So you've read a couple of articles about whole brain thinking,

that is the left brain being more linear,

analytical, and task focused.

And the right brain being more relational, intuitive and creative.

And you can see that the left brain is more those styles

above that line in our framework of mover and the mapper,

and more the relational right brain for the milder and the motivator-type style.

So, what you read in the article is how as we mature and

grow in our careers that we do adapt more to work with different styles.

And it talked about an individual contributor versus a CEO,

the CEOs tending to be more whole brain using both sides of their brain and maybe at

the early stage of your career you're more kind of stuck

in the brain dominance that you have naturally.

So I wanted to share with you on this slide here some important research from

Center for Creative Leadership where they looked at

executives and what derailed their careers at some point.

And what that showed was what competencies were

most important at different stages of your career.

And it starts out where at the beginning of your career,

say you're an individual contributor,

that technical skills are the most important competency for success.

As you move up and start managing projects and managing other people, managerial skills,

budgeting, tracking results,

and keeping things going and managing coordinating activities,

those become most important.

But those kind of diminish over time as you move into your career.

When you become at a certain level of senior leadership,

say a director typically in most organizations,

that's when what becomes most important.

You already have the technical skills,

you've used the managerial skills,

what differentiates the most successful leaders who are senior leaders at

the director level and above in organizations from

the great ones versus mediocre is interpersonal skills.

That's when that becomes the most important competence set.

And that was shown in research very clearly by Daniel Goleman in

his excellent book Emotional Intelligence that

really put hard research around the soft skills.

So in the article you read that mentions soft versus hard skills,

that puts some science behind the soft skills and

the importance of it and it does shift in your career.

So I would urge you to be aware of that and try to develop those skills ahead of time.

Accelerate your self through the career and know what's going to

differentiate you and make you excellent in performance and compared to your peers.

And it reminds me of a story at

my fifth reunion after graduating from Stanford Business School.

I looked through the Facebook that they sent out and in

those days it was actually just a hard Facebook.

Facebook didn't exist.

And I was interested in what people had to say, and I leafed through it,

and there was one question in particular that I read for almost

all 350 of my classmates which is,

what do you wish you had learned more in business school now that you're five years out?

And the answers to all other questions in

that and for business school Facebook were random and assorted across the board.

In this one, over 90% said the same thing.

So that's pretty remarkable.

And what they said was,

I wish that I had paid more attention in touchy feely,.

Touchy feely was the name for the course in

the business school called Interpersonal Dynamics because what

most of us hard charging MBAs including myself had

found five years in was that we thought we needed to get things done,

focused on task, be the smartest guy in the room, make things happen,

and that what we learned is that we ran into a lot of walls that hurt our results,

hurt our influence and trusting relationships because we didn't

put enough weight and attention on those interpersonal skills.

So, learn from my lesson, and learn that early,

and learn that well so you can use your whole brain and balance your strengths,

whether they be in soft skills or higher hard skills and integrate it to

be fully skilled and to have the sort of strong soft skills,

to going back to our simple framework.

Let's look at the weaknesses side,

very important to know what those are so that you won't be

surprised by them so that you can manage them rather than they managing you.

So if you're a mapper with your strength in analyzing,

you have a need,

a need to know,

a need for certainty, a need to be right.

Now, where that runs into a weakness is that that can delay

decisions make you a little indecisive because there's always more data you can get,

and insisting on one right way probably your way,

now the stress behavior when that happens we'll get to that in a little bit.

Now, if you're in the mover style of strengths,

of determination driving forward,

making things happen, that style needs to get things done.

And to get things done they need control, pushing.

Now, the weakness of that is can be impatient - I belong in

that style - and moving forward without consent of

others and allowing enough give and take among groups because they're

quite common they have a strategic outlook and they're quite confident

that in their answer and they'll move forward.

Stress behavior we'll get to that.

If you're in the motivator style, energizing communicating, innovation,

ideas, that style has a need for attention and admiration.

And they're not afraid of being in the center of the room.

And they have a need for spontaneity not too much process and constraints.

The weakness of that style can be a lack of focus in their drive for

spontaneity and interest in variety which can create of course problems for others,

and they can be overly emotional at times which is not a problem for them

but it may be for other styles that feel that as heat coming from them.

It can be blaming.

We'll get to the stress behavior.

If you're a melder and you're the harmonizing,

collaborating type who's strength is tuning into emotion.

That style tends to need acceptance and to be liked.

Now, it's hard to be a firm leader of course if you're if you need to be liked.

The weakness that that can turn into is not speaking up and standing up

for their convictions in what they think is important

because it might cause waves and their conflict averse.

They can also waver later and

withdraw support even though they're not making a big scene of that.

Those who thought they had support may not find it later,

and would say, "Why didn't you speak up?"

So those are some of the weaknesses that go

along with the strengths of those different styles.

So it's important to know what yours are.

Importance of “Soft Skills” and Looking at Grid and Managing Weaknesses

Converting Challenges into Opportunities

Meet the Instructors