Not Connecting with Your Stakeholders? It isn’t a “Soft Skills” Problem
Soft skills.
A solid candidate for “buzzword of the year” in the world of business training— and the competency area IT people are most resistant towards developing. Not that I can blame them. Who wants to spend an afternoon in a windowless seminar room while a business exec with a peroxide-bleached smile lectures on and on about the importance of projecting “alpha” body language in meetings? I sure don’t.
But even if the training was more appealing, I’m not so sure trying to transform every IT person into the next Tony Robbins is the correct track to take. We have a lot of introverts in IT, and the work we perform doesn’t help— keeping your head in the code 12 hours a day prevents you from developing the same deep level of interpersonal comfort as, say, the sales guy who’s out there navigating tricky relationships day in and day out.
This leaves us IT professionals in a bind. On the one hand, you are very resistant to trying to transform yourself into something you perceive to be unsavory. On the other hand, you don’t want to limit your career aspirations—and doom yourself to a life of frustrating business relationships—because these skills don’t come naturally to you. So what can you do?
For a Moment: Forget “Soft Skills” and Focus on Getting the Content Right
If you’re an IT professional who feels like you’re no good at communicating effectively, or at developing business intimacy, or at building influential relationships, I’ve got news for you—the root problem is NOT that you don’t know HOW to communicate. The real issue? You don’t know WHAT to communicate. You’re likely telling your stakeholders stuff they just don’t care about! Likely issues:
- You’re way off track with the data you chose to report.
- You’ve buried the good stuff in a ton of irrelevant metrics.
- You’ve mangled it with so much technical detail your stakeholders just aren’t compelled by what you’re reporting.
In other words: most IT professionals aren’t facing a “Soft Skills” problem… most IT professionals are facing a content problem. And until you start giving your stakeholders the concise information they actually want to hear, no amount of interpersonal slickness will help you.
So before you start worrying about your nervous ticks or your unimaginative vocabulary, first take the time to reduce your presentations, memos, and quick talking points down to the essential information your stakeholders actually want to hear about, expressed in a manner they can sink their teeth into. Focus your content clearly on the needs of others, and you’ll quickly see it won’t matter so much if you stutter or slouch.
