Coaching for Interpersonal Skills | Soft Skills Mentoring - YouTube

Are you coaching someone that needs to work on their soft skills or maybe you find your

team is lacking in interpersonal and social skills. Maybe those are skills you want to

work on for yourself. And that’s great if you do, because coming up next on project

skills mentor, We’re gonna talk about what these skills are, how to build them, and how

to use them to become a more high- performing team member yourself, or be part of a team.

next on projects skills mentor.com. Hi I’m liz, the project skills mentor, And

today were talking about soft or interpersonal or social skills. That’s the glue that binds

us all together. And this card says it all: well technical skills give you the job of

your dreams, you keep them with soft skills. And as PMI says soft skills are the hard skills.

What we do On a project, or working together, That may be a hard skill. A task we have been

educated to do. but the way we do it, how we work together, those are so-called soft

skills. Hard skills are thought of as specific, quantifiable, Knowledge demonstrated through

testable an absolute evidence. Soft skills are more subjective and contextual. Demonstrated

through opinions perceptions and outcomes. So this card talks about hard versus soft

skills To drill down even more. And some of these might merge. Critical thinking has a

little bit of both, right? You need some amount of technical knowledge or business knowledge

for critical thinking but you’ll also need the ability To be flexibly minded, good listening

skills, The ability to encourage others to be innovative. All of those are Actually soft

skills. And there is a third element about soft skills, And that is really tapping into

your personal power. And I called that “super power”. So what is your mentees or your

super powers. Is it listening? is it getting people excited about a new idea and sharing

your vision? having empathy for others? creating a dynamic and energized work area? everyone

has a super power. And I’ve listed some here, but I want you to think about yours

or your mentees. What is your superpower? The way you know it is your superpower, is

when “push comes to shove”, “ when times get tough“,Or in your best moments What’s

that thing that’s your “go to”. Use this card or your list of superpowers and

go through and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 or high, medium, low. How well you

use it, often how often you use it, And how is it working for you.

By looking at those skills that are you “go tos”, You can strengthen those, by looking

at your weak points you can think: how can I build those.
So the first thing you’re

going to want to do With your mentee is start a conversation. When you’re talking soft

skills first of all, make sure you’re talking about the same thing. And secondly ask them

what they think they’re super power is. Show them list this list, the link is below,

you can download this card. And then ask them to rate themselves talk

about situations where they think this is a superpower. So now you’ve been listening

and your assessing how in line they are, how insync they are, and how self-aware where

they are. And then ask them what they want to change do they want to be better listeners

better speaker’s ,it kind of depends, so tap into their goals. Second step is, once

they’ve understood where they are strong and where they’re weaker they need to make

an action plan. something to do every day, or every week, that moves you forward on that

Strength do you want to leverage or that weakness you want to build on. This goes to role-playing,

journaling, assessing the situation in the field, using those skills you’ve role-played

And documenting the outcome. By journaling all of this you will create a body of work

that shows you you’re moving forward maybe small steps at a time but forward projection

a building your skills and leveraging your strengths and growing your weaknesses will

help you to become a more dynamic and in control high EQ personality. And get your point across

to others in a nice way
Agree in your coaching meetings to the way you will track progress.

A great way to do this is if the person you are mentoring is journaling. Talking about

a day or a situation with a super power was or Wasn’t used in that moment and what they

wished had happened. “ I wished I had listened better”, or “ I wish I had been

more bold in this situation”.
Let’s talk about about this teambuilding element

of social skill Focus. You can create this encouraging safe space in an away day, or

at the end of a team meeting, have a 15 minute conversation about social skills. and even

test out some ideas, have a bit of fun. I’ve got three ways, again in my blog below,That

you can do this. And at the end of the day, if you’re coaching your team or A mentee,

do it with enthusiasm Balanced with patience. These are two social skills necessary for

the coaching process. you know social skills are ingrained in us from when we were children

in our family situation, in the culture we live in, In the project situation and environment

we find ourselves. Maybe I’m the only extrovert in a group of introverts or vice versa. So

change can be hard, It can take a while to do and you need a safe space and a process

to work through that. but building social skills can be the biggest contribution to

long- term success you can make for mentee.
Give me a comment Below to let me know what social

skill you’re working on. If you want to see more I’ve got this playlist on mentorship.

If you found this information helpful please give the video a like and also consider subscribing.

I want to thank you for joining us today good luck on your mentoring or social skills journey

and I’ll see you next time on project skills mentor.com goodbye everybody.