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People skills are much harder to improve than any other kind of skill. This is true for two reasons. First, people skills are the most complex behavior patterns we have. They allow us to respond emotionally and logically to unpredictable relationship situations. These behaviors are nearly impossible to comprehend, because every person does them a little bit differently. So connecting the pathways involved in a people skill is a much bigger project than learning a sport, technical or business-specific skill. Second, and even more important, when it comes to people skills, we’re not talking about learning them for the first time. We’re talking about changing the way we’ve been doing them for a long, long time. This is a huge problem because every newly hired employee shows up for work with a full set of people skills. People learn these skills in life, not in a classroom. They began practicing them a long, long time ago, actually during the first year of life, and as they grew up they mastered these skills “on the street,” so to speak, by interacting with friends, parents, teachers, coaches and other role models. They found out what works for them, and eventually these behaviors became their way of dealing with people. So people skills are deeply ingrained. Think about it: the process of reinforcing these behaviors has been going on for decades. So every adult already has a full set of people skills, and some of these behavior patterns may be quite effective. But in most cases, some of the ways people deal with others causes problems in the workplace. That’s why organizations so desperately need good leader and team development programs. People skill behavior patterns aren’t easily changed, to say the least. And yet, it’s important to try to improve them. If it’s your job to lead others, you have to interact effectively with others. You need the best people skills you can get. But learning new ways of dealing with people is like building an Interstate highway. Say the road you’ve been using is old, indirect and bumpy. But it’s the only route you’ve ever known…it’s how you get from Point X to Point Y. Sure, once the new, super-fast thru-way is finished, you’ll be glad you have it, and you’ll probably use it all the time. But what if you have to construct this expressway yourself! Somebody told you what to do and how to do it, but building a new way of getting from X to Y is really hard work and will take a long time. You may give it your best effort, but along the way, you’ll experience failures and setbacks. It’ll be frustrating. It’ll seem as if no one is supporting you in this reconstruction effort. The new way won’t be ready for high-speed traffic, but you’ll still have to get from X to Y. Who’d blame you if you gave up on the project and decided to use your old, familiar route? To further illustrate, I like to use the example of learning how to hit an effective serve in tennis. What if you had taught yourself how to hit a serve years before and had been using that clunky serve ever since. Now that you’re fortunate enough to get lessons from Jimmy Connors, he’s telling you that you’ll get much better results by serving the ball a different way. Learning to do a skill differently is harder than learning something for the first time. The problem is, you already know how to hit a serve. You already have the neural pathways. Your old way may not work very well, but it’s your way of doing things. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. It’s there for you. At first, trying the new way will be so uncomfortable that you won’t be able to do it right. This awkward phase will persist long after your training sessions, so when you feel frustrated and discouraged, you’ll be tempted to fall back on what’s comfortable. But if you don’t keep practicing through the discomfort, if you stop doing what your teacher has advised you to do, you’ll never master the improved skill. You’ll conclude that it’s “too hard” and return to your old, comfortable way of doing things. This is what commonly happens to people when they try to change the way they behave in leadership and team interaction, involving skills which are a whole lot more difficult than hitting a tennis ball. Weeks after the training and without any kind of follow-up program, the new skills will still feel unfamiliar and won’t bring consistently positive results. Ultimately, most participants conclude that it’s too hard to get there from here and go back to doing what’s comfortable.
Article Source: http://www.articledestination.com
Dennis E. Coates is CEO of Performance Support Systems, author of MindFrames, a brain-based personality assessment system (www.initforlife.com) and co-founder of the Train-to-Ingrain alliance (www.train-to-ingrain.com, info@train-to-ingrain.com, 800-488-6463), which delivers a reinforcement-centered approach to learning and development that achieves permanent, measurable improvements in workplace behavior and positive impacts on business results.
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