Soft skills essential for career success
LEADERSHIP is fundamentally about mastering soft skills as organisational success ultimately depends on people, says Adam Gordon, director of executive education at Wits Business School.
“Of course it always has, but these skills are becoming more important in the modern world of business. Essentially, in the knowledge economy, what you know, have learnt and are prepared to learn are your key resources.”
He says that most professionals start off being hired for their hard skills, but as they move up the ranks and become responsible for groups of people, the job is more about motivating employees, talking to clients and deal making. And those are the skills they wouldn’t necessarily have gained en route.
“Those things aren’t always inherent,” he says. “You don’t have to look very far to see how few people have adequate leadership ability.”
As opposed to general short courses, executive education is aimed at the development of junior, middle and senior managers while they are in their careers.
Wits offers a suite of programmes adapted to the African context. The courses are either customised for companies or are for open public involvement, with a high demand for general management skills training.
“There is a massive shortage of these skills in South Africa today. There is an elite cadre who has them, but most managers desperately need strategic mechanisms for them to make decisions and keep ahead of competitors.”
The value of short courses, Gordon says, is that one can pick up what you need when you need it. Getting a qualification, such as a degree, is a long-term investment, which may give you some of what you require, but professionals need to constantly grow what they know and adapt it accordingly.
More often than not, this means speedily too.
Doing an executive course assumes that delegates have work experience and prior learning, but candidates do not need to have a degree to complete one.
“We have a fair number of junior managers, and they don’t need an enormous amount of work experience. We are also in the process of finding ways to articulate between short courses and qualifications – so that a short course could be used as a credit towards a degree.”
On the cost, he says: “Executive education is never cheap. If it is, you can be sure that it comes from a bottom feeder. It is an investment, and the proof is in the pudding. People keep coming back.”
The Wits courses, especially senior programmes, are run on the basis that there is “not one source of truth” but rather that it is about what everybody knows. Most of the delegates have insights they can share. While there is an expert in the room, peer-to-peer learning is very strong. “They all want air time,” says Gordon.
He believes that education, like all industries, is being creatively disrupted by technology, which has led to the explosion of massive open online courses (Moocs).
But in terms of more senior, smaller groups where “real interactions” take place, the disruption – at least in South Africa which is about 10 years behind as far at the internet goes – is unlikely.
“The jury is still out on Moocs and the online MBA from Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina is one of the top ranking in the world, but I don’t think you can get what we, or our closest competitors, offer online,” says Gordon.