An ability to operate outside of one’s own functional silo is pretty much a standard requirement when companies are hiring in Business Operations today. Certainly when appointing their leaders of tomorrow (and today) the requirement is for more than just technical competency or industry sector knowledge.

As businesses are being organised end-to-end, rather than as a group of separate functions, the (often referred to as soft) skills required to be effective in this type of environment are more sophisticated. In the business of Change and Transformation you are ineffective without advanced communication and influencing skills.

A constant requirement from our customers is that an individual is able to influence at an executive level, across different peer groups and also at the shop floor. However, although companies recognise these skill sets as mission critical in delivering successful outcomes they don’t seem to invest much in training their existing people how to be more influential. In relation to other important aspects of training such as technical skills, project management or leadership, practically nothing is invested in training people how to maximise their communication and influencing skills, unless they are in a customer sales role. These are very trainable skills.

We have completed a survey of 250 candidates that recently submitted their resumes in their search for a new position. Our survey has shown that very little is being invested in increasing the understanding of inter-personal communication. In this brief (and admittedly unscientific) survey we identified that these types of courses comprised significantly less than 1% of the total undertaken. Additionally, many of the courses that were taken were either upon specific request by the individual and then sponsored by the employer, or self-funded independent of employer sponsorship.

When considering how much significance is put on these skills when hiring new talent it is staggering that this is so often overlooked in terms of existing staff development.

We have all browsed through the wealth of titles on personal and business communication in dedicated sections that exist in every major bookstore, covering useful established technologies such as Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

NLP, created by Dr Richard Bandler and John Grinder as long ago as the early 70’s, is a particularly interesting technology as it is deals with the structure of people’s experience, as opposed to the content. It covers in detail the role of language (in its broadest sense) within the communication process and how it affects peoples’ subjective experience and consequently behaviours. Quite simply, practitioners well trained in these tools are equipped to understand others, build relationships of value, influence others and therefore create better results.

Perhaps good communicators are just considered to be ‘naturals’. It is often the case that they have taken time to continually develop these skills, have been conscious of the choices available to them through the communication process and have worked at developing their skills to a level of excellence.

I believe the fact that most of us gain proficiency in speaking and comprehension at a fairly early age tricks us into believing that we are fully proficient communicators. I have met many people that have held senior roles and believe themselves to be effective communicators but fall short in the opinion of others. Some of these people are very bright but a failure of theirs, and of their employers, in realising the need to evolve these important skills (through training and practice) has left them ill-equipped for tasks such as the engagement of others.

I have known hundreds of confident (not excellent or good) communicators over the years who thought that an interview or a meeting they’d been part of had gone really well only for me to learn that they have lacked necessary awareness and grossly misjudged what was happening during the event. People often don’t like giving harsh critical feedback, even when asked, so the ‘confident communicator’ bulldozes along in blissful ignorance.

Recognition that influencing skills really are very teachable by investment more in line with their requirement across today’s business landscape would make a significant contribution to a cohesive workforce and improved results.