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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor
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Relise Cortez.
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Welcome back to the Working in a Purpose program, which
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has been brought to you with passionate pride since February
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of twenty fifteen. Thanks for j nating again this week.
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Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes.
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If we've not met before and you don't know me,
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I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, local therapist,
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speaker and author. I am constantly researching helping my clients
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elevate their leadership and culture. And my team and I
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at Gusto Now help companies enliven and fortify their operations
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by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and
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nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. And did you
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know that inspired employees and purpose led companies outperform their
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satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five
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two one. In other words, inspiration and purpose are good
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for the bottom line. You learn more about us and
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how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com
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or my personal site at least Coortes dot com. Which
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on today's program we have with us today Yadiracato. She's
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an organizational psychology practitioner who has been working with teams
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that developers and engineers with military operations for over fifteen years.
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She's the author of Hardcore Soft Skills, A Guide to
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Work with Humans. We'll be talking about how and why
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learning what have been called soft skills makes such a
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difference and motivating and engaging teams, and dive into several
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of the core soft skills that she teaches. She does
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to day from Tampa, Florida. Yadira YADDI, welcome to Working
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on Purpose.
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Thank you so much, Alie. I'm very happy to be
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here on the show.
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We just have to also say also been Venida, are
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working on purpose a being being no working on purpose?
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Because you and I both speak Spanish and Portuguese, I
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know you spraky de Deutsche. I don't speak German, but
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I do speak a little French a little time.
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With enough wine, yes exactly, we could all become more
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fluent that way.
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Yes, it's amazing how much better I sound at least
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I think so. Yeah. Okay, So I want to just
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start by sharing just the humble and beautiful way that
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you opened your book. You know, we oftentimes talk about
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the importance of teaching and learning what we need most
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to learn, and I just think that's just so beautiful.
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So let's let me just read this for our listeners
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and viewers, because it is the very opening of your book.
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You're right, and I quote you were talking with your
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Oh so your soft skills are like sandpaper. My husband
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said to me one day as I was giving him
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feedback on a project he was working on. I was
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trying to tell him how he was focusing on the
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wrong priorities and that he needed to reassess. I think
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the exact words I used were quote, your being lazy.
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It was well intended. I knew he could do more.
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But the tone of my voice than the words I chose,
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reflected my frustration his response to reject entirely what I
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had said. You may have encountered similar challenges at work,
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which is of course why you wrote the book. But
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I just thought, gosh, can't we all relate to this?
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You know, this is so.
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Relatable and it helps us understand you and connect with
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you right out of the gate. So beautiful.
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Yeahdie, thank you appreciate that.
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So let's talk before we get into the book, and
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really you know what's in it, why you wrote it.
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Let's just talk a little bit about your background and
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what drew you to research soft skills in the workplace
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and help companies to incorporate them. Why this, why not
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I don't know, strategy or something like that.
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Yeah, So it's the fact that I have been working
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for now about over a decade and eighteen years that
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I've been working specifically with military organizations with teams of engineers,
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developers and all the people with the brilliant skills, and
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also in kind of rough environments in the military as well.
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So having working a lot in the areas of focus
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on developing products and helping the teams become more productive,
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and realizing that you could have a team of very
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talented people, like all good at what they do, and
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there's still this gap of a lot of a lot
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of times basically the projects don't workout or initiatives die
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on the vine. And I thought a lot about that
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and thinking that we we tend to focus a lot
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on the aspect of how to cultivate our technical skills,
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like if we just become better at this program or
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get the certification. And around the time of twenty twenty
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when COVID hit and we were I was living in
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Germany at the time and working with the team on site,
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meaning in an office, so we had to quickly transition
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into working from our respective homes, but also we still
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had a deathline to commit to deliver a particular product.
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So realizing that aside from the skills that the brilliant
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team of engineers had, we also needed to be able
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to find the ability to work together effectively, to collaborate,
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to really communicate when we're not in an office, and
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I started exploring and kind of delve more into the
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term of soft skills soft quote unquote because it just
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sounds I would think before that soft skills were along
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the lines of etiquette or about things that were like
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how do you behave on a you know, and a
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dinner setting, and realizing that the what we call soospects
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are all about critical skills being that be for working
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with people, social skills or managing effectively, or communicating or negotiating,
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so all these skills that are not very considered technical
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yet that we really need to develop in order to
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really succeed in teams. So that's how I started with
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the podcast and hardcore of skills in back in twenty twenty,
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and it evolved into learning from others more about skills,
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doing my studies in organizational psychology to learn more about
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that and now kind of developing that framework based on
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the lessons that I have learned along the way.
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Beautiful, and I appreciate that you're reminding me. As you
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were talking about the specific kinds of people that you've
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been helping, you're reminding me that a big chunk of
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the people that I've worked with over the years too
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have been engineers, IT people and scientists, people that you know,
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love and you need to use their minds. And I
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think part of the reason I've been drawn to them
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is I do like working with people like that and
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to help round out that this capacity to as you say,
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to better collaborate, to better relate to their team members,
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to better understand them, which of course allows them to
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better motivate them and increases their performance, all these things
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that are so important. And you say so also in
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your book. That I laugh about this too, is I
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think that soft skills is probably an outdated phrase.
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Now.
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It's still being used, but it's outdated more and more increasingly.
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You and I both know that these kinds of skills
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are now called essential. In fact, you know, in the
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work that we're doing at Gusto now or our tagline
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is doubling down on humanity in the age of AI. Right,
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So it's really such a way to one distinguish our
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contribution as work as humans, but also to do it
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more effectively with and through technology.
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Yeah, and that's absolutely right because even now, because we
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are in a very evolving, technologically evolving environment, if we
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look at reports, for example, for the Work Economic Forum,
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they recently had a report that specified that the skills
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for the future, we don't know what the jobs are
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going to look like ten years from now. Possibly a
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lot of the roles that we have right now are
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going to be extinct or new roles will come in.
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But when it came to specific skill building, AI of
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course was one of them, but it wasn't necessarily like
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on the top five the top five were a area
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or the top ten where empathy, critical thinking, communication, working
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with others. So those are the skills that in the
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age of AI or the visually changing environment, those are
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the skills that are humans. We need to become better
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at working on those critical skills.
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One hundred percent agree, my dear. It's amazing. You know,
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both of us are working in a similar space, So
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of course I agree with us, and that's a lot
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of the work that I do. Okay, So for those
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listeners and viewers that are listening to this maybe by
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accident based on this and they didn't intend to learn
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about self skills, I think it would be useful to
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compare in contrast here. So just for if you could
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describe a manager's results and effectiveness without these kinds of skills,
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So what does that look like? How would we know
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that's who we're dealing with alongside somebody else who really
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does have those skills. So if you could kind of
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paint the picture of those two different managers without and
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with soft skills.
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Absolutely, and it's a great way to frame it like
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the either or side because for example, with managers that
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may not be necessarily focusing too much on the soft
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skills side, they could be very process driven. They could
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be just going into a team and telling them like,
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this is the process, this is what you follow, without
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necessarily taking into consideration what are the specific skills for
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those team members that they want to they need to develop,
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or what are those things that the teams really want
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to work with the team members. So managers with that
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doesn't focus on that is very process driven, well, you
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will have on the other hand, if a manager really
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focuses on those on the aspect of the people, meaning
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that understanding that they as a manager, you have the
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people to do the work and that you need to
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give them the support in order to be able to
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execute better, to provide a better product. That it is
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very important to do that first part of connecting, which
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is one part of the framework that I discussed in
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the book, very important as a manager to connect first
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with the team, understand what are the strengths, what are
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their weaknesses as well, and or to have that self
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awareness as a manager to know what are the areas
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that we as managers need help to improve. That's a
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very important factor. Another one will be that if a
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manager that doesn't focus on the soft skill side may
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consider themselves that they may have a lot of knowledge
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on a specific area or that they have the solution
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for a particular problem, we don't necessarily understanding how to
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use the collective knowledge of the team to solve the problem.
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To help them, give them a framework to be able
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to collaborate effectively, to have good meetings that actually are
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good meetings that people want to attend, that are meetings
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that people come up with creative solutions. So you could have.
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If a manager doesn't necessarily focus on those specific areas
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of how can I reimprove my meetings, how can I
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really get the best out of my team, then they
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will probably not have the same results. And also a
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manager that may not necessarily be focusing on seft skills
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is also a person that may not be willing to
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learn from mistakes or cultivate a culture of continuous learning
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of mentorship. A manager that does have that awareness and
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have cultivate those skills, they are able to create an
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environment that is a that is healthy to have conflict
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within the team, that the team stops and reflects on
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what they're doing, and that also it's not just embracing
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failure necessarily, but that we can learn from it. That's
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the main difference is in between a manager that's process driven,
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skill set, the focus on on the job, but not
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taking into consideration how do we enrich that cultivating the
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skills of the team and creating the space for the
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team to thrive, and they don't realize that they will
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have better results. That way.
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Very well articulated, and I think it helps services and
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viewers start to recognize just how much room there is
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for all of us to grow absolutely not necessarily become
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well rounded per se because I think that's a little
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bit an outdated phrase, but to be able to have