Lack of soft skills: The biggest challenge to Zimbabwe’s economic recovery

The biggest challenge facing our country is not the lack of money but the lack of soft skills in our managers. We have highly skilled people who have been praised all over the world for their work ethic. Our own assessment over the years indicates that technically Zimbabweans are gifted but they lack one group of skills that is needed in a struggling economy: soft skills.

Have you noticed that most organisations that are clamoring for more money from banks and shareholders do not have the basics needed to run a successful business?  Organisations need both technical and people management skills as a starting point before borrowing money. Some organisations have borrowed money and they still fail. Once they fail they blame the country’s politics and economy when the fault lies within the organisation. Organisations must do proper due diligence of the soft side of business before borrowing money or acquiring new equipment. Without this shareholders will continue to lose money.

Across all sectors of our economy the technical skills depth required to handle any job are available. Managers however lack the skills to manage people. Here we are talking about people management skills. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that no single university in the country or even outside teaches people management skills. Yes, universities and colleges teach human resources management which is not the same as people management. Most universities and colleges teach technical human resources skills that are normally taught to human resources professionals. What is required is for universities and colleges to teach people management skills focusing on how to deal with people and understanding that people are not objects. Managers need to understand that people have emotions and they should be handled differently from machines.

Most managers lack the Emotional Intelligence to handle people at an emotional level. The lack of such skills has led to so much disillusionment in many organisations. In Zimbabwe you rarely come across employees who say their managers look at the emotional side of the business. This leads to low employee engagement which in turn affects the level of employee productivity. Low employee engagement is an issue that should be handled at the highest levels within the country. Industry leaders and politicians rarely talk about the impact of low employee engagement on productivity.

Most managers use threats to manage their subordinates. However, if they are educated in the psychology of people they would know that threats do not produce the best in people. If threats worked there would be no thieves. What they need to understand is that behavior is a function of its consequences. People do what they do because of what happens to them. Managers need to understand that for instance if significant positive performance improvements were to happen they need to apply both positive and negative reinforcement. However the reinforcements works only if they are certain and immediate. Look at this, if AIDS was killing people on the spot, there would be very few infections taking place. The reason why people continue to be infected is because the consequence is in the future and is uncertain because people can die of other causes besides AIDS.

Apply the same principle to how we manage people. In most instances employees are promised bonuses at the end of the year. This has very little impact on performance because the consequence is in the future and very uncertain as the company can decide not to pay the bonus for other reasons. Therefore employees will not change their behavior if the consequences are in the future and uncertain. Managers unfortunately manage people as if they are managing people who do not know what to do or people who do not want to do what they are told. Only managers with the right emotional intelligence will be able to get the best out of their subordinates.

It is also critical for managers to appreciate that naturally, individuals are different and they have certain preferences in the way they behave. Having a deeper understanding of your subordinate’s personality profile can help in reducing conflict and increasing effective communication with the subordinate. It also helps the manager to have their own personality profiled so that they can have a better understanding of their own personality.

Due to the low emotional intelligence in our managers we now find work situations that are tension filled, toxic and have no regard for customers. Managers generally have a mistaken belief that being tough and rough when handling employees indicates that they are good managers. This is a terrible mistake as most of the poor performing managers are normally those perceived to be the tough guys who are failing to get the best out of their people.

Organisations will benefit significantly from having managers with the right level of emotional intelligence. Organisations should make it mandatory for managers to go through a one week intensive people management course which includes pre-workshop assessment of Emotional Intelligence and their Personality Profiling.