Social Skills are Critical for Teams

From a strengths perspective, a Strengths Coach can assist you in identifying the sweet spots of your social skills that are aligned with your strengths. It’s the place where you operate with ease and can be successful in managing relationships. We’re all uniquely wired, so an approach that works for one person may not work for another and we all have blind spots in the areas where we’re not strong. When, as a leader, you know the strengths of your team members you can delegate or assign them to a project that has complementary strengths. In my experience with teams, when everyone on your team is aware of each other’s strengths they tend to take missed social queues less personally and ask more questions of clarification.

This is part 2 in the 5-part series on A New Era of Relationships by Diana Gabriel, Certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

The most effective teams include people who know where they are strong and where they are not. Click To Tweet

According to Fortune Magazine Senior Editor Geoff Colvin in Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will (Portfolio, 2015) your social skills, when working in teams where each team member’s gift and talents or strengths are honored, could be your competitive advantage in future careers where computers take over many tasks.

Ample evidence demonstrates that leaders require flexibility, agility and diverse perspectives to understand and manage organizational complexities. CEOs are turning to leaders of teams to solve increasingly intricate, complex problems.

The most effective teams include people who know where they are strong and where they are not strong and are confidently vulnerable in sharing each with the team. Wanting to be part of a team where everyone can contribute their best work is fulfilling for everyone and produces great results. We rely on human interactions to:

• Tell our stories and hear the stories of others
• Brainstorm new ideas and create new products or services
• Share our feelings and learn to appreciate other points of view
• Connect on a deeply human level through our physical senses
• Form coalitions and alliances
• Negotiate agreements

Even if a computer spits out the right words and makes the right decisions, people want to engage with and follow human leaders. Being human, we need to look into someone’s eyes.

What About Computers
As leaders, you must first identify the skills you want humans to perform, regardless of a computer’s prowess. Most of these tasks involve projects or areas for which people are held accountable.

For example, computers have shown they are superior to juries when evaluating criminal evidence, as discussed in Colvin’s book, Humans Are Underrated. But there is a social necessity for humans to be accountable for life-and-death decisions.

Humans are also critical to organizational life because priorities continually shift. It takes a human touch to redefine problems and goals. Leaders must address the needs of numerous stakeholders, including customers, employees and the public — issues that people must work through for themselves.

What are some of the things that you think we should always insist are done by humans? I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me here and on LinkedIn.