Soft Skills - Ask a Wharton MBA
Develop Soft Skills – Work Smart & Live More
Another week has gone by in this new reality – First the Bay Area and then the entire state of California is told to “Shelter in Place.” I breathe a small sign of relief – finally we are deciding to act before the numbers get bad. While there is no cure for this novel (aka new) Coronavirus, we can now perhaps buy enough time ...
I really wanted to write about something else this week – anything but the coronavirus. But alas, I cannot escape how this pandemic is fundamentally changing all of our lives and rapidly. This is one “lemon” many of us didn’t foresee, even after the Wuhan situation in China in late January. We all thought we were far away enough to be safe. We all have heard the saying “when life give you lemons, make lemonade.” Can we this time? I am going to try with this post. ...
Happy New Year! Wow, its already 4th week of January. Where did the time go? I have been meaning to write about my new year aspirations. I am sharing them to help me be more committed. I hope they can also help you.
Last week, I saw this great article – In the New Year, Become a Better Version of Yourself. It inspired me to come up with these five way to become a better version of myself. All of them are hard for me, but they are also great aspirations for the year – how to evolve who I am as a professional and a human being. 🙂
Be Patient with myself and others – I am not a patient person. I tend to interrupt people in discussions. I get impatient when people are slow to understand or respond. I like to rush my kids when they are slow to shower, clean up, brush their teeth. You get the picture. This will be one of the hardest one to adhere to.. I think deep down I believe if I just rush others and myself, I will get more done. It sounds silly now that I have articulated it :-). This year, I will try to work on the following:
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My husband sent me this video last week and I was blown away by its message. It Is < 5 minutes, but carries a powerful reminder for us all – the power of our words and why we should speak wisely. Here is the video and what it meant for me. I look forward to hearing your reactions.
It’s ironic. We often focus so much on wanting to be heard that we forget we are already heard by many today. Below is what this video meant for me.
Reminder 1: Speak wisely to my kids – be patient and be there. I have two girls – 6 and 9 years olds. I am blessed that they still think mommy is awesome. I love my kids but I know I can be more patient with them. This video reminds me that a hard day at work is no excuse to yell at my kids even if they are fighting yet again. They are so impressionable at this age. It is my responsibility to nurture their growth with care as well as set a good example.
What was shared in the video about Nassar is so sad. Many of us may not be that heartless, like his father, but lesser actions can still have a big impact on our kids. There are two things I always tell my kids
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On Oct 29, 2014, against all odds, the San Francisco Giants narrowly won Game 7 of the World Series against the Kansas City Royal by the score of 3 to 2. I learned everything about baseball from my husband who is a diehard Giants fan. Since meeting him 10 years ago, I have had much more appreciation for this game – all the strategy involved with the lineup, the pitching, and the catcher.
On that Wednesday, like millions of people, my eyes were glued to the television as this 25 years old Madison Bumgarner “Mad Bum” walked to the mount in the 5th inning to defend our Giants’ narrow lead. I didn’t even know who he was until this season. He seemed so calm and focused as he pitched and as he waited in the bullpen when the Royals pitched.
I don’t know enough about pitching techniques to comment on any of Bumgarner’s hard skills in pitching. What I want to focus on is his soft skills – the strength of his inner game. Many successful athletes and coaches have said “success is more than 50% mental.” I absolutely believe it and would argue the same rule applies to work.
Here are 3 soft skills we can all learn from Madison Bumgarner
Lesson #1: Stress Management – How to stay calm in the most stressful situation and still perform at your peak level. After Giants won the World Series, Bumgarner was asked at the press conference, “What did you think about when you were walking that 300 feet from the bull pen to the mount in the 5th inning?” He simply said, “I focused on thinking about getting outs like any other game.” I don’t know about you but these simple words were profound.
He didn’t think about any of those facts. His soft skill was to focus purely on his pitching and be present to the game at hand like it’s any other game. In another word, he didn’t waste any of his mind space psyching himself out or worry about what ifs like most people would.
We can all learned a lot from Bumgarner. Much of the stress we experience at work is self-inflicted. We constantly worry about the future – what if I don’t present well in this next executive meeting? What if I don’t get the funding for this project? What if …..? All this worry about the future distracts our mind from the focus of our actual work. So I say, “Ignore the what ifs and just focus on the work!” and everything will take care of itself.
Lesson Learned #2: Emotion Regulation – How to stay objective and focused on the game. Giants were up 3 to 2. He beat the Royals in Game 1 as the lead pitcher 7 to 1. Bumgarner could have smiled or relished in that history. The camera was zoomed in on Bumgarner in the bullpen several times between innings in Game 7 – before he started in the 5th inning and while he waited while the Royals pitched. His face was blank the whole time and sometimes he just looked down. There was no sign of joy, pride, anguish or worry. He didn’t show any emotion at all. Again, he was focused just on the work – pitching.
I used to think emotions are simply a sign that you care about your job. I am realizing more and more allowing emotions at work is an indulgence and a distraction. I am sure Bumgarner is human and feels all the human emotions we feel, but what he is good at is keeping them at bay during the game, where objectivity and focus are paramount. Let’s all learn from him and deal with any challenges with work with our best mind – the strategic mind, instead of the emotional one.
Lesson Learned #3: Resilience – How to stay un-phased by setbacks and keep performing at the same level. In the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7 with 2 outs, Blanco and Ishikawa fumbled the catch and the throw that allowed a Royal to run all the way to 3rd base. The atmosphere was intense to say the least.
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Not getting the promotion we were expecting can be devastating to our self-image. I am here to tell you that you are not alone. In fact, not getting promoted can happen to the best of us. What is important is how you handle this unexpected news and what you do next to keep advancing in your career.
That is why I am excited to share this Candid Conversation with one of our Executive Authors, Gloria Asari. Gloria has been a close friend for 10+ years, and she is a successful executive with 18 years of experience. I am so glad to involved her as an Executive Author in the Soft Skills Gym for those reasons. Additionally, she always sees the good in others, and is one of the best people managers I know — she currently leads a team of 30 people.
I have benefited tremendously from her stories all these years. I am glad that I can start sharing them with you through Candid Conversations in order to support your career journey. This story is from 10 years ago, when she first came out of business. Her story is about:
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I work on multiple initiatives simultaneously at my current job. Some of them are long term, big projects, and some of them are smaller projects under one big program. Two of these smaller projects have given me serious headaches and stress in the past few days.
Why? Because the key people I work with on these two projects:
Was I bothered when I experienced all these things? Unfortunately, yes. My instant reaction was, “why can’t these people get their s*** together?” I am not even expecting them to deliver it on time any more, but I did expect them to update me before the deadline had passed, and I expected them to check their own work before declaring it finished.
There lies my problem, and maybe yours if you have encountered anything similar at work. I had certain expectations which led to my frustration and my urge to fix it, even though I really can’t make people be better than they want to be.
The truth of the business world is all kinds of people work in it. The bigger the company, the more variance there is in the:
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