Serious Soft Skills (Dr. Tobin Porterfield & Bob Graham: Soft Skills Experts)

Paying attention to details can help an individual, the team and the organization. Yet most of us struggle with this important soft skill. Learn why it matters and how to do it better in this episode of Serious Soft Skills.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore the many important benefits of paying attention to details.

Among the topics they cover:

1. Who benefits from our attention to detail
2. What happens when we don’t pay attention to details
3. How to pay attention to details more effectively
4. Eight hints for better paying attention to details

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE

Bob Graham: In this week's episode, we're going to talk about paying attention to detail. That's right. Paying attention to all that little stuff that sometimes drives us crazy with what matters and how to be better about it. All that and more, coming up in just a few seconds.

Welcome to Series Soft Skills. We're here to help you unleash the power of soft skills with Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham. We write books, conduct academic research and are working on vehicles like this podcast to help people better understand soft skills.

Can you set us up here?

Dr. Tobin Porterfield: I can, but I have to say the same thing is that we always talk about soft skills and how you need to develop a strategy to ensure when you're hiring into your team that you hire new people with soft skills that can fill gaps in your own soft skill list. Companies have failed miserably at this.

I'm sure we'll get some feedback from some of our listeners and folks who read our ebook and say, "Hey, you guys clearly are not experts in this detail thing because I see some errors here and there." It's humbling, 

We have some people in our circle who are very detail oriented and are able to help us with a lot of those gaps. But you and I can get so so engaged in the big picture and all, understanding the goal we're trying to reach, that some of the details can get lost and that can create a almost an embarrassing situation, where there's errors. If there's oversight and someone from the outside might looking go how can you even talk about this item or or provide this report and had made of you know this type of a mistake, it's clear that you don't know what you're doing and that's not always the case.

It's a a person who may be quite the expert in an area but failed to pay attention to detail. So I think there is hope for us and others who don't always catch all the details and I think we can cover some of those things and ways to combat that in this episode.

Graham: Just to be really clear at the beginning, paying attention to detail does not mean that there will not be mistakes. It just means that there are fewer mistakes. Every organization, every employee, every person is going to make mistakes and I think when I see we first started talking about the attention to detail with myself, I read it to be no mistakes, eliminate all mistakes. That's a popular misconception that we should probably just get out in the open. That's not what we're saying here.

What we're really saying, in my mind, is we're trying to minimize mistakes and minimize opportunities to make repeated mistakes. Does that sounds sort of logical to you?

Porterfield: I agree and I think there's the that parallel. I think it manifests itself in mistakes, but also it's that combination between the tactical and strategic. The strategic is the big picture. Somebody though needs the detailed plan of how we're going to get there so it's connecting those two things together. I often work with colleagues who clearly have the vision or have the direction of what we want to do, but they're lost in what details what would be required really to get that done. And if they attempted to do it themselves, I know that they would forget all of these steps. Will this person need to be contacted and you had to update this document and and so there are some important things that have to be done and it they can often be overlooked. I think that's part of the details they often say that old adage, the devil's in the details.

I think that's what they're referring to is that you really can fail to accomplish what you had set out to do because you weren't aware of all of the details, the the finer points of what had to be done in order to accomplish it . So you're talking about the steps in the process so a strategic person's thinking we want to accomplish acts to achieve the big goal.

Graham: There's gotta be someone, whether it's that person or someone else who's got to say A. B. C. D. E. F. G. in this sequence will lead us to that objective. Is that correct?

Porterfield: That's my view on it and and I agree with what you're saying also when it comes to making mistakes is also kind of fits well with that and like many soft skills, this also overlap some with the soft skill that we describe as project management skills because project management is all about combining that scope of what we're trying to accomplish and in making sure you've got an excusable plan to get there. This one of the kind of combines that and I think when we frame it as a soft skill, we are trying to remind people that it's everyone's responsibility to be aware that there are details and that they do need to be addressed. And how we address them, sometimes it's bringing someone alongside of you that can check things and make sure and run it past them. Sometimes, it's mapping out a vision and even bringing a group together, then mapping it out on the whiteboard to say this is what we're trying to get there. Hey don't forget we need to do this and and who's going to take it that means we quickly can figure out the path. 

It also brings up another one of our soft skills. We can delegate some of those activities to the appropriate person, who can manage. Some things we need more attention to detail for and some need less. We can determine when we need more and we can also see it as a differentiator among employees. 

Graham: Well, I have a situation that I actually have run into. I'm going to change it a little bit so it doesn't damage me, but this goes way back in my career. A manager receives a report on monthly statistics from an employee and that manager is pressed for time. The report needs to go up the ladder to her boss and her boss's boss so she doesn't check those numbers. She just passes them along without looking closely. Next thing you know, a few hours later, she finds out from one of her bosses that there was a really egregious mistake in there. 

We see this happening all the time and I know when it happened to me as the employee, it real eroded trust with my boss in the short term. She thinks, Bob, I count on you to do these things. Why wasn't this done correctly? 

We get to the idea of trust as you're building teams. If everyone's paying attention to detail, your team's going to probably flourish more so than when there's a constant need to go back and check work. Who wants to spend time figuring out if he did everything he said he was going to do.

The more we can spend our time as a team looking at the big picture, the better we can be. I agree and I love that team focus. If I had my team where I wanted them to be acting as a group, they would certainly start with a recognition of the importance of the details and that failure to address the details will result in not fully accomplishing or end up causing us a lot of additional work in the long run. So having a team that recognizes it and each addressing it in their own way means they are going to be more able and skilled at doing that than others. But everyone's recognition of it and then knowing that is key. As I put this together, before I send it around the entire group, I'm going to send it to one or two people to just double-check and see if I'm missing any major points.

So getting getting conscious of enough that they can solve problems and also rely on others to provide some feedback, it is finding the people the team that are some sort of backstop who can guard us from ourselves. 

Graham: That's really critical so in our case with you and me. You started keeping a list of what we agree to what our weekly meetings, which has really made me pay attention to detail because I can't forget it because it's on a sheet of paper that you email to me. So finding things like that is one strategy. 

But Toby we should probably take a break because I've got some other hints for how people can be a little better detail oriented.

Porterfield: Welcome back. We've been talking about details details details and how important they are to teams. Bob, we want to get kind of a more application oriented here. You have some helpful hints on not letting those details get past us.

Graham; I came up with a list from my own experience in talking to a couple of people. These are not any great order but they're sort of some of the things that when I'm on my game and paying attention to detail I'm following. The first one is keep a list. I know that sounds really elementary and many people say oh I can keep it in my head. I'm fine. But that's really easier said than done and I find one of the ways that help I can sleep at night, believe it or not, is to actually write a list of what I'm going to do the next day before I go to bed. If I don't have that list, I roll around in bed thinking about all the things I have to do because I know that paying attention to detail can be a challenge for me.

The second thing is create a schedule and stick to it. So if you check your email at 9:00 every morning, do that at 9:00 every morning you're gonna check your email and that's built to your schedule. And if you need to do something else -- exercise for me is one of those things -- I try to schedule it into my day to make sure that I do it because otherwise, it falls off that list. That's part of the attention to detail.

The next thing is probably the most foolish one and the most logical on at the same time. Avoid distractions. Now that is not the easiest thing for me and distractions come from things that are essential that you have to deal with. Someone comes and says we need to deal with this problem right now. But what I'm talking about is the distractions of listening to music or watching TV while you're working or goofing off with your friends when you really should be working. I find that when I make mistakes, it's often when I'm distracted by something out of the ordinary so closing my door and focusing on my work tends to help me with avoiding distractions and being more focused on details.

Another one that we deal with that has really come on the last 10-20 years is the idea we all think that we can multi-task, which is doing two things at one time. There's a great deal research now that says that's just impossible; you can only focus your mind on one thing at a time. So figure out what that focus is going to be, focus on that one thing, get it done and then move to the next thing.

I mentioned exercise. Believe it or not, there's research that shows that exercise will actually help build your concentration and your attention to detail so getting regular exercise gets the brain working and the synapses firing so that's real good and then conversely, believe it or not, it's good to take breaks. We tend not to be real effective when we work for long periods of time. The Perreto Rule is 25 minutes of hard work and then take a five minute break. You can look that up. 

Then the last one I would give, Toby, would be don't beat yourself up when you don't pay attention to details. I'm a perfectionist; every mistake I made is a major incident in my mind and I find that when I can get away from that just say you know what I made a mistake what and build a system to recover from that so when I do wrong, I try to find where the breakdown is and how to fix that breakdown. That's when I find that I'm actually more successful going forward and I think you told me you liked my list because you saw a preview. But you want to add one or two to it.

Porterfield: I want to add number eight because I knew this is where I get myself into trouble and it fits with some of things you're talking talking about. But let me get out a little more specific. For me, I really have to allow time for drafts and revisions and proofreading. I find that if I'm working on a two o'clock deadline I will have everything mapped out a be working and I always fall behind because there was a piece of data I needed. Then I have to go get it and sure enough I deliver the product at two o'clock as promised out in the email. And I immediately get a feat a response from someone saying I forgot to attach something or I forgot to change the date. If I had just finished it an hour earlier and sent it out to those couple people, asking them to take a look at it before I send it out, then everyone wouldn't see there's anything glaring that I'm overlooking. So I get so tied up to my deadlines and and people will probably say about me all yeah he always makes his deadlines, but if I pressed a little harder, they'll say a yeah there's so many times you know he needs to redo it. We find something in these to be fixed and and so I really have to map into my timeframe to include having time to send it out and allow that person whatever time they need to look at it and provide some additional input. So that goes into the scheduling and the avoiding distractions.

Graham: It sounds to me like your task might be remember time for revision and build that into your schedule.

I think we've given some people some helpful hints. We've put a face on one of the soft skills that people tend to overlook. Next week we're going to discuss another the soft skills complying with standards, which is when the people fear will be boring, but we're going to make it come to life. Until then, thanks for listening, good day and good soft skills.

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Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham will tackle the soft skill of complying with standards. Sounds boring, right? Well, they’re going to make it interesting. We promise. 

Among the topics they will discuss this week are:

• Why complying with standards is a soft skill
• The difference between internal and external standards
• Written and unwritten standards
• How the subprime mortgage industry breaking key rules caused a financial collapse
• When standards need to be challenged or questioned
• How time can require the need to evaluate old standards
• When to question standards
• The expectations that organizations have about complying with standards
• How organizational culture can help with complying with standards

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Being focused on the client, whoever that is — both internal and external to the organization — is a critical component of any successful business and a soft skill that we need to understand and incorporate into any business. 

Co-hosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore client focus from two different perspectives — one looking at external customers and the other looking at internal customers. It's sure to help you better work with whatever clients you have, no matter what your business.

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Podcast 43: Can Manage Multiple Projects

People think that being a good multi-tasker, something research says is impossible, means you are able to manage multiple projects. Most employees need to be able to manage different projects at the same time, meeting deadlines and working with others, to be effective.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham dig into this important soft skills. Among the topics they discuss:

• The difference between multi-tasking and managing multiple projects
• Why we believe multi-tasking works
• Technology’s role
• Are we using our time more effectively?
• How to get ahead of multiple projects
• What to do when things are not being well managed
• Why looking at the Big Picture too much hurts being able to manage multiple projects.
• A real example of managing a project to ensure it can be managed with other projects
• How computers switch better than humans
• Blocking out your day to ensure projects are managed well
• More tips for ensuring you can juggle multiple projects
• The other soft skills incorporated into managing multiple projects
• Addressing the fact that things may go wrong once in a while

Next week

We will be looking at the role of storytelling. While not a soft skill, storytelling plays a huge role in being effective in a job search and in being successful in work situations.

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Today’s episode isn’t about writing the Great American Novel, but rather how we incorporate the powerful aspects of storytelling into how we explain our work and our ideas so we connect emotionally .

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore this important aspect of success, looking at it helps us at interviews, in meetings and when working with any other group. Storytelling can work in any situation where we talk about our work.

Among the topics they cover in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills podcast are:

• Defining how storytelling fits into explaining ourselves
• Making an idea “sticky”
• How widely this approach can be used
• The value of storytelling in a meeting as simple as a daily or weekly status meeting
• The right preparation for storytelling to succeed
• Understanding our audience’s needs
• Why less is more in some cases and why more can be valuable at other times
• Self-editing our stories to meet specific needs
• Why writing the story out in advance or developing great themes and plot lines won’t work
• Building the story from two or three key elements or takeaway you want the audience to learn from your story
• Planting words to make things sticky
• Sticky versus stinky
• How to prepare for an interview to ensure you’re sticky
• Making experiences become sticky through storytelling
• Developing an emotional connection
• Real examples of how storytelling can make us look better to employers and others
• How anecdotes and stories about what you do in a job can help others understand the value you can bring to their organization
• Going from a worker to a worker who did important work
• Finding stories to explain how our skills can be transferrable

Next week

We’ll delve into another one of the 55 soft skills in an episode coming out Wednesday.

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Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore the soft skills of adapting knowledge to new situations, what it means and how it helps build teams and careers. 

Among the topics they discuss are:

• How companies are relying more on people who can apply knowledge to solve new problems
• Why this soft skill is so important to company growth
• What other soft skills are included in this ability
• Employers want people with new ideas, not the same old perspectives they already have
• How successfully applying it can make someone a team leader, intentionally or unintentionally
• Why compensation and opportunity follow good adapters
• An example of adapting to the new situation of tariffs on products coming from China
• A five-step process for applying knowledge to new situations
• We can draw on others’ experiences to help us adapt to new situations
• How multiple sourcing can help us find better solutions
• Drawing on relationships and those we trust

Next week

We will explore the soft skill of being able to work independently or with minimal supervision.

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This week’s Serious Soft Skills podcast explores the soft skill of working independently, or with minimal supervision, and how it fosters better teams and trust.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham, authors of The 55 Soft Skills That Guide Employee and Organizational Success, talk about a variety of aspects of this soft skill, including:

Letting go of micromanagement

The idea of ownership of projects and knowing when to share a project or take it to completion ourselves

Strategies for ensuring independence and appropriate intervention

The tug-pf-war between independence and either delegating or drawing on others

Independence varies by role and by supervisory style

Where entrepreneurs can overcome inherent independence to ensure greater success

The power of proper delegation

How we can take monkeys and push them away to get work done

Working with minimal supervision

How to ensure that minimal supervision yields maximum results

How more meetings may enable greater employee independence

Does your organization or team need help in putting soft skills to work for them? We want to help you. We do webinars and workshops, online, on the phone and in person, to help teams become more successful. If you or someone you know could use our help, contact us at podcast@serioussoftskills.com today. Or call 937-SKILLS5.

Next week

Next week, we will explore the soft skill of being able to work under pressure. Relax, we will make it easy. Look for new episodes every Wednesday. 

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47: The One Paperback Soft Skills Book You Have to Read

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham celebrate the long-awaited release of the paperback version of The 55 Soft Skills That Guide Employee and Organizational Success and explain how reading it will help anyone who works.

Among the topics they discuss in this short episode are:

How they came up with all 55 soft skills

Their surprise at how many soft skills employees use

The logic of the book

Where employees and leaders can benefit from reading the book

How to get the book

Want to buy our book, The 55 Soft Skills That Guide Employee and Organizational Success? Visit Amazon.

Next week

We will go back to our list of 55 soft skills to explain how another one of them works and why it matters in the workplace.

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Positive outcomes derive from a positive attitude, but why do we say that, and what do we do when we don’t have a positive attitude at times. We’ll tackle that saying and how to maintain a positive attitude in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore a variety of topics related to the soft skill of having positive attitude.

Among the topics they address are:

• What if we bring a negative attitude to a situation
• The negative effects of creating a hero among teams
• “Faking it until you make it”
• Pushing forward despite stumbles
• Moving past problems
• Confidence in myself and my team
• Finding ways to overcome challenges
• Being honest and open and how to leads to trust among team members
• How sparks and cobbled together ideas can fuel better outcomes
• Naysayers never get promoted
• Not falling into the unrealistic and non-optimistic perspective

Tips for keeping or restoring your positive attitude

1.Set realistic goals and recognize when you achieve them

2.Don't let setbacks dig into you

3.Be grateful – we all need others to succeed

4.Smile

5.Sleep well and eat well

6.Laugh at yourself

7.Populate your life with positive people

8. Don’t get stuck in the weeds

Next week

We will look at the complicated soft skills of understanding the ethical implications of our decisions. 

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Whether we know it or not, our actions usually align with our ethics, and people with good ethics tend to be trusted and respected more than those whose ethical decision making is questionable. We are going to look at the ethical implications of decisions we make in this weeks’ episode of the Serious Soft Skills podcast. 

Among the topics cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss are:

A definition of ethics and how it applies to work

The value of virtue

How questionable ethics can erode trust of team members

Questioning cripples progress

The societal effect on our ethics

Are ethics black and white?

The Golden Rule

Short-term versus long-term benefits and how they relate to ethics

The personal nature of ethics

How our ethics set a tone for an organization

Tips for Good Ethics at Work

1. Don’t be deceived by short-term benefits
2. Matching your ethics to your organization’s ethics

A good book on ethical decision-making, The Power of Ethical Management by Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale, with three guiding questions on ethics

1. Is it legal?  

2. Is it balanced?  

3. How will it make me feel about myself? Unethical acts erode self-esteem. 

Next week

We will talk to Mike Shelah, an expert at LinkedIn on how soft skills play into that social media platform, as well as networking in general. New episodes come out every Wednesday.

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Mike Shelah, an expert and early advocate for LinkedIn’s ability to connect people for business, shares his wisdom on LinkedIn, networking and soft skills in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills podcast.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham are joined by Mike Shelah, head of Shelah Consulting (http://mikeshelah.com) for a discussion of the following:

• How to use LinkedIn to make quality connections
• What not to do on LinkedIn
• How to gain permission to ask
• Mike’s formula for using LinkedIn effectively
• What soft skills come into play
• Examples of good networking 
• Tips for being a better networker

Also, Mike talks about a side project, Pathfinders for Autism (http://pathfindersforautism.org), where he serves as a board member and helps families like his own who have children who have autism.

Next week

We look at cultural awareness and why its importance only grows in our current workplace. New episodes every Wednesday.

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A growing list of cultural differences -- from generational to technological skills, from social and political, to religious and lifestyle differences -- are realities in today’s workplace. In this episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast, we will discuss what being culturally aware means and how to avoid being culturally unaware.

Among the topics Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss in this episode:

• Dealing with diversity in the workplace and how it affects performance, innovation and meeting customers’ needs
• The example in computers and how they look differently for a 60 year old vs. a 20 year old
• Why we need to try to see the world more broadly than only through our own eyes
• How opportunities are lost when we go blindly or avoid situations
• Awareness of where diversity issues arises is the first step
• When we put people in a place of being an outsider and how it hurts us
• Something as simple as food can raise issues or diffuse them
• How Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence set the stage, but does not full cover cultural awareness
• Individual and organizational responsibility for recognizing and leveraging people’s differences
• How mentoring and one-on-one interactions, and even our peers, can help us become more adept
• Finding similarities can overcome great challenges

Hints for Being More Culturally Aware

1. Avoid doing anything that could marginalizing one or more individuals.
2. Ensure your organization is setting a tone for inclusion
3. Engage in self-reflection to become better (see Episode 14)

Next week

Serious Soft Skills will celebrate its first anniversary with a look at the last year, what’s coming up for us in the new year and a celebration. 

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We celebrate our first anniversary of the podcast with a celebration, with lessons learned, and even some hints of what’s in the pipeline for the podcast and soft skills on this week’s Serious Soft Skills podcast.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss the following:

• What they didn’t expect about podcasting
• How they and the podcast has evolved over the year
• Why the podcast is so topical
• What the Soft Skills Revolution is
• How soft skills fit in with technical skills
• More soft skills in more ways

Next Week

We will be discussing the emergence of cobots and what they mean for soft skills. It’s cutting edge and you won’t want to miss it. New episodes come out every Wednesday.

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Cobots, robots working collaborating with people to accomplish specific tasks like deep tissue massage and other tasks, and what they mean for soft skills are our topic this week.

Among the topics cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham talk about this week include”

• How robots learn tasks
• How robots are learning new steps and the latest in robot technology
• Robots are becoming a bigger part of the job world
• How new technology is changing our soft skills
• Examples of when soft skills exceed the capabilities of a robot
• Why humans will always be needed

Next week

Another soft skill will land front and center in our discussion. See which one every Wednesday.

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In this episode we launch The Soft Skills Revolution. We discuss why it matters, what it means and how you can help. 

• Among the topics cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss are:
• *Why the soft skills revolution must occur
• *How a successful revolution would change the workplace.

Join the revolution at TheSoftSkillsRevolution.com.

Next week

Why hiring is all wrong and what soft skills could do to help it. New episodes every Wednesday.

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A Forbes.com article, How to Hire the Right People to Help Your Organization Success by Sally Percy, suggests that employers are undervaluing soft skills, which seems silly in this low-unemployment business climate. We will discuss the technical skills fixation and why it hurts employers in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast.

Among the topics cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss are:

• Why focusing on technical skills is comfortable, but difficult to enable proper hiring.
• Why combining technical skills and soft skills is the key to business success
• How employers have become lazy when it comes to soft skills
• Job qualifiers and job winners
• Why employers need to get past the fishing expedition in using soft skills to hire
• How hiring with a soft-skills focus helps create a better cultural fit

Next week

We explore one of the more complicated soft skills: accepting criticism. New episodes every Wednesday.

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Accepting criticism can take the wind out of our sails and hurt our ability to advance in our careers, relationships and in life. We will discuss this complicated soft skill and give hints for delivering and responding to it better in this week’s episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham talk about a number of important issues, including:

• Why the soft skill of accepting criticism can be difficult to hear
• How accepting criticism can benefit us and our development
• What happens when we don’t accept criticism
• Helping you versus hurting you with criticism
• When to discount people’s criticism
• Filtering out the good criticism and retaining ownership
• Finding people to trust and value who give you constrictive feedback
• How to give constructive criticism
• When to table someone’s criticism 
• “The Sandwich Method” of criticism
• When a cooling off period pays off for everyone  
• Preventing criticism from paralyzing us 
• Why organizations need to integrate feedback and criticism into their operations to become better
• Making a case for writing down suggestions, rather than speaking them 

Next week

We will address another soft skill and its implications. New episodes come out every Wednesday

Have you joined The Soft Skills Revolution?

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A willingness to learn is a powerful tool that recognizes that the processes, software and techniques that you know are just the foundation for your success. 

Among the topics cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss are:

• How changes in the workplace necessitate the need to be willing to learn
• How do you tease out a willingness to learn in an application
• Employers want to see a willingness to learn
• Curiosity is key
• Hints for learning new things to promote your professional benefit  

Next Week

We will look at another soft skill, dealing with ambiguity. New episodes every Wednesday.

Join The Soft Skills Revolution at SoftSkillsRevolution.com

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Bob Graham, cohost of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast, explains how doing your homework on a job search makes a huge difference in your results.

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The world is changing faster and faster. What seemed clear yesterday may not be clear today and who knows what tomorrow will bring? Dealing with ambiguity is not just a soft skill but a necessity in today’s workplace. We will discuss dealing with ambiguity and even give some hints for how to handle it.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss the following topics:

• Life isn’t predictable and it can get boring
• How clock speed affects our ability to succeed
• Dealing with not knowing
• Decisions have consequences and making bad decisions can be costly. 

A few hints for how we can ensure that we can deal with ambiguity.

1. Accept that ambiguity is real. Easy choices don’t always exist. 
2. Keep a compass. Know what you are trying to accomplish and keep true to it.
3. Call in the reinforcements. Find people and other sources of information and support that are solid no matter what else is happening.
4. Heed the signs. When things appear to be faltering, recognize it and react. 

That’s it for this episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast. Look for new episodes every Wednesday. And if you liked what you heard today or in another episode, then give us a great review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Share our podcast with someone you know. And by all means, go to TheSoftSkillsRevolution.com and join our revolution. We want to change the world’s view on soft skills and you can help us. 

Next week

We will explore why we are leading The Soft Skills Revolution.

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People ask us all the time how we got into soft skills so today, we’re going to explain how each of us came to this place and why we know soft skills are so important. All that and more in a few seconds.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss:

• Their individual paths toward leading the soft skills revolution
• Why they feel compelled to lead this charge
• Examples from their lives, including one from supply chain work, where soft skills made all the difference

If you liked what you heard today or in another episode, then give us a great review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Share our podcast with someone you know.

And by all means, go to TheSoftSkillsRevolution.com and join our revolution. We want to change the world’s view on soft skills and you can help us. 

Next week

We will look at another one of the soft skills. New episodes are posted every Wednesday.

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Relationships are at the core of all business these days, so our ability to manage them is paramount if we are going to be successful in practically any job.

In today’s episode, cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss:

1. How changes in the work world necessitate building more relationships
2. How to manage relationships
3. Examples of well managed and poorly managed relationships
4. The benefits of managing relationships with workers, former colleagues, bosses and others

Here are some hints for better managing business relationships:

• Make amends. If you have a bad business relationship, fix it. Now. 
• Scroll through your phone contacts every week or two. I sometimes see someone's contact information that I haven't talked to and have called or emailed them right away. Everything happens for a reason.
• Find beneficial ways to interact. I like to send articles to people that I think they might find valuable. They seem to like it. It shows I am thinking of them, and it's easy enough to send an article.
• Just say hey. Sometimes it's great to hear from someone who you haven't heard from in a while. I had a former coworker who I helped mentor contact me recently out of the blue. She told me she missed “my first mentor.” It made my day. 
• Use LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. It allows me to know what other people are up to, to be able to contact them when they change jobs or locations and it's all free. I like to see who is celebrating birthdays, job anniversaries or whatever else. I respond often, and it pays off. Ten minutes in the morning or evening can yield great fruit with LinkedIn, or do it every Sunday night.
• Be grateful. If all else fails, contact someone at least once a week who has had a profound effect on your career and tell him or her that. Believe me, if that's where the conversation starts, it will end much better – for both of you.

Have you joined The Soft Skills Revolution at thesoftskillsrevolution.com? Why not? We are giving resources out for free to people interested in better understanding their soft skills. It's free and it's easy. Just provide your email and away you go. Nothing to buy or sell. Jut go to thesoftskillsrevolution.com.

Next Week

Next week, we will tackle another soft skill. New episodes come out each Wednesday. Until next week, thanks for listening, good day and good soft skills.

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Pressure is one of the realities in today's fast-paced business environment. To not be able to deal well with pressure is to practically guarantee you will be ineffective in performing your job. Today, we will discuss dealign with pressure and give some tips for handling pressure at work.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss:

• Finding the sweet spot in handling pressure
• The "Yerkes-Dodson Law" 
• Pressure and control

Some suggestions for dealing with stress:

1. Accept that stress is a part of life and work. Don't fight it. Don't complain about it. Just acknowledge it.
2. Anticipate stressors. If you know a deadline is coming, make sure you eat well, get a good night sleep and clear as much as possible in advance of that day.
3. Don't take on other people's stress. Different things cause each of us stress. Listen to others, but don't make someone else's stress yours.
4. Make time for daily stress-busting activities.  Taking a walk, deep breathing, meditation, journaling, exercise are among the strategies many people use to combat stress. 
5. Don't make stress worst than it is. Stress will come and go. Can you remember the stressors in your life two months or two years ago? Probably not. Just let them go.

Have you joined The Soft Skills Revolution? We are giving resources out for free to people interested in better understanding their soft skills. It's free and it's easy. Just provide your email and away you go. Nothing to buy or sell. Jut go to thesoftskillsrevolution.com.

Next week

Next week, we will tackle another soft skill. New episodes come out each Wednesday. Until next week, thanks for listening, good day and good soft skills.

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Teams cannot achieve results without teamwork, and we found an expert to talk about teamwork. Join us as special guest Michael G. Rogers, author of the bestselling business book, You Are the Team—6 Simple Ways Teammates Can Go from Good to Great.

Michael Roger’s is a 2014 Inc. magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker who is working on his second book, Heart Based Leadership, and his blog Teamwork and Leadership regularly ranks in the top 10 of leadership blogs and has a monthly following of more than 30,000 people. He is at MichaelGRogers.com.

In Part 1 of our two-part interview Serious Soft Skills Podcast Cohost Bob Graham speaks to Mike Rogers about a host of topics related to teamwork, including:

• Selfishness
• Lack of trust in teams
• Vulnerability
• Peer-to-peer accountability
• How sports works better than business at teamwork
• Creating a vision

To obtain Michael Roger’s book or to read his blog posts, visit MichaelGRogers.com.

Next week

Part 2 of our interview on teamwork with Michael Rogers. 

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In this episode, we air the second part of our interview with Michael Rogers, bestselling author of You Are the Team—6 Simple Ways Teammates Can Go from Good to Great.

Cohost Bob Graham interviews Michael, who is a consultant on teamwork and leadership and is working on his second business book, Heart Based Leadership. If you missed the first part of the interview, visit Episode 62.

In this episode, Bob and Michael discuss:

• The differences between teamwork and team building
• How to give and receive criticism
• One-on-one meetings to ensure a proper feedback loop
• His book on leadership

Next week

We will tackle the issue of how to accept compliments in a manner that encourages team success. New episodes every Wednesday.

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A listener suggests that we add accepting compliments as a soft skills since we have one that is accepting criticism in our list of 55 soft skills people can use in the workplace. The cohosts debate the merits of the suggestion in this episode.

In this episode, cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss the following:

• Why accepting compliments is important in business
• Why it matters
• Whether accepting compliments is a good addition to the soft skills list
• An alternative proposal
• A critique of The 55 Soft Skills That Guide Employee and Organizational Success ignites our own issues with accepting feedback
• A few hints for better accepting compliments 

Hints for Accepting Compliments

1. Acknowledge it.
2. Thank someone for the praise.
3. Don’t blow it off. Reflect it back.
4. Be someone who gives compliments so others will give it back to you.

Next Week

We will discuss the soft skills that go into successful selling with an expert, Keith Daw of Sandler Training in Baltimore, Maryland. New episodes every Wednesday.

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Bob Graham, cohost of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast, discusses how resilience and persistence come into play in his preparation for a half marathon and our business lives.

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So many of us are involved in selling, either as a career or for our ideas. We brought in an expert to talk about the role of soft skills in sales. This week Bob Graham is talking to Keith Daw, Vice President of Business Development and Trainer at Sandler Training in Baltimore, for a discussion on soft skills and sales. 

Keith Daw trains high-level executives on sales and training. He also is a strong advocate for the role of soft skills in business. Here is the first part of an interview Bob recently did with him.

Among the topics they discuss in this interview are:

• Where sales and soft skills intersect
• How good listening factors into sales
• Where empathy plays a role
• What sales is really based on

Keith Daw, Vice President of Business Development and Trainer at Sandler Training in Baltimore is McDonell Consulting Group, a Sandler Training operation, based in Towson, Maryland. More information is available at mcdonell.sandler.com. If you aren’t in Baltimore, Keith will find you a Sandler Training program near you, both in the U.S. and internationally. If you are in the Baltimore area, he has some free local events that our listeners are free to attend. Find out all about them at mcdonnell.sandler.com.

Next week, we will air the second part of Bob’s interview with Keith Daw, where they talk about presentation and an array of soft skills that go into dealing with other people in a sales situation. New episodes come out every Wednesday.

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Sales, whether of products and services or ideas, requires powerful presentation skills and Keith Daw, Vice President of Business Development and Trainer at Sandler Training in Baltimore, offers insights and tips for success.

Among the topics he discussed in an interview with cohost Bob Graham are:

• Where sales and presentation, one of the soft skills, intersect
• Tips and strategies for better presentations

Keith Daw, Vice President of Business Development and Trainer at Sandler Training in Baltimore is McDonell Consulting Group, a Sandler Training operation, based in Towson, Maryland. More information is available at mcdonell.sandler.com. If you aren’t in Baltimore, Keith will find you a Sandler Training program near you, both in the U.S. and internationally. If you are in the Baltimore area, he has some free local events that our listeners are free to attend. Find out all about them at mcdonnell.sandler.com.

Next week, another episode exploring one of the soft skills. New episodes come out every Wednesday.

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Dr. Tobin Porterfield, a soft skills expert, explains how a bad opening to a discussion can cripple the whole discussion.

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Dr. Tobin Porterfield interviews his co-host Bob Graham on two new offerings to help people get jobs. Graham has created a free webinar, Acing the Job Interview, which details exactly how to go about using a job interview to advance your chances of getting the job. It's available for free at http://serioussoftskills.com/acing

This course is perfect for people who are struggling to get hired, don't know what to say at a job interview, get nervous at the job interview, or want to be more in command at the job interview.

He also explains a new online course, Telling Stories to Get You Hired, that details a new way to go about getting employers interested in you, using stories that tell them exactly how you will fit into their growth plans. It's available at http://serioussoftskills.com/story

For other episodes of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast or the Soft Skills Minutes, visit https://shows.pippa.io/5ab11850f433bbaf533d003e

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There’s a lot of head scratching and complaining in most offices centered around a major difference we are seeing in offices of all sizes. We’ll tell you what that big difference is and why it’s so vexing in this episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast.

Cohosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explore this complicated area and discuss:

Differences among the generations

Why we need to find common ground

Where these issues most often crop up among the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and iGen

How marriage serves as a model for how to address them

Why failing to address generational differences is bad for business and innovation

Hints for dealing with generational differences:

1. Accept it is real and it can be a powerful force against success.

2. Build a system that constantly holds onto common interests and goals. 3. Get outside help.

It’s not going away, and when harnessed correctly, it could actually fuel growth and innovation in new and exciting ways. Well, Bob, I think that’s all we have for today. Next week, we’ll dig deeper into generational differences and how to address them. Until then, thanks for listening, good day and good soft skills. 

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Generational differences, something we also covered in Episode 68, continue to vex organizations, and today we look at the way different generations tend to look at sick leave.

Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss these and other topics in this episode:

• Views of sick leave
• Communication
• Rules of engagement dealing with sick leave
• Explicit and implicit sick leave
• Hints for dealing with these situations

Don't forget to check out our Soft Skills Minutes, bite-size nuggets on soft skills in work.

Also, have you read our book, The 55 Soft Skills That Guide Employee and Organizational Success.

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As March begins many of us have already cast our New Year's resolutions to the side for another year, just like last year and prior years. What's lacking is intentionality, that ability to focus on what makes the most sense and way as a means of developing a plan to actually achieve it. That's our topic on this week's episode of the Serious Soft Skills Podcast.

Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss many topics related to setting intentions, including:

• What intentionality is and isn't
• The project management perspective
• How to bring new focus to your efforts
• How intentionality differs from setting goals/prioritizing
• The New Year's resolution effect
• Its relationship to soft skills
• Where tasks that can't involve intention fit in.

Join us in two weeks for the next Serious Soft Skills Podcast, where we will cover managing meetings for people who are attendees. In the meantime, you can always take in our Soft Skills Minutes, bite-size, actionable discussions of real-life situations where soft skills make the difference.

Does your organization need soft skills help? Call us at 937-SKILLS5 to learn how we can help you or visit http://serioussoftskills.com.

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One study finds that only about 15% of meetings accomplish real results. This episode looks at how people attending meetings can make them matter more and some other suggestions for ensuring meetings achieve results.

Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham discuss:

Why meetings don't work so well for most people

How to plan for who should attend meetings

What good meeting behavior is

The Rule of Fours fo making sure every meeting matters

Want to learn more about managing meetings or being more productive in your organization? Contact Serious Soft Skills at 937-SKILLS5.

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We talk to a resident expert about how to take an elevator pitch or elevator speech from boring to bright, bold and business-friendly. 

Co-host Dr. Tobin Porterfield interviews his co-host, Bob Graham, who has helped thousands of people, from college students to CEOs, in a wide range of fields to build a powerful elevator pitch.

Among the topics they discuss are:

• How long should an elevator pitch be
• The roots of elevator pitches
• The one-and-only objective of the elevator pitch
• A results-focused approach that focuses on value 
• The keys to developing an ever-better elevator pitch
• How you elevator pitch has to hue to the audience you are in front of
• The structure of a great elevator pitch
• Fixing up Toby’s elevator pitch live!
• Getting them to ask for more
• The ongoing trial-and-error that leads to a better elevator pitch
• How to know when it's working

Look for a new long-version episode in about two weeks, and 1-minute versions of the podcast every few days, a few times a week. 

If you want to talk to us about episode ideas, insights or guests, please email us at info@serioussoftskills.com or tweet us at @RealSoftSkills.

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