LORI WILSONRETIRED - Technical Project Manager| RETIRED - LifePoint HealthClarkston, Wa, United States
If you are asked to provide metrics for your soft skills, what do you provide? Per LinkedIn, 92% of recruiters value soft skills equally or higher than hard skills, but only 41% have formal metrics to assess them. Saving Changes...
Thank you Lori, definitely a timely call unfortunately am seeking some insights from the community. Interesting to see what are the 41% recruiters’ assessment metrics, do you think it includes ‘trustworthiness’ as softskills, this seems to be a hot metric claimed to be missing in mosts companies, am sure many of us have seen this, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4dyADuYfbg
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1 reply by LORI WILSON
Nov 14, 2019 10:54 AM
LORI WILSON
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Suzi - I loved this You Tube video about HIGH TRUST. Thank you for sharing, I have never seen it before.
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
In our case we use a set of key points that we sent to specific people to take feedback of other people. For example, some people will receive the items to answer about me. We use this type of evaluation because what matters is the perception or our clients (for us client is the next in the process chain) in the first time.
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2 replies by LORI WILSON and Suzi MS
Nov 13, 2019 2:10 AM
Suzi MS
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Is it called 360 something or rather?
Nov 14, 2019 10:40 AM
LORI WILSON
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Thank you for sharing, Sergio - this is very helpful. Do you select who will provide the feedback, or is this done randomly?
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
My belief is that soft skills are best measured by the footsteps you leave behind and like leadership is not something with a 'measure'. Obviously I know this not to be the case since there are many psychometric tests and tools being used to evaluate character, where soft skills originate. So whenever I had to access soft skills I would always go by what I see and experience i.e. communication, interactions etc.
I also believe this is the approach most used by companies via 360 reviews, as Sergio mentions it is about perception so I'm not too sure how successful it is.
BTW I agree that soft skills are more valuable than hard skills.
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1 reply by LORI WILSON
Nov 14, 2019 10:42 AM
LORI WILSON
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Thank you, Anton. Soft skills are hard to measure, but I think they are so important for successful project management.
In our case we use a set of key points that we sent to specific people to take feedback of other people. For example, some people will receive the items to answer about me. We use this type of evaluation because what matters is the perception or our clients (for us client is the next in the process chain) in the first time.
Is it called 360 something or rather?
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Nov 13, 2019 4:05 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Not exactly. We have 360 evaluations too. It is focused on people soft skills aligned with organizational values and strategy.
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Nov 13, 2019 2:10 AM
Replying to Suzi MS
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Is it called 360 something or rather?
Not exactly. We have 360 evaluations too. It is focused on people soft skills aligned with organizational values and strategy.
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1 reply by Suzi MS
Nov 21, 2019 5:05 PM
Suzi MS
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Thank you Sergio
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Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Lori Very interesting question Thanks for sharing
I had the opportunity to attend the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People training course
Prior to the training, all participants are asked to: 1- Do the assessement by completing a questionnaire with 64 questions. The answers we give to these questions correspond to self-assessment, or self-perception if you like. 2- Ask people in your circle (family, friends, co-workers, subordinates, bosses, other people such as trainees) to complete the same questionnaire To get a closer idea of what people think of us, it is suggested that at least 30 people get the answer In my case, I got the answer from 120 people The results obtained allow us to make an analysis about what others think about us, a comparative analysis about our self-knowledge and what others think about us. We are also provided with the results of all persons who completed the questionnaire.
From these results we can talk about our skills in the field of soft skills and also, if we want, develop a personal development plan.
Regarding Linkedin we can ask people in our circle to fill out our skills and / or make testimonials
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1 reply by LORI WILSON
Nov 14, 2019 10:43 AM
LORI WILSON
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Hello Luis - thank you so much for sharing - this makes a lot of sense and I can see the value in all the feedback.
Effectiveness with soft skills is subjective and is situational. A leader might be extremely effective in one particular context but be horrible in another. This is one of the reasons why turnaround CEOs often leave once a turnaround has been achieved.
Stakeholder satisfaction tools such as surveys are one of the few ways of assessing this effectiveness but the context within which the work was done has to factor into the overall evaluation.
Kiron
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1 reply by LORI WILSON
Nov 14, 2019 10:49 AM
LORI WILSON
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Thank you so much, Kiron - I always appreciate your wisdom! I have found that my soft skills questionnaires return only positive feedback and as you stated are subjective. It makes me concerned about bias. Sometimes I wonder if teams are afraid to really offer constructive critique or if they just don't feel they have the time or what? It would be helpful to find a more accurate way to measure soft skills. To your point about soft skills being situational - you are exactly right and your example about a turnaround CEO is spot on!
Hello Steve: Thank you for sharing this link. The competency profile for key leadership of (1) creating a vision and strategy (2) mobilizing people (3) upholding integrity and respect (4) collaborating with partners/stakeholders (5) achieving results and (6) promoting innovation and being able to guide change are excellent. It would be nice to find a way to measure each of these components and come up with a score. Thank you for sharing this link - very helpful.
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Victor GinobaBusiness Analyst| HarmoniaDumfries, Va, United States
Hi Lori,
Soft skills are not on the quantitative scale but on a qualitative one.
According to Dictionary dot com. Soft Skills is: "personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people".
So the best way collect data on soft skills would be to interview the people who have interacted with the person of which you would like to study. Of course, you would need to make sure the study it wasn't bias in any way, making sure that you speak with a broad selection of people who have interacted with the person (preferably with different perspectives).
Also, like Kiron said, surveys are a good way to determine how good someones soft skills are.
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1 reply by LORI WILSON
Nov 14, 2019 10:50 AM
LORI WILSON
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Thank you, Victor - I agree with all you have stated and do currently use anonymous surveys post projects requesting feedback. It makes me feel like I am following what my respected colleagues are doing as well.
