While looking through a university continuing education course catalog, it hit me. Wow, look at all those technical skill-building courses! And yet, very few courses focused on what really makes a difference in business: people skills.
I then came across this:
“The Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Carnegie Foundation once spent over one million dollars and five years of research studying why some people succeed. After the study was concluded, it was determined that 15% of the reason a person is able to get a job, keep a job, and move ahead in that job, is determined by his or her technical skills and knowledge, regardless of the profession. The other 85% of the reason a person is able to get a job, keep that job, and move ahead in that job, is directly related to people skills. It soon becomes apparent that working with people and managing people, starting with ourselves, must be a high priority if we are going to be successful.”
If that’s the case, why is so much training devoted to technical skill-building, and so little to people skills?
Of course, this doesn’t just apply to training. Given the choice between developing a system or developing a relationship, perhaps it’s the latter one should focus on.
I’ve heard it said that ninety percent of success in business is due to good communication. I would bet it’s the thing that is on most people’s “least favorite things to deal with” list. That’s certainly my conclusion based on the number of issues, problems and challenges that I’ve seen that could be resolved with more effective communication… but isn’t.
What is communication? Would you agree that it seems many people think that the definition of communication is “talking”? But we all know communication is as much about listening as anything else.
I once had a coaching client who faced a situation where groups of people were not working well together. We discussed ways to make things better and came to the conclusion that more communication was needed, so I asked how she was going to deal with it. Her reply was, “I’m going to tell them what to do, how to behave, when to do it, everything. Obviously, they can’t figure it out.” When I then asked her whether telling people what to do was the only way of fixing a communication problem, she looked confused. After some coaching she went into a meeting with the two groups, described her expectations (collaborative work through lots of communication), and then asked them to come up with some ideas of how to improve things. She then sat back and simply facilitated the communication. The groups came up with a process, and things began working much better.
Business is all about the results, the bottom line, and yet it’s only through people that the results happen. It’s only through people that business happens.








