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Power skills - a term with benefits?

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Thomas Walenta Global Project Economy Expert Hackenheim, Germany
Now we are hearing that soft skills should be called power skills and a list of 5 of them is contained in the Pulse of the Profession report:

Most essential team skills:

1. collaborative leadership
2. empathy for the voice of the customer
3. risk management
4. innovative mindset
5. methodology or framework governance

Any opinion about this?

For #2 I really struggle, as we can have empathy for another human only, not for a role (customer) and certainly not for their voice. I agree empathy is a relevant skill, and it is a part of emotional intelligence, a key leadership capability.
Why should we limit empathy to the customer even?
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
New way to call "ancient" things trying to make money. The same is outside there from more than 50 years ago. Unfortunatelly some people and organizations do not understand that trying to make business with this type of things will destroy the business.
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Thomas -

I'd agree - empathy towards the stakeholders who will be using the product, service or result (not just customers) is important to help us design and deliver good outputs - personas, design thinking and other such techniques can help with that.

But empathy should apply towards all stakeholders to ensure we are treating them fairly and to help us achieve the project's objectives through effective interpersonal relations.

I'd also agree with Sergio that this feels like putting "old wine into new wineskins" (to mangle the phrase!)...

Kiron
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1 reply by Thomas Walenta
May 31, 2020 9:32 AM
Thomas Walenta
...
Sergio,

agree that just rebundling known concepts can be perceived as being irrelevant.

Kiron,

yes, empathy is indeed a human capability that, once you have it to some degree (show behaviors) , will be applied to everybody else. So if you are empathetic to a person that is your customer, you can be empathetic to other people too.
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Thomas Walenta Global Project Economy Expert Hackenheim, Germany
May 31, 2020 7:39 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
...
Thomas -

I'd agree - empathy towards the stakeholders who will be using the product, service or result (not just customers) is important to help us design and deliver good outputs - personas, design thinking and other such techniques can help with that.

But empathy should apply towards all stakeholders to ensure we are treating them fairly and to help us achieve the project's objectives through effective interpersonal relations.

I'd also agree with Sergio that this feels like putting "old wine into new wineskins" (to mangle the phrase!)...

Kiron
Sergio,

agree that just rebundling known concepts can be perceived as being irrelevant.

Kiron,

yes, empathy is indeed a human capability that, once you have it to some degree (show behaviors) , will be applied to everybody else. So if you are empathetic to a person that is your customer, you can be empathetic to other people too.

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