When one becomes a leader or starts a business, one needs skills that will enable one to communicate with people and build work processes effectively. This is why lately soft skills became so popular since they are versatile skills that help maneuver between work tasks, meetings, and negotiations, plan the life-work balance and manage behavior and emotions. Research in this area began in the United States around the 1960s, and the term entered the business environment even later, in the late nineties. In general, soft skills help to cope with stress and feel more confident, as well as increase interpersonal and self-management competencies. I believe this kind of knowledge is necessary for business leaders and project or product managers.
This is why I found this course essential for my personal and career development. I graduated in 2019 with a finance bachelor’s degree. I currently work as an accounting assistant and am pursuing my MBA to help me advance in my career so that I can eventually become a Chief Financial Officer. In my professional journey, it is essential to be able to build effective communications, negotiate, lead a team, make decisions, work well under pressure, and be aware of the weak and strong points to optimize the working process.
Today, almost no one works alone but in a group with colleagues. Each employee communicates with colleagues, and sometimes also with clients and partners. Everyone must be able to negotiate with co-workers, argue their position, and have excellent stress management skills. Moreover, it is related to networking and effective communication in general. The ability to find and build valuable connections is not such a common skill now, with the seemingly increased simplicity of online communication. Networking is one of the most important and, at the same time, difficult arts to master because people usually have an established pattern of behavior and communication which is hard to be changed, especially if someone is an introverted type of personality. I read a book suggested by the course (“Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain), and I found it truly useful to understand better how to build communication with my colleagues.
Communication skills are one of the most critical areas that I need to develop for my personal and organizational performance. To improve the level of emotional intelligence (EQ), each of us should have more awareness and reflection about one’s reactions to events and people. In today’s constantly and more rapidly changing markets and sometimes unpredictable external environment, it is more important than ever to remain in these storms an unshakable rock for your team.
The very concept of emotional intelligence became more familiar to me as I learned about interpersonal differences and several psychological concepts that I did not know before. Especially, the MBTI assessment, the personality testing of Goldman Sachs, which is used as a part of a hiring process in the divisions close to my area of expertise, such as banking, trading, and finance. Moreover, it is crucial, in my opinion, to study emotions and moods at work, and I think every team leader should be aware of the person-environment fit theory and its effects on job satisfaction. I hope that this knowledge will make me a good leader as I want to occupy a governing position in my future career.
The topic of leadership was extensively studied during the course, and I find it highly beneficial and important. Issues such as ethical use of power and influence, and level 5 leadership theory have been entirely new to me. I find the idea of charismatic leadership very appealing for me personally. I want to be an example of the 4 I’s: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. I want to make my team be sincerely interested not only in the salary but in the achievement and encourage innovation.
This is also related to mentoring, the ability to quickly communicate information and provide career and social support. I think many leaders simply do not allow development and improvement since there is too much management, control, measurement, precise job descriptions, checklists, goals, and objectives. It turns a person into a machine, which means that they cannot think critically and are taught not to think and not to have a personal opinion. Instead, it is crucial to know how to give people some freedom. Moreover, successful mentoring contributes to more productive communication in general – with partners, managers, shareholders, and all of their environments around me.
Ultimately, for a leader, it is most important to be able to set the right goals correctly. The success of the entire business depends on a good strategy. Just seeing the big picture is not enough anymore. The result of a business is the result of a set of decisions made. I understand that in business, as in life, sometimes difficult decisions have to be made. Constantly and for a long-time hesitant leader is not seen as a leader and a successful leader in leading positions. Therefore, the ability to generate and quickly make a specific decision, considering the consequences, is developed in managers with experience. I was trying to identify my goals in soft skills development when I want to complete those goals and how I can measure my success in this accomplishment.
I believe I cannot name one final goal for my career, probably having reached the top that I imagine now my horizons will expand and I will have a desire for a new step forward. Seeing the ultimate goal would be like defining my limit, the limit of possibilities and desires. However, for this year, my focus is to archive knowledge and skills to become a good leader, as described above.
A measurement of my success can be a happy, satisfied and effective team that feels supported and encouraged by me. The signs of it would be that a team has a shared purpose and goals, communicates freely among themselves, can deal with conflict within the group, and improve individual and group processes and functioning. I also set a goal to be able to adapt effectively to new conditions and find non-standard solutions.
I would like to summarize the main points I learned during this course. The course made it clear to me that I have to develop my interpersonal skills: better networking, negotiating, and understanding of psychology to identify the differences in the personalities of people around me. Moreover, I recognized how crucial it is for me to focus on developing my leadership style and skills. I learned theories of leadership, the qualities of a good team leader, and the signs of an effective team. I will work on those skills in the following years to reach my goal and become a successful CFO after obtaining my MBA degree.
References
Foundation [PowerPoint slides]
Leadership [PowerPoint slides]
Individual Different Attitudes [PowerPoint slides]
Learning rewards [PowerPoint slides]
Managerial Decision Making [PowerPoint slides]
Motivation [PowerPoint slides]
Teams [PowerPoint slides]
Perceptions and Attributions [PowerPoint slides]
Stress Aggression Change [PowerPoint slides]