Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo on this episode, I want to talk about a new study that was done by Deloitte recently on the types of skills that people are looking for in the workplace. And I think this is it was really eye opening and kind of a new way of looking at things, because we've talked a lot on the on the podcast over the years about how, you know, leaders shouldn't just be investing in their people in terms of
making them better for the job. They should be making them better people, better applicants for otherir jobs, you know, kind of life skills, that kind of thing. And and if you look at the the kind of skills that companies typically incorporate into a curriculum for people, the ones that are leadership based, and and you know, kind of
the the softer skills empathy and human connection. Those types of skills are usually a large part of the of the training that leaders get with organizations, but not as much for people in non leadership roles. And this study from Deloitte said that individual employees in non leadership roles are starving for these skills too. This study says that the top three skills that employees report wanting in these
are non leadership employees. The top three are teamwork, communication, and leadership, and that the you know, the kind of technical skills and the skills of the job itself fall far lower on the list of things that they want
to learn. And you know, it's one of those like kind of obvious does but something that you know, I think a lot of organizations don't think about in terms of, you know, who who do they invest this time and effort into and what is the fallout for not giving it to the people who are currently in non leadership roles.
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. It's kind of like it makes a ton of sense when you think about what people are looking to maybe get training on, and when you say like teamwork and communication, like that is ninety percent, I'm sure of their day to day which is you know what I mean, like, yeah, how do we work better together, how do we communicate more effectively? How do you know, how do we do things that allow us to to get the work done and feel
good about how we're doing it. And then of course then then it gets into the leadership aspects or into the like the technical job aspects of it. But I think it's it's such an important thing to take away and to understand, especially when we talk a lot about leadership and then creating spaces, like how are you creating these spaces for people to work well together? How are you helping them to manage their relationships they have with
their peers? How do you reward and recognize great teamwork when it comes to you know, teams working well together to accomplish the goal at hand. Like these are all things that I think as we get more of these types of surveys and insights, you know, we're I think we're seeing a more truer understanding of what people want
and what they're looking for at work. I think if you maybe rewound the tape on this twenty thirty years ago, people would be selecting the obvious answers or what they think that they should answer, you know what I mean, Like, that's that's what I believe. I think we're getting more kind of authenticity and transparency to what matters most to a lot of people, and that is the day to day and that is the ability to function well with peers on a team and enjoy that time with them.
Yeah, I think. I think another art part of this too is that the skills needed not from the not the human side of things, but the job skills needed to do whatever whatever the processes or the technical aspects are of the job. The training to go through the day to day process of the job, not in relation to other people, but just in relation to the to the job itself. Those skills change far more quickly now
than they did a while back. And so you know, if you if you were, you know, learning a job thirty years ago, obviously you want to put more time into doing that thing better and better and better, because the more efficient and the better you got at it, you could hold onto those things for you know, a decade or two decades before a new system was in place, or a more efficient system was in place or something.
You know, these things are happening so much more quickly in many organizations now that you encounter the law of diminishing returns when it comes to trying to get better at doing something. You know, Proficient at doing something is often good enough, you know, as opposed to a mastery of something when when it's clear that it was it was new six months ago and it was. It replaced the other thing a year before that. You know, there's only so much you really can you put into that.
But these skills, these these human centric qualities like teamwork and communication and empathy and you know, leader ship, those are the things that will endure regardless of what the processes of the job are. We're one of the quotes in this article by Anthony Stephanie's the chief Learning officer
at Deloitte. He says organizations that emphasize technical training at the expense of enduring human capabilities like divergent thinking, emotional agility, resilience could end up impeding innovation and leaving employees ill equipped to lead teams, adapt to market opportunities and fully harness the potential of technology. And that says it right there. I mean, this is it's are you are you teaching people how to do a job or are you teaching
people how to do jobs? And that's the biggest difference. It's like, you know, I remember why when my kids transitioned from you know, kindergarten to first grade, they they said that the teacher said that the biggest change is that they're going from learning to read to reading to learn and that was a huge jump because you know it, there's less time being spent on learning to read. It's an assumption that they know how to read so that they could learn other things. They could utilize the tool
of reading to learn other things. I look at this as the exact same way. If we're teaching people how to lead, if we're teaching people how to communicate, if we're teaching people how to have teamwork, then regardless of the company they're with, or the team that they're on, or what the technology is doing, they'll be able to be they will be more equipped to do it with
those skills. But if we're just teaching them how to do whatever that job is now, then those skills become irrelevant the time the next time the job changes, or the next time the technology becomes out of date, or the next time that you know, a more efficient process replaces it. So, you know, the companies that really invest in this not just for their leaders, but for people who they hope to become leaders someday, those are the companies that I think are setting themselves up for success.
Yeah. I think we talk a lot about you know, kind of just all the time, building pipeline, building talent pipeline and what are you doing organizationally to actually do that?
And I think sometimes we can, you know, we can get stuck in some of the norms, or when you start to have elements of success where you've got some examples of kind of where the pipeline has maybe worked, you start to get really comfortable and complacent, and I think that that's where that's where it can get dangerous, because then it's like, well, you're you're are you building leaders for the future or are you building leaders for the right now you know, when you need them in
the future. And then are you looking at maybe historical examples of what it was to be a leader or what it was to find success in an organization from five or ten years ago, fifteen twenty years ago versus
where you are today and where you're going. And I think these are the things that when you're really when a company is really invested in understanding that there's a lot of time, attention, and quite honestly money that's put into figuring out how do you build for the leaders of the future, and how are you staying close enough to what's successful today and then modeling much of your training and development programs to to what that looks like.
I think sometimes that's that's what I've witnessed anyway in my career many times talking to other leaders across industries, across organizations, is that like, you know, the same training that they were doing for leaders, you know, five years ago, is the same one today. You know, there's very little
change in what those programs look like. And when there is change, it's usually either slow or it's all at once and it's long overdue and it's you know, every ten years or something like that, and then it's like, okay, now you have this change. Now, great, now this feels relevant for the moments. But if you're going to wait another five or ten years to do it again, you're
going to be in exactly the same space. So I think that just the you know, looking at this type of you know, data and considering organizationally what you're doing, and also like thinking about as a leader in the business, how do you take this data in understanding and even if you know your team were not a part of any of this, these are questions that you can go ask.
These are things that you can go do to discover how and where you should spend your time when it comes to maybe the training and development of your current team and in the team of the future.
Yeah, I think there's another element of this that I want to touch on too, because I think about how how I've learned or when I have learned how to be a better teammate, a better leader, a better communicator. When have I learned those things? And very little of it was in formalized training from organizations that said this is how you do these things. A lot of it was learned by doing and failing and learning from those
failures and doing again. And a lot of it was learned by watching the leaders who I reported to do things both well and and not well. And then you're reflecting on why I why I interpret that, is it being done well or being done not well? And and what I wanted to want to take from those things. And so I think a lot of this training that employees are looking for, they it can't necessarily be done in in the classroom or in the you know, the
formal environment. Some of it can, and and there's some there are some important things you can learn through courses you can take online or you know, you know, programs that that companies can apply for and and make available, you know, kind of virtual or digital courses for their
for their employees. Those are all great, but but just putting your people in situations where they have to utilize communication and teamwork and leadership skills even though it's not necessarily a core port part of what their job is, and then making sure that you don't just do that from a standpoint of hope they learn from the mistakes, but to debrief with them and follow up with them and find out what was difficult, what was easy, What do they love about that, what do they not like
about it, what was uncomfortable, what was very comfortable. These are the situations that will help employers and individual team leaders figure out what people on their team need, what skills and need develop in what areas, and more importantly,
what people really gravitate towards certain things. You know, if the places that you're putting your people in in order to kind of test these skills or their or their interest in them, if a person comes back and says, that was the worst experience of my entire life, you know, maybe that person isn't, you know, one of your future leaders, but maybe they're fantastic at the job that they do. And if a person comes back and says, wow, that
was very challenging, I want more, Give me more. Those are the people you want to put more effort into, you know, kind of refining those skills, because the human skills are the ones that you will need in order to move people up. And I'll tell you it's very rare that the best salesperson is the best leader of salespeople, or that the best engineer is the best leader of engineers.
The skills of sales and engineering and leadership are three very very different skills that require very different skill sets, and they have different people who gravitate towards them and who are better at them. So, you know, the traditional pipelines of looking at the best this in order to lead the team of this that you're not going to
get the best leader of teams that way. The best leaders are going to be the ones that you develop through these processes of putting in the situations where they can have the chance to showcase these skills.
YEP, completely agree with that, and with that it brings us to this episodes one minute Hack. But first a few words from our sponsors.
All right, for this episode one minute Hackers or want you to do. In this article, the Anthony Stephan, the chief leading officer for Deloitte, recommends a couple of things. He says that the most important things that leaders, hr leaders and team leaders can do is to listen to employees dictate to them what that those employees need to be successful, and so asking employees, what are you lacking?
What do you think you need in order to be successful not just at your current job, but at this company as a whole, or in life in general, whether it's at this company or another one. What are individual employees looking for? That's the first thing, and then the second thing is making sure that the tools are set up to allow the employees to get those kind of trainings.
And you can have formal mentorship programs that's one way, but a lot of the ways that these skills are honed and refined is just in interacting with other people. And if their jobs are structured in a way where there's less of that, it's your responsibility as a leader to get them together in certain places, whether it's a kind of a relaxed social event or you know, some kind of of a team get together where there's collaboration, whether there's you know, people talking to each other, talking
over each other. You know, these are the environments where these skills are refined, because they're refined through making mistakes. And if as long as you have the psychological safety that says that mistakes are okay, there are great opportunities to let employees kind of figure this out and then let you know or debrief with you on what went well or what didn't go well.
Yeah, I think it's a great you know advice in
this hack. And we talked a little a little bit about this earlier, but just the creating of the space and the understanding that like what the team is going to learn and how you're going to create a great culture around not just doing the work today, but but getting people to really have passion behind filling up a talent pipeline, wanting to be in that talent pipeline, and then understanding like how they would work together and how as a you will listen to what they're looking for
and what they need and then making adjustments for that is how you will continue to not only build great talent and have great talent pipeline, but you'll have the trust and you'll have the the ability to pivot in the here and now, but also build skill that is necessary longer term when it comes to the ongoing evolution and changes that you will see when it comes to the expectations of leaders of today and into the future.
So I think again, it's just like having an intention to be able to have these spaces created and knowing that most of where people are going to take in the ability to have to build you know, teamwork and to build trust is going to be in the informal places of them really getting to know each other authentically and being able to build connections that will allow them to move better together forward right right.
And the last thing I want to put on this and this is just I think it's very important here, is that you know, of this survey that Deloitte did, ninety four percent of the survey respondents said that younger workers in particular need better human skills. Now, you know, I want to make sure that we're sing this is this is not a generational thing. This is not a oh you know, this generation is terrible at this, and this generation is not younger workers have less years doing
these things. These are skills that people get better at because they do them, and and there's no way to do them besides doing them. And if so, if if you are a younger employee or you have a team of people that are on the younger side of things, they're probably not as good at these skills. Not because they're This isn't a you know, their generations worse than our generation. This is that they've just not been doing
it long enough. And it's your responsibility as a leader to give them opportunities that are both organic and structured to allow them to make themselves better at these skills or to help them get better at these skills because they're starving for them too. It's not just their coworkers who are saying these younger people need to get better
at these skills. It's the people themselves who feel very awkward and very ill equipped to interact in certain situations, and it causes them to kind of withdraw further and try to make less of a connection if they don't know how to do it, or they don't have a
kind of a sponsor in this space. And so as a leader, it's your responsibility to help them get there and they'll reward your organization and your team in terms of what they do for you with the engagement and the productivity they can provide if they feel like they have these skills and they can talk to people and make connections with people.
Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end of this episode. This is how your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.