Soft Skills - Ask a Wharton MBA
Develop Soft Skills – Work Smart & Live More
In a separate article, I talked about a famous Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “Who’s Got the Monkey?”, and why an effective manager must let his team take care of the “Monkeys” (problems discovered during their work). Today, I want to shift focus and talk about tips for the team members — How can you excel as an individual contributor and demonstrate that you are ready for a management position? ...
How to give constructive feedback is a great question to ask and an important soft skill to develop especially if you are now managing a team. The abiliity for coach and mentor well each of your team members is essentially to your and your team’s success. To be a great team leader, you need to be able to provide constructive feedback that meets two objectives ...
Previously, we discussed the first part of this real life situation that Jessica is experiencing. Today, we will finish this topic on how to break into a managerial role with a follow up discussion I had with Jessica a few weeks later. Here is her follow up email updating me on her situation and some new challenges she is facing. ...
In my article, “Dealing with Difficult Personalities – What Not to Do,” I talked about 4 things not to do:
Continuing with my example with Anna, what should I have done? To recap: Anna hada great reputation for being smart and excellent at her job. I also met her casually in the hallway, and thought she was quite nice. During our first business meeting, she cut me off and began to pepper me with questions about why I needed this data and what I planned to use it for. Her tone was sharp and aggressive. I was quite surprised and caught off guard. ” Here are 5 tips I recommend using to deal with any “difficult personality” at work, and for achieving the best long-term results. ...
Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “Don’t assume, because it makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.'” While it seems tongue and cheek, it’s very good advice. It’s amazing how we can understand this concept in theory, yet still make unwarranted assumptions at work. I think this happens mostly because we don’t even realize we have made an assumption. We just think “this is how it should be,” or we think we should know the answer. This is a mistake, and can be very detrimental to our career progression. ...
Email is one of the primary methods of communicating at work today. “What so hard about writing an effective email?” you may ask. Well, the mechanics of sending an email are simple, but if you want to facilitate effective email communication (e.g. your email is read, understood ,and acted upon in the time frame you desire), then there are certain skills involved in writing a good email. ...
Business networking is essential to your job success as well as during any of your job search.
So whether you have a job or not, you should be constantly expanding and building your network so you can tap into it to support your career success. While most of you probably know networking is important, few actually know how to network well. In my blog, you can read about the 5 business networking tips anyone can follow to give you some specific tips. In this article, I want to share 1 simple rule that can help you network well no matter what your situation is. ...