The cost of poor ‘Soft Skills’

We have a little tool on our website called the 'Difficult People Calculator'.

It asks you various questions about a difficult person you are dealing with, such as how much of your time they are taking up per week, how many sales you have lost as a result of their behaviour and so on.

The cost is always at least twice what you think it is. Last year I ran a client through some figures on an extremely difficult person in his department who had some serious behaviour issues including that he bullied some of his staff.

At the end of the discussion he totted up the figures and said the cost was £1m. I asked how long she had been there. “12 years.” He responded.

“So that’s about £80,000 a year.” I said.
“No.” He answered. “I meant she’s costing us £1m EVERY YEAR.”

He was pale as he checked his figures. He recognized that they were correct. He just hadn’t really added it up before.

The trouble with ‘soft skills’ is that you often just put up with the problem and don’t realise how much of a problem it is. You’ve lived with it for 12 years, so what’s another year?

Soft skills problems can be fixed

Soft skills can be improved, often without much effort. The individual just needs some help. Sometimes it can be as simple as making sure they get the feedback they need. Other times it can be a bit more tricky. But remember to balance up the cost of doing nothing before you complain about the cost of a cure.

Difficult People Calculator  Try it now.

Why is there still so much bullying?

Bullying happens when people aren’t getting what they want and try to get it in a way that ignores the needs of others.
There are two key issues:

• The behaviour of the person doing the bullying
• The way the recipient responds

If you change either you can stop the bullying.

To change the first, people have to:

• Know how their behaviour is coming across
• Be able to negotiate with others effectively

To change the second, anyone on the receiving end needs to:

• Recognise bullying behaviour
• Know how to respond in a way that stops the bullying and enables the other party to negotiate

What’s really good to know is that, as the recipient you can stop the bullying. What’s more worrying to know is that we have all bullied others at times and that we are often completely unaware of the fact that we are doing it.

Many years ago, I fell and cut my head open. I went to the Queen’s Medical Centre – a hospital that is a quarter of a mile square, so quite big.

I waited in casualty for hours. There was no queue. There had been no multiple pile up, there was no ‘flu epidemic. I was almost the only person there. But, for some reason it took something like five hours before I saw a member of the medical staff.

The gash on my forehead was still wide open and I had broken two teeth. I had not eaten for hours.

When I finally did see a nurse I asked her politely when I might get to see a doctor.

As soon as she had gone, my husband said he thought I had been ‘a bit short’ with the nurse. I thought I had been very polite. I remember being very polite. However, with the benefit of what I know now, I suspect I might have come over as a little aggressive. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. It rarely does.

I think there is still so much bullying because so many people are not taught how to deal with it, or to recognise when they are bullying others.

Only yesterday I worked with a client who asked me how she could deal with her “difficult” manager. After a minute or two it was clear to me that he was bullying her. Yet he is a director of quite a large company.

To stop bullying we all need to be able to deal with it effectively and to take action whenever we encounter it so that no one thinks it’s OK to bully others. Everyone needs to know how to negotiate properly. And we have to stop promoting people who bully others, especially not into senior positions.

As a result of working with some clients recently who had been on the receiving end of some particularly nasty bullying, I have updated my downloadable book “How to Deal With Bullies”. It now includes over 10 pages on how to deal with malicious bullying. I’ve put it on special offer just for this week.

To find out what's in it, use this link.

The cost of poor performance at senior levels

So often you hear people telling you that the middle levels of management are the most skilled and the people at the top 'won't even come on the courses'?

Here’s why I think you get these problems:

1. Those in top jobs are often motivated by money and power (but not necessarily in that order) and so don't care at all about 'people'.
2. The job has grown and the individual has not
3. The top people have no idea how bad they are and are too afraid/proud/arrogant to find out (and no one will tell them)
4. The promotion/recruitment processes for people at these levels are very poor or non-existent

So what can we do about it?

What Motivates Them?

You need to work out what’s important to the people at the top and focus on that.

Let them know:

• How much money they are losing 
• How much more money they could make if they did them differently

This can be hard if you think people should develop themselves for the sake of it, or simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Cost of Poor Performers at Senior Levels

The higher up you are, the greater the impact of your mistakes. When you are lower down, if you do something wrong people don’t seem slow to come forward and tell you about it. They make a big thing of it and bring it up in your appraisal.

When you are very senior, you often seem to end up being promoted.

Isn’t it time we started paying more attention to performance at the top and to how we recruit these people?

Big Rewards for Improvement

The other side of the coin is that improvements at the top can have a huge positive impact. So if you want to get some really big improvements you need to start there.

For more help with this get my booklet

How To Deal With Poor Performance