Many organizations opt to send their leaders to executive education programs such as Harvard or Dartmouth. But learning leaders also can make internal efforts. The ideal scenario is to put leaders in situations where they catch themselves in the act of their own leadership habits — increasing self-awareness — then, give them the ability to pause and reflect and hear feedback from peers.
Scott Miller, CEO of Action Learning Associates, an executive development firm, said peer learning reflection should feature both the good and the bad. “Push the pause button long enough for people to hold up the mirror and say, ‘What am I doing as a leader that’s helping us get performance results?’” Miller said. Also, “‘What am I seeing other people do that I [as a leader] wish I would emulate more?”
Miller said peer learning is effective when teaching soft leadership skills because, when it comes to changing behaviors, people are more likely to mimic their peers rather than an authority figure or instructor.
Tuck’s Finkelstein is also a fan of peer learning. He said coaching is an expanded form of peer learning. Having a peer mentor or coach can help the individual identify and reflect on soft skill tendencies. Soft skill learning, however, can be more challenging because a different part of the brain is at work.
“Our emotional brain operates by a different dynamic than our logical brain,” said Goleman, the psychologist. “It’s more primitive. And the model for teaching is not the going-to-school model, where you read something or you hear a lecture and it changes your understanding. But, rather, it’s a skill building model — like playing golf.”
T.J. Elliott, vice president and chief learning officer of strategic workforce solutions at nonprofit learning assessment firm Educational Testing Service (ETS), said action learning is also a vital aspect to soft skill leadership development. “There’s got to be something that’s meaningful, that’s a real problem that you give to people,” Elliott said. “It has to have just enough challenge; it can’t be routine.”
Some take more reflection-oriented pathways to help leaders cut through the haze of their weekly stresses and refine their emotionally driven skill sets. Teresa Roche, vice president and chief learning officer at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Agilent Technologies Inc., said she encourages team members to leave open time to reflect. Like Goleman, Roche said the abundance of technology-driven communication and mobile devices has left leaders without time for deep conversation and reflection. “We have to create the surroundings to enable [reflection] because it’s not as natural as it used to be,” Roche said.
Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson aims to simplify the foundation for its soft skill development through another area — wellness. The company emphasizes clearing the mind through wellness to maximize human performance and energy, said Michael Ehret, the firm’s vice president of leadership development and training. The centerpiece of this initiative is the firm’s Corporate Athlete program, a three-day event where leaders learn authenticity by focusing on fitness, nutrition and spirituality to bring the whole self to work.
The firm also aims to include soft skill development in all of its learning offerings. No single program is dedicated specifically to soft skill development; things such as targeted coaching through listening, probing, motivating, creating engagement and leading virtual teams are all embedded in each of Johnson & Johnson’s leadership experiences, Ehret said.
Most importantly, soft skill leadership development should be capped off with an intense measurement process, according to Pat Crull, chief learning officer for Time Warner Cable. This should happen at all levels in the organization, not just for executives.
“We can’t afford to make guesses [about soft skill development] any more than we can afford to guess about our technical skills, or auditing skills or our legal skills,” Crull said.
Johnson & Johnson, for instance, ties its soft skill measurement to its performance management and compensation. It’s not just the results leaders accomplished, Ehret said, but how they led that matters.
Soft skill development is steeped in experiential learning, which is why learning leaders should aim to create experiences meant to test leaders’ behaviors and EQ.