By Gemma Simpson, 26 March 2007 09:20
NEWS
The computer-centric office has left everyone – and not just the IT crowd – lacking important interpersonal and soft skills, according to one psychologist.
Bill Moir, soft-skills coach for IT training and recruitment body FDM, told silicon.com: "I think there's a need for soft skills and interpersonal development across all sorts of industries and all sort of levels, not just IT."
Most people have a relationship with a PC when they're at work - instead of focusing on their colleagues, Moir said. And as we see an increase of technology within organisations we will see a reduction in interpersonal skills, he warned.
He added: "People who are within the IT industry have a greater need to be concentrating on their PC and therefore maybe a greater need to develop their interpersonal skill set."
What kind of CIO are you?
♦ Paratrooper
♦ Consultant
♦ Executive
♦ Professional
Check out the full CIO profile report here and silicon.com's own 2007 CIO Agenda survey.
Life skills are important too, as nearly nine out of ten organisations said an IT manager's experience was more important to them than their IT qualifications, according to a survey from the British Computer Society (BCS).
Steve Smithson of the BCS' management forum said IT managers have a much broader, more influential role nowadays and have to exercise more leadership skills.
Smithson added IT managers need to be able to make a persuasive business case and work closely with people from different disciplines and departments.
Previous research from e-skills UK predicts two-thirds of IT staff will require high-level management skills in the next three years, while only 45 per cent demonstrate these skills now.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Bill Moir, soft-skills coach for IT training and recruitment body FDS, told silicon.com: "I think there's a need for soft skills and interpersonal development across all sorts of industries and all sort of levels, not just IT."
Incredible....the soft skills coach thinks more people need soft skills. The brilliance of such a statement is overwhelming ;)
The Sad thing is....the more our jobs force us to think and act like machines, the easier ti will be to automate our jobs with machines. Think about that the next time you talk to an IVR system.
2. anonymous
How remarkable that somebody who sells "soft skills" coaching feels we need more! However, that said, he does have a point that working via technology can be impersonal. However, he perhaps misses a few things as well...
... e-mail, instant messaging and the like (even telephone calls, which have been around for a while) have their social protocols and work better when you follow them. To some degree these are learned as you go, but maybe they can be taught too. In most organisations the quality of the content of e-mail could be vastly improved by teaching writing skills.
.... we have the technology, although few companies really try to use it, to overcome the lack of personal interaction (somewhat) by providing webcam visibility between workers - even, horror of horrors, to see the person you are dealing with in that dreadful call centre.
Since many of the clues of human interaction are facial ones, this might help a great deal. Yes, it takes bandwidth - but it might just provide benefits that justify the cost.
.... rising generations will be more comfortable with "living via technology" and that may well make things work better too.
But most tools are only as good as the way you use them - and that can always be improved by education.
3. Roger Huffadine
Thanks 'Anonymous' you saved me a whole lot of typing by saying most of what I would have. I can only add that 15 years ago when we were working on standardising the interconnection of computers and Call Centre switches the small group of 'experts' identified the the dichotomy between 'people skilled' agents and 'screen reader' agents. The problem is that if speaker independent speech recognition ever becomes a reliable reality the call centre's who employ 'screen reader' agents merely have to connect two bits of equipment together before sacking the agents, whilst the soft skilled call centre will need to capture the knowledge of it's skilled agents and program them into a computer before the agents can be sacked. The 'screen reader' call centre will have at least 12 months advantage over the 'soft skilled' call centre and will have a huge advantage.