staff in check or even putting organisations at risk.
The main areas we focus on are performance management, behaviour management, work place conduct as well as improving management and discipline, she said.
So why do people act out in the workplace? What are the triggers?
"A lot of it comes from people self rewarding because they feel they have not got enough out of work or they have not been remunerated enough or have not been congratulated enough or they are not recognised. As people, they think, 'I do more than I get paid. Well then, I'll just take this or do that'", Abbott said. "So if we got the recognition and reward part right we would eliminate a large aspect of these social work place issues."
People lose their jobs every day over workplace misconduct ranging from bad behaviour right across into the realm of what may be considered criminal. However, "most are not dealt with as criminal", she said (see breakout story, Oil and Gas Not Immune To Organisational Psychopath).
Using an example for which she cannot name the protagonists, she referred to an incident where a support staff member who did all the work but someone else got all the credit started "acting out".
"Without these support workers, businesses can fall over," Abbott said, and in this case the hard-working but under-recognised support worker became very angry over time, which she said is "similar to attention seeking".
In this case, the acting out eventually took the form of aggression and being loud-mouthed. The person stirred issues in the workplace and even utilised the function of the union to push the cause of agitation. This case turned out to be what is labelled as 'bullying up the line', or bullying the manager. The person publicly demeaned the manager and eventually built up a track record of issues.
The case eventually landed in the Industrial Commission, which is now known as Fair Work Australia. The hearing resulted in the employee leaving the organisation.
"This, I believe, is sad because if the issues were addressed appropriately to begin with and the person had been given that initial reward or simple recognition they may not have acted out", Abbott said.
"There are several points in these matters, where it is often said, 'why did we not do anything back then and prevent all of this'? But by that stage it is too late. I would like to reiterate these are not bad people, they're good people who end up down this track for many reasons".
Serceau said that in Total, where he has headed up some of the world's biggest and most innovative projects, he was supervising all Total projects and in charge of guaranteeing to the management that the projects were running smoothly. This involves staffing the project, managing the careers of people involved and recruiting engineers etc.
But to get to this stage, he first had to iron out some of his own issues.
"I know I have changed a lot from the first year of my career working in Norway ... I had the reputation of being a very tough guy, now I am far softer. Of course, when I say soft, I mean I will not react the way I would have reacted in the past", he said.
"I recall when I was 40, a colleague told me, 'if you continue to be like that, you will never develop your career'. At the time we were fighting and shouting with each other. I don't shout any more. People now know that when I use a soft tone that doesn't mean I'm not serious."
He said that over the past 15 years he has devoted "a considerable amount" of his time developing his soft skills. "If you are not able to do that, you will have no chance of progressing in the company", Serceau said.
To illustrate the importance that even an international major like Total places on soft skills, Serceau said that the company trains its staff continuously and management staff are given dedicated training on a regular basis to learn how to listen, negotiate and how to manage staff.
Serceau said that he still finds HR to be one of the most interesting aspects of his job and has found it most rewarding when witnessing a new employee happy in their new position, "especially when they are successful in their new job and when one observes them four years later having made progression ... it's very interesting and satisfying".
Gavin, still in the infancy of her career, said that in preparing for interviews she endeavours to ensure she can present
herself in a calm, confident and intelligent manner, which she concedes is "easier said than done".
Abbott said that, in Australia, the business community tends to spend a lot of energy and time investing into technical skills and unfortunately not so much into people skills, which can lead to negative and expensive consequences.
"This does not just cost in dollar terms, it also costs in terms of team moral and productivity rates. People with good skills that are not treated with the respect they deserve (whom are often willing to take a pay cut to be treated well), will often leave a company", she said.
"When a workplace is not good in a 'people sense', it becomes difficult to maintain employees and attract new people, which makes it difficult to quantify exactly how expensive not investing in people skills can be as the impacts encompass such a wide range."
While not dealing directly with the psychology of workplace relations, Abbott analyses and deals with the behaviour and investigates what can be done about a problematic situation.
She recently conducted an education program on accountable and ethical decision making in teams, focusing where there is not a clear policy or rule in place, then helping the company establish a code of conduct. During one of the exercises, one of the participating employees was continually disruptive exclaiming, "that's not right, where is the policy?"
She said it was easy to recognise that the person would have been very difficult to work with because he could not look outside policy. This example shows that "people are people and they do not simply look at policy alone; and he simply did not have that range of soft skills", she said.
Abbott feels that a lot of work still needs to be done, especially considering that the only pieces of legislation that cover workplace behaviour are for accident prone, violent aggression, bullying and equal opportunity in terms of discrimination.
"While we have a code of practice for these areas, for the rest we have to make it up", she said.
Sometimes even the best ideas need refining. She cited another recent situation where a company CEO opened a bar out the back of the office for sundowners where employees could socialise and relax - a typical practice in regional Australia.
However, some of the men descended into inappropriate behaviour as the booze took its toll, resulting in a sexual harassment complaint. A subsequent investigation found that some of the bar antics had flowed back into the workplace, so the bar was closed.
When Behaviour Matters got involved, it found that the bar did not have any established boundaries on behaviour, which is needed, because, in Abbott's experience, an alarming proportion of people lack the 'common sense' to realise the consequences of their after-hours actions with people they have to work with the next day ... and the next, and so on.
The company CEO recognised both the positive and negatives the bar brought with it, opted for a middle ground solution, and with the help of Behaviour Matters, developed a code of conduct for the bar which established the principles and boundaries of what is and is not appropriate and the bar re-opened.
"Work is where people go to earn a living and it is not fair to subject people to poor conduct in that domain. It should be a place for equal economic opportunity. In society and out in the community (socially) we can walk away from it or choose to go elsewhere, but this option is not open for many in the workplace because of their natural dependence on their incomes", she said.
"So the parameters need to be in place so the work place can be a safe and healthy place in which one can earn an income and that is the bottom line. We all should have an opportunity to 'get on with it' and should be able to expect fair conduct.
