This cast tells you how to begin a process of coaching a direct on interpersonal skills.

Soft Skills!

How many times have you heard, "hired for technical skills, fired for (lack of) people skills"? It may be common wisdom (an oxymoron if there ever was one), but it's still true. The path to greater success in most organizations, big and small, is more quickly achieved by improving one's relationships and communication skills than it is by learning more technical knowledge.

Yes, results trump everything; but the higher you go, the more your results hinge on your abilities to get along and to get others to go along.

And yet, far too few managers are willing to coach directs on interpersonal skills: how they speak, how they create and maintain relationships, how they listen.

In this first of a series of casts, we lay out the basics of interpersonal skill coaching, and tell you which of the skills to start with.

Can you guess which it is?

In this cast, we finish our conversation on how to manage effectively in a Matrix Organization.

By now, you know why matrix organizations exist (and why we don't like them). In today's cast, we talk about what you DO to be effective in matrix organizations.

This cast describes how to manage effectively in a Matrix Organization. (Not that we recommend it ;-) )

We've finally succumbed to the steady drumbeat of requests for "The Manager Tools Way" of dealing with how to survive and thrive in a matrix organization. A couple of years ago, Mark said he'd never do these casts. His rationale? "We've never done a cast about managing in an organization that employs corporal punishment [physical beatings] - why start down that path by talking about matrices?"

He was joking.

Mostly.

But he's come around, and he's come around fiercely. The fact is, as misguided as they are, matrix organizations are not only here and here to stay, they're likely to increase in number over the next 30 years. The fact that we disagree with them doesn't make them suddenly cease to exist.

We've got a lot of ground to cover, and some of it is background. But we start right out with our recommendations, and then spend some time building our case.

Welcome to the Matrix. We can't make you Neo -- but we can help.

This cast describes how to create a simple behavioral interview question.

We believe that behavioral interviewing is the best systemic form of interviewing evaluation a manager can use. There's nothing that even comes CLOSE. Sure, there are those who think testing is important, and we don't disagree. But we also think that a professional manager can, with time and an effective interview process, approximate what amounts to a "test" of any candidate that 'is reasonably certain to be an accurate predictor of future success'. Those quote marks indicate that that is a claim that a popular screening test makes.

The question, of course, is: HOW?

There are two ways. One is to use the Manager Tools Interview Creation Tool, which we're due to roll out shortly for premium members. Answering about a hundred questions on a scale of 1-5, in about 45 minutes, and you get an interview printed out immediately afterwards that is so good some managers will cry about it.

The other way is to use this simple model described in this cast. It works, and it's free.

[Editors Note: The Interview Creation Tool was rolled out subsequent to this cast. You can find it here: Interview Creation Tool.]

We're all in meetings all the time, right? So how come there's not an instruction manual? We all complain about them. But no one seems able or willing to do something about it. We will.

We shared - 3 years ago - our recommendations on how to RUN an Effective Meeting. What about our recommendations for how to behave when you're NOT running the meeting?

We have a series of recommendations, because meetings take up so much of our professional lives. In this cast, #5 in a series we'll build up over time, we talk about how to be a participant once the meeting gets started.