Maybe it's because I was trained as a scientist: Even as I've written, many times over several years, about the importance of interpersonal skills in employment, it always felt a little, well, soft. It was only recently that I figured out what bothered me about the advice I -- and everyone else -- was giving. It's too generic. GC-MS is a practical career skill: it allows you to accomplish a particular task. Javascript and Perl are practical career skills: ditto. Sharing small talk in the lunchroom, or managing not to get into a fist fight with the person at the next bench, are not career skills.
In this weekend's New York Times, I read something about interpersonal skills that really resonated with my own professional experiences.
For the "Corner Office" column, Adam Bryant interviewed Susan Lyne, the former CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, who is currently CEO of the Gilt Groupe, an online, members-only luxury-goods purveyor. That's about as far from science as you can get, but that doesn't make her advice irrelevant. The interview focuses on hiring and evaluating talent, mostly for senior-management positions.
There's much that's worth reading, but here's the part that got my attention:
Read the whole interview here.
In this weekend's New York Times, I read something about interpersonal skills that really resonated with my own professional experiences.
For the "Corner Office" column, Adam Bryant interviewed Susan Lyne, the former CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, who is currently CEO of the Gilt Groupe, an online, members-only luxury-goods purveyor. That's about as far from science as you can get, but that doesn't make her advice irrelevant. The interview focuses on hiring and evaluating talent, mostly for senior-management positions.
There's much that's worth reading, but here's the part that got my attention:
"Somebody might be a great manager of a team but incapable of working across the company to get things done because they're competitive, or because of any number of reasons...That's just one interpersonal challenge--there are many others--but it's one that I, personally, have struggled with. How do you win, and deploy, the loyalty of people who don't report to you and are always very busy with other work? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
...there is very little [in the typical MBA training] about how to work with your peers where you need to get X done, and you need these other three departments to give you X amount of time in order to succeed at that.
The people who truly succeed in business are the ones who actually have figured out how to mobilize people who are not their direct reports. Everyone can get their direct reports to work for them, but getting people who do not have to give you their time to engage and to support you and want you to succeed is something that is sorely missing from B-school courses."
Read the whole interview here.
