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Professional people skills (soft skills) are more than a skill set. The mindset to the skillset is key to your professional people skills.  Your mindset at any moment impacts and sometimes directs how you act and what you say.  In effect, your mindset can determine the success you have in interacting with others even after you have taken professional people skills training.


From one mindset to another. The impact of mindset is very clear when you switch from one role to another. Have you switched careers lately – from business person to teacher, from sales to customer service, from team member to team leader, from technical professional to business technical liaison (to name just a few)? If you do not switch your mindset, you may find that the people skills that served you before, fail you now. Adjust your mindset and your professional people skills will adjust as well. A different position requires different people skills performance.


Stressed or not. When you feel pressured or annoyed, your mindset could lead to disastrous interactions with others. Take a moment to reset your mindset before speaking. Here’s a post with images to change your mindset when stressed out with customers: 5 Things to Think with Rude Customers.


All or nothing. Professionals with a strong technical or structured focus (technology, medicine, engineering, finance, law etc…) often put their mindset completely on that technical or structured focus. When they do, interactions with non-technical people suffer. The mindset of rigorous structure spills over into the human interactions and blocks successful bonds. Picture a doctor talking to a patient, finance professional working on a diverse team, an I/T pro working with clients or business leaders to identify solutions to business challenges. To connect in these situations, step outside of the rigorous structure when communicating. With this alternate mindset, you will see a significant difference in your people-skills.

How else does mindset impact your professional people skills?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, inspires and teaches outstanding people skills to organizations, companies, and large conference audiences with humor, experience, and practical application. Kate improves communication skills that bridge the gaps of diversity, personality types, and geographic/cultural differences. View footage of her workshops and preview her new DVD on this site.

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The dividends, the value, of people skills (soft skills, interpersonal skills …) become clear to those who jump into learning and using them. For skeptics, the dividends seem unclear because they can’t easily measure them with numbers before investing.

As a leader, whether you are a skeptic or a believer, it is worth considering how much more productivity and what new success your teams can achieve with better people skills. With virtual team members distributed in workplaces throughout the globe trying to meet objectives, people skills are more critical than ever to overcoming obstacles and reaching success. Even within one workplace, people skills are the vehicle for all to contribute their occupational knowledge so that others can use it effectively.

Help Desk Insitute, (popularly known as HDI), invited me to write a feature article, What Are the Dividends of People-Skills, for their Support World journal. The editor has graciously sent me the pdf (see link below) for all to read. The print version is available only to members. The article is copyrighted so please do not re-post on other sites without permission (Email: info@katenasser.com).

The article in pdf format: What Are the Dividends of People Skills.

To get started improving your people skills, here’s a related blog post: Professional People Skills – Work on You and On the Work.

Thank you Cinda and Megan at Help Desk Institute for covering this very important people-skills topic. [HDI is the professional association for internal and external IT customer support offering industry best practice research and reports, training, and certification. For more information: Help Desk Institute.]

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, brings 20 years of experience, a natural intuition about people, feisty energy, and practical vision to your organization in teamwork and customer relations workshops, DVDs, keynotes, and coaching. BS Mathematics, Masters in Organizational Psychology.

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There is much press today about whether people skills (also known as soft skills) are considered during the hiring process. Do people skills count more than your occupational (aka hard skills)?

Quite honestly, to me the debate is both useless and a bit risky. Your professional career is in your hands. Hiring managers, teams of current employees, HR reps are people. They may consider people skills. Do you want to gamble that those interviewing you don’t consider people skills in making the choice? Whether they do it consciously or subconsciously, why bet that they won’t? Develop your professional people skills. Work on you AND the work. Be workplace ready!

When to start? Yesterday. Developing your people skills can begin in school. In can happen in your everyday life — inside and outside of work. I was lucky enough to have a mother who demanded it of us. So when I graduated college with a BS Mathematics, I had been developing the interpersonal skills of my right brain while sharpening and expanding my left brain.

Is it too late to start? Never. I continue to learn and improve my people skills. You have infinite interactions with people and it costs nothing to learn “on the job” so to speak. Even those who debate whether or not interviewers consider people skills in the hiring decision, agree that people skills are expected and assessed for job assignments and promotions once you have the job.

How to start? The most productive first step is to understand your own personality type — for two reasons.

1. You will interpret what other people say and do based on your own personality type.  It is your reference sheet.
2. Knowing your type gives you limitless potential for adapting to others of a different personality type.  It is the fuel for success in teamwork, leadership, customer relations, and long term professional friendships.

Here is some valuable footage on personality type differences to spur your learning: GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type.

Get Started! Take a well respected personality indicator like The Kiersey Temperament Sorter and then use the knowledge in your daily interactions. People-skills are the conduit to delivering your occupational knowledge to those around you and to the company that employs you.

If you get stuck, you can always call me (or my mother) for help!

Warmest wishes,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach in This Technical World
Masters in Org. Psychology

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Kate Nasser delivers her 20 years of experience and her natural intuition about people in inspirational keynotes, transformational teamwork and customer care workshops, and coaching for your success. Preview her new customer service training DVD Customer Service USA.

A recent MSN CareerBuilder article What They Should Have Taught You in School offers insightful practical advice to all GEN Y (aka Millenials). The writer, Anthony Balderrama, did a great job of amassing lessons learned and best advice on the professional people-skills you will need to succeed at work. I contributed three tips for that article.

Yet the topic is so valuable to GEN Y and to all those changing careers, that I include here more of the best professional people-skills to learn before work.

Six of the Best Professional People-Skills to Learn for Work:

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1. Flexibility. How well do you work with different people? How do you react when asked to change certain behaviors? I asked a VP of Human Resources one day, what is the most important trait you look for in a new hire? Answer: “Flexibility and adaptability. Things never stay the same and employees who can’t work with different bosses and team members are a drain!”




2. Communication that connects! Communication today has to cross generations, cultures, educational backgrounds, and occupational areas. How well do you connect through your communication with someone different from you?




3. Positive Initiative. Employers hire you to contribute your all and to help create business success. So give more in effort than you ask for in privileges. True story: An employee emailed his manager the following message: “I would like to work from home 3 days a week. How can you make this happen for me?” In the next downsizing, he was gone. If you want to explore working from home, speak with your manager (not email) and ask what you would have to do to get this accommodation from the company (as opposed to how she can make this happen for you). The manager is not your concierge!




4. Balancing. Regardless of your age you have individual goals and beliefs different from the organization’s. Learn early on how to focus on the organization’s goals first and foremost while still being you. If you find this balancing act tortuous, you may do better in self-employment.




5. Understanding Beyond Words. If you tend to be a literal person, you will need to learn to read between the words. Organizational politics exist and thriving in it requires this skill. Asking great questions and observing are two surefire steps to developing this skill.




6. Diplomatic honesty. As you work on teams — good teams — your honesty will be expected. How you deliver that honesty will impact your work relationships for a very long time. One excellent way to deliver diplomatic honesty is to speak about observable behaviors and events rather than your interpretations of behavior and events. For example, if one team member’s behavior is so strong that it causes friction, discuss the exact behaviors as opposed to saying “You are always trying to dominate!” Not only can you not be sure that person is trying to dominate, that statement will leave an emotional scar that plagues future interaction. Moreover, it doesn’t give the person anything specific to change.

Invitation: Please add your insights on the best professional skills for work in the comments field below. It will be an ongoing expansive resource for learning.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers keynotes, workshops, and training dvds on professional people-skills, transformational customer service and teamwork, and leading change. Her energy, insights, and practical advice, have helped tens of thousands over the last 20 years.

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2010 will undoubtedly bring many new surprises, challenges, and inventions.   Yet one truth prevails — professional soft skills (aka people skills) are still the underlying mechanism for success in business around the globe. So as you make your 2010 resolutions, make a professional soft skills resolution to take your career, your company, and your teams to new heights.

Professional Soft Skills Resolution

Here’s a resolution that one leader made:

“I resolve to improve how I communicate with my teams, customers, and colleagues.”

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Keeping this resolution:

Speak positively not negatively and forward not back.

Almost every negative statement you make can be reworded to say positively what needs to change rather than just what is wrong. Monitor your statements for one day. You will be amazed at how often you state what is wrong rather than how to make it better. This change in your communication actually breeds better morale, rapport, and results!

Identify your natural listening style and adapt to your team members.

Every soft skills blog reinforces the value of active listening. Yet to be a great listener, silence is not the automatic winner. It is a myth that silence is what everyone wants. Learn to spot asynchronous and synchronous listening needs and listen with that style. The WOW of rapport occurs with this step.

Speak with and require all to speak with respect for diversity.

Learn what your social style is (Amiable, Analytic, Expressive, or Driver) and have each team member learn theirs. If you want major ROI on your soft skills resolution this one step of communicating with respect for differences is the magic bullet.

Increase and improve your face-to-face contact.

Yes we are technologically connected with email. Yet if you look across the generations, face-to-face contact does bring better understanding among and about people. Technology can help you with this as well — SKYPE and VideoConferencing to name only two. A recent study showed that among distanced teams, videoconferencing produced better teamwork and work results over teleconferenced meetings. Even if your team is primarily comprised of GEN Y, you can help them to learn better face-to-face skills with this commitment in your resolution.

What is your professional soft skills resolution and how will you keep it?

Would love to read yours in the comments section below.

In her workshops and training, Kate Nasser develops your professional soft skills to improve your connections with diverse people. In her new training DVD “Customer Service USA – What They Expect From Coast to Coast and Everywhere In Between” Kate illustrates the soft skills you need to meet diverse customers’ needs. Email her for info on this new training DVD.