ABC - The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff

At GTEC this year the theme was High Performing Government.  The final panel discussion had four Deputy Ministers discussing their findings from the Administrative Services Review federal departments have been going through.  Daphne Meredith, Chief Human Resources Officer, Government of Canada, spoke about how the soft stuff is really the hard stuff of managing performance.   

Attracting and retaining the right people; motivating people; providing the right support; quality of teamwork and leadership; and how to improve the workplace.

How does a team bridge the gap between the soft stuff and the hard stuff?
 

Soft Stuff – Culture Change  Hard Stuff- Process Change
Recognition & Appreciation  Data Collection
Listening Skills  Brain Storming Techniques
Playing Win/Win  Problem Solving
100% Responsibility  Logic Models
Compassionate Confrontation  Flow Charts

 

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of organizational development using a tool called the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI), from Personal Strengths Canada www.ca.personalstrengths.com  The linkage between the hard and soft sides is more effective when the soft stuff starts the process.  This is where the SDI comes into play.  Most teams need to accomplish a specific task and agree readily on what the goal should be. Where performance issues and challenges arise is "how" the team will accomplish their task working together.  

The group will have various degrees of wants, needs, comfort zones, expectations, and personal baggage.  It is left up to the team leader to channel this diversity towards an identified vision. Managers I’ve worked with using the SDI and who are shortly retiring, have all said how valuable the SDI knowledge has been and they wished they had had this knowledge earlier in their careers supervising people, as it would have helped enormously in bridging the gaps, understanding and managing conflict.
 
The SDI is based on some important assumptions which are of interest to leaders doing team development or wishing to improve the performance of their organization.  Every person has an inter-personal style, all styles have strengths and weaknesses, weaknesses are strengths used to excess, and styles may change in conflict.  Awareness and appreciation of the basic relating styles has proved a valuable tool that provides leaders with the ability to understand, motivate, and manage with greater effectiveness, the strengths and diversity, on a team. 
 
Both research and experience clearly demonstrate that truly high performing teamwork requires a diversified group of skills.  The most common mistake made by teams is the failure to recognize, appreciate and integrate differing inter-personal styles.  The better we know each other, the better we can work together.
 

 

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