Analysis of Soft Skills for Team Development

At our last HR managers meeting for Ace consulting, we were given the assignment of developing measures for successful performance for the teams to better serve our global customers. In this analysis, I will be discussing how our conversations changed or altered my views on measurements tools to be used, the key elements, and how I would communicate them to employees in my region, and go over any cultural-based issues with these measures.

After going over the material available to us at ELT newsletter (Cologne, ELT, 2000) over viewing the soft skills needed to create successful teams, I realized that many teams' members will have overlapping skill sets. Not only will they overlap, but many of them will be a necessity to have successful teams. I came to the conclusion that many of these skills can be measured by how successful the team is or by the amount of conflict within a team.

Key Elements

The key elements of the soft skills list provided by Dr. Goeran Nieragden Cologne in his ELT newsletter (ELT) include interaction, communication, self-management and organization skills. As we discussed in our HR managers meeting, some people may be strong in some areas and weak in other areas. Each team should be made of us a diverse group of individuals being sure that all have several of these types of skills they are strong in.

The key elements I found to be most important in team development are listening skills, teamwork willingness, self-marketing, and learning willingness. Each team member must listen to other members and leaders to ensure the tasks are being performed. In addition, as team members come up with new ideas it is important they can communicate these ideas to the team and "sell them" on their ideas. In contract, team members must be willing to listen to new ideas and be willing to adapt or try these new ideas, learning willingness.

Of these key elements I also found that some of these soft skills would be mandatory for team leaders to have. Skills such as delegating skills, problem solving, conflict handling and decision making are key skills all leaders must have.

In addition, I believe that the HR department should develop short training classes to help assist its employees improve upon these skills. Short, one hour seminars developed by the HR department would be the best way to communicate these ideas to each other and the members of the teams. We could do interaction seminars to increase team learning willingness with each other among the teams.

Cultural-based issues

I believe it was Wilda who brought up a very good point at our HR managers meeting when dealing with diversity among team members, "Managing diversity is more than simply acknowledging differences in people. It involves recognizing the value of differences, combating discrimination, and promoting inclusiveness." This is diversity and cultural-based issues among team members.

I however feel that diversity among team members as a necessity among a team. Whereby, each member of the team is bringing a different background, cultural and economic experience to the table. We can also add diversity by educational experience, such as engineer, sales or accounting / financing.

I foresee when doing business in other countries, we will always face cultural-based issues. As the regional Human Resource Manager employed by Ace consulting, it is our responsibility to educate the global sales force on the etiquette of other cultures. Our current global regions US, Europe, Asia and Latin America will need to be divided up further by country and regions based on culture needs of the area. As guests in other countries I feel it is important that we be accommodating as possible. It is also the responsibility of the Human Resource Managers to put together culture training classes to ensure something as simple as not dressing properly doesn't cause Ace Consulting to loose business.

References:

Cologne, Dr Goeran Nieragden, September 2000, ELT "The weekly column, The Soft Skills of Business English, [Electronic Version] retrieved on February 27, 2006 from http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/September2000/art282000.htm