Organizations struggling to react to increasing economic pressure frequently downgrade the importance of Soft Management skills. Unfortunately, this often yields short-term success but long-term failure.
Soft Management, also known as human and communications skills, is focused on facilitating greater productivity by identifying and enabling talents of human resources and catalyzing increased individual and team functional alignment through open communication. Without the practice of the "soft" management function, individuals, teams and entire companies quickly find themselves in a confusing state of affairs and even less capable of reacting to changing economic landscapes.
The soft management function, while not always affordable on a full-time basis remains critical on an on-going basis. It is imperative therefore for companies to remain aware and attentive in the arena of human resource and communications management. Most of the soft management functions described below address the human resource and communications management function and, in today's time constrained environment, requires a fraction of a 40 hour work week for every 3 to 5 employees.
An effective soft manager essentially performs the following tasks:
Mentoring
Meeting Facilitation
Goal Development
Individual Alignment
Team Alignment
Status Reviews
Assessments
Communication
Recommendations
Conflict Resolution
Transition Coaching
Change Agency/Facilitation
How Does It Work
Soft Management Support is available on both an on-going (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, yearly) and as-needed basis. Beginning with an initial two-week cultural and business assessment, on-going and as-needed support recommendations are co-developed with leadership. From this point, a support plan is established, a contract is signed, and work begins soon thereafter. Because an assessment preceded the establishment of an on-going support plan, impacted employees have likely already had exposure to the soft management support consultant. In short time, the soft management consultant is seen as a member of the team.
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