March arrives and with little fanfare winter washout transforms into spring softness. Dank, murky, squelchy trudges through town or country vanish into distant memory as our spirits lift at the sight of blue skies and a touch of sunlit warmth. Blazing hot summer is still some way off but for now we embrace gentle spring and its promise of better times ahead.
Whenever we think about spring it is generally in terms of soft gentle breezes, touches of warm sunlight and the first hints of green tinting the trees. Spring is soft, spring is gentle, spring is……
But wait. Spring is also the time when the world which slept as it endured harsh winter bursts into life. Leaves burst forth from winter brown trunks, dormant plants erupt from the warming earth and birdsong heralds nesting time and bounteous insects to feed on. Spring is the time of growth, of renewal; spring is the time when we are driven to turf out the old and approach the new with vigour.
In fact, when we look at what spring achieves with gentle persuasion; it is surprising that it has taken us so long to recognise how effective similar “soft skills” can be in the workplace. True, there are some who cling to the old ways of dictatorship and regulation but more and more organisations are coming to recognise that you get far better results if you carry your employees with you than you do if you try to control their every thought and action.
Employee engagement aligned with an innovation culture which empowers, encourages and collaborates will result in an organisation which turns a genuinely caring face to the world. In turn the world will respond with loyal customers and a positive image which translates into increasing profits.
But you won’t get employee engagement unless you employ soft skills. Lining up the workforce and lecturing them for an hour about loyalty won’t do anything apart from increase discontent. Sending out a memo telling people to work together or else will only increase back-watching. Engagement can come in many forms but the key is in the way that the ‘business’ cares for and about its people. So the business consults, the business listens, the business encourages and the business says thank-you.
Once upon a time ‘the bottom line’ was all that mattered, employees were assets to be used or discarded at will and customers were necessary evils. In those days engagement was seen as fluffy, as irrelevant and as something which got in the way of the drive to ever bigger profits. But not anymore! Study after study has shown how high levels of engagement directly impact business profitability. Regulator after regulator is looking for organisations to put customer care ahead of profits and to do what is right and ethical rather than what will make most money. Shareholders are driving the ethos of corporate governance to care for the environment, for the customer and for the wider world.
Of course this doesn’t mean that leaders must now bounce around happily in a pink fog, smiling at everyone and only doing ‘nice’ things. The role of the leader is still to lead, but leadership has moved on from dictator to creator. And yes, sometimes that will require making harsh decisions, but the more engaged the employees, the less that will be required.
Spring is soft, spring is gentle, but without spring we wouldn’t have renewed growth and resurgence. Perhaps it’s time we stopped scoffing at ‘soft skills’ and appreciated them for the game changers that they are.
