subject: People Skills Tips For Technical People [print this page] Engineers, IT professionals, and other scientists hold impressive academic credentials. Sadly, most technical programs fail to include a critical success factor in their curriculum. That success factor includes people skills training.
Technically brilliant, scientists have a distinct disadvantage in an otherwise stellar career.
To be fair, nontechnical professionals do ask (and need) people skills training for their "high potentials," emerging leaders, and current managers and executives as much as engineering firms, IT companies and other scientific industries.
However, scientists often aren't expected to fill in this gap in their education until technical companies recognize the need for people skills in team building, succession planning, and the continued productivity and profitability of their company.
Employment reports and the Bureau of Labor Statistics clearly paint a picture of too few high-tech employees for the positions available.
As a global shortage of scientists such as engineers, health care and IT professionals ripple across the globe, savvy companies who depend upon the human capital of their technically trained staff realize that for a viable future, they must train their technical employees with high quality people skills workshops, seminars and coaching.
People skills include not only the basic ability to control one's emotions and recognize the impact one's behaviors have on others, but also include the ability to work well in teams, to collaborate and cooperate in teams while valuing the diversity of cultural, communication, and generational differences.
Advanced people skills must be fostered in current leadership and a technical company's "high potentials" to ensure team building, the leveraging of diverse talent, and full employee engagement. These factors ensure the continued productivity and prosperity of a company.
Here are seven ideas to help technical professionals improve their skills:
1. Don't be too hard on yourself. Unless your major was organizational psychology or interpersonal communication (and it likely wasn't, or you wouldn't be in your high tech job right now) your formal education did not include the essential elements of people skills.
2. Don't be too easy on yourself. Everyone seeking professional career success needs to boost their people skills. People like to work with people who are easy to get along with.
3. Don't be too proud. Sure, you got the technical job, and it comes with an impressive pay check. To really make your difference in the world, and to be heard at work, you'll need to be a good listener. Your peers, supervisor and clients want to feel like you hear them before they are willing to listen to your ideas, no matter how great your ideas are.
4. Don't be too modest. Look how far you've come already personally and professionally without formal training or coaching in people skills! Imagine how much more successful and influential you will be when you master this!
5. Don't be too confident. If people skills came naturally, technical companies from Honolulu to Manhattan and Anchorage to Orland wouldn't hire trainers and coaches for their technical professionals. You need a systematic, strategic approach to people skills to master them.
6. Don't be too doubtful. These soft skills DO improve your life, both personally and professionally. Millions of dollars in research, and countless studies support this fact. Don't sit on the sidelines while your rewards pass you by.
7. Do be intellectually curious. Technical professionals have a natural competitive advantage in being intellectually curious. Apply it to learning and applying as much as you can about people skills. Not only will you improve your professional career success, you'll also enjoy deeper, more gratifying personal relationships.
