Leadership: are you an ASS?
You might be offended, even by the question. But stay with it, there is something useful coming.
Here is a figure that may shock you. Between 70 and 85% of all leaders who are ‘exited’ from an organisation are removed for EXACTLY the same reason.
Not because they are technically incompetent.
Not because they lack commercial or industry knowledge.
Not for any of the reasons that most people guess.
They are removed because their people skills are so poor that they do more harm than good.
Where they should be achieving they’re alienating.
Where they ought to be contributing they are confounding. Where value could have been added it is annulled.
What does that mean? (The above paragraph and the question – Leadership: are you an ASS?)
People skills, or to be more precise, social skills are the most highly sought after commodity in business. No! That is not correct. Social skills are far from being a commodity. They are a rare and premium product.
So rare, that business owners are prepared to pay more for social skills than any others. Does that mean that every leader is “exited” for those reasons? No. Some are removed because they are too skilled; they are not prepared to operate at the low standards they find, try to raise the game of their peers, and are subjected to all sorts of false accusations for doing so.
Most people assume that emotional intelligence is the thing.
It’s not, and here’s why?
Would you employ someone who has language intelligence, but has learned no languages? Would you recruit someone with problem solving intelligence but has solved no problems? Of course not!
So why would you employ someone with so called emotional intelligence if they have not developed social skills? You wouldn’t.
Social skills are what you want, current, live and useful social skills, not the promise that the potential exists for them to be developed at some unknown point in the future.
Social Skills (SS) in business are everything.
Take those two little S’s out of an executive’s repertoire and you have career-kill, that’s road-kill where blood is replaced by future earnings.
Add just two little S’s and you go from career-corpse-nowhere to skilled somewhere.
Add an A, for Advanced, and you go to the top of the leadership pile with Advanced Social Skills.
Our title now makes sense – Leadership: are you an ASS?
Are you an Advanced Social Skiller? If you are serious about a career in leadership, you might want to answer YES this time. And if you can’t you might want to explore leadership coaching to become an ASS.
Advanced Social Skills for executives are essential. But only as necessary as oxygen and water is to life.
Sometimes hidden components of a skill are exposed in the way a skill is delivered or communicated.
If you understand and appreciate why ASS was used in this blog, you already have a major part of the skills set. If you were offended by being asked if you are an ASS… well there is probably some work to do on the humour front (humour is one of the most advanced of the advanced social skills).
If you want to be an ASS, like most top leaders, contact PsyPerform.
Prof Nigel MacLennan
Copyright 2016 Dr Nigel MacLennan
