You might have met those people at least once in your lifetime – people who are little rough around the edges, who might seriously need some sort of social skills and who we wonder how they ever manage to make it through a day without getting into problems with someone. All because they lack basic behavioral skills.
It turns out, these behavioral skills might not be as simple as we think they should be yet they are essential business skills. It’s a complex set of skills that need every bit of nuance in their usage because they’re used in complex situations in interactions with other human beings. While one might be able to get away with poor behavioral skills to a certain extent in regular life, it’s totally a different matter altogether in the project management environment.
Good behavioral skills are important to the success of every project. Its for just such reasons that organizations invest in training programs for their project teams.
Relational Personality
To begin with, it just helps to have a personality that is very friendly to people and enjoy interacting with other people. Some people might be so anti-social and reserved that they come across as having zero personality.
Patience and Understanding
Once in a while, you might come across a person with a short fuse. This indeed can be an issue as no one wants to risk conflict with the person fearing a potential backlash. Such an attitude can be a drain on the energy of a whole project team. Organizations want people who are easy to work with, easy to speak to, can easily mingle with others and has patience and understanding.
Politeness and Courtesy
Usually, good social etiquette can be displayed without a word being spoken to someone. This is usually done through mannerisms and respectful gestures. Using the right tone and language, talking politely, maintaining eye contact and smiling are some of the most important and basic elements of behavioral skills that one must have.
Being respectful of people’s personal space, and expressing general courtesy will be appreciated by everyone. People with such characteristics not only develop a good relationship with team members, but also create a positive vibe among people they communicate with.
Having an Open Door Policy
You must establish an open door policy on your project and promote communication with your team. If the project manager is not available or inaccessible to team memebers, they can feel that their opinions are not considered to be important. The project manager should strive to encourage team members to voice their opinions. When you are the project manager then you should spend time listening to team members if you want to form a positive workplace culture.
Making the Workplace More Engaging
As project leader, you must engage your team so keep them up – to – date with new changes that are relevant to them. Also be open and honest with your team.
Appreciate Your Team for the Efforts They Put in for the Company
It is important to encourage and appreciate your team for putting in hard work for the benefit of the company. Employees who are not identified and valued for a certain skill or work they do might feel de-motivated and their efforts could decline with time. One good thing to do is to establish a reward system to thank and appreciate the people who have done their job well.
Getting Corporate Training
Training programs can be crafted specifically for the purpose of developing and enhancing social skills and also making them more compatible with the current culture of the organization. If you are a project manager and want to track your team’s behavioral skills, then opt for Project Management tools like Quickscrum, to track basically everything from the project they are working currently to the clients they will be working with.
Conclusion
These training programs equip staff with the skill sets to steer their work better and they can also explain and control clients more effectively. And when people work better, it will reflect in profits, revenues and client satisfaction. You get more business and your client goes on to become your brand advocate.