What is professional effectiveness?
Regardless of role, of seniority or even sector, it’s hard to find anyone these days who doesn’t need to work with others. It may be as part of a close-knit team, or it was be a more distant interdependence across oceans and timezones. Regardless, our ability to work well with others is crucial for our performance – not to mention job satisfaction and wellbeing.
We frame professional effectiveness as the set of skills, attitudes and personal qualities that allow us to work well with others, get the most out of ourselves and leverage our existing technical skills. Without these abilities, technical skills lose their impact and interpersonal friction can fill the gap.
How can people become more effective at work?
Effectiveness is largely contextual and different roles in different organisations will necessitate varied skills and abilities. However, we can identify some essential areas of focus for employees who want to be more effective, including:
- Investing time and effort in intentional relationship management
- Being able to flexibly take others' perspectives
- Influencing skills, combined with an awareness of organisational power and politics
- The capacity to set goals in alignment with values and be self-directed towards them
- The ability to navigate interpersonal friction and have difficult conversations
- Sharing perspectives, skills and insights with colleagues
- Using personal values to navigate challenges and setbacks
How do interpersonal skills support performance?
A lack of these skills can contribute to conflict and misunderstandings, additional inefficiency, procrastination and working in unhelpful silos. Working on these skills supports performance by removing the kinds of intra-personal friction and interpersonal disagreements that derail effort. These skills support the kind of collaboration and information sharing valued by the majority of organisations, while also facilitating the use of flexible approaches to get the most out of others.
Professionals who develop and use these skills also serve as valuable role-models to their colleagues.
How we can help
We have a range of coaching and training solutions designed to boost employees' effectiveness at work.
Coaching
Coaching can be a great solution for managers and leaders how need to develop their interpersonal skills and address topics like self-confidence, influencing others and dealing effectively with interpersonal conflict.
Training Courses
Our training courses cover a whole range of effectiveness topics and are perfect for groups with shared development needs, including: influencing others, developing others, communication skills, having difficult conversations and provision of quality feedback.