SYNOPSIS

Soft-skills are people skills. They are hard to learn because they require time to learn, observe, relate and reflect. It is not an exact science because of the many variables that not only interact with one another but are themselves also dynamic in nature. These makes it difficult for soft-skills to be examined in a controlled and conditioned environment to isolate the cause and effect of a given variable. We can however learn from findings and hypothesis of behavioural scientist to speed up our learning and understanding of the human behaviour and tendencies and then honed them through exposure, networking and actual networking with people.  

In my youth, there were theories of human behaviour and leadership styles that could be applied with their relative effectiveness. In later business management studies, we soon learn that one size did not fit all. People came from different background and culture. Some were easy to understand while others were baffling because we had insufficient knowledge and facts that were pertinent in the understanding of human behaviour. After each decade, new theories were proposed, some expanding on prior knowledge, some new and others offer different explanation of past theories. As new knowledge emerged, we get better and more discerning and hence become better leaders. We face communication challenges working with people, misread body language and the nuances' that they imply, unspoken but nevertheless important and often more important that what were actually said.

Peter Drucker defined a leader as “someone who has followers”. Then, what do leaders do that motivate others to follow them? What success attributes need we inculcate, do what leaders do, so we may emulate to lead and be successful too? Are there underlying reasons that make leaders persuasive to gain management and team support? Leading projects is about leading people and often done without authority to provide monetary incentives nor power to reprimand, censure, promote nor demote those they lead. The softskills required includes a good blend of leadership skills to harness the collective intelligence & combined skill sets of the team. Current PMI research findings and leadership literatures shows softskills effectiveness require leaders to be articulate and capable to stay the distance. Leaders need emotional intelligence and the authenticity to lead. However, talking is easy, to be convincing is harder but walking the talk I think is the hardest part of all.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Robert Gan PMP, IDPM (Camb), AICA, NCC S&D. Robert is a seasoned professional and a Project Delivery Partner with 20 years of Programme and Project Management experience that has included people, processes and technology. He has formal training in Accountancy and Project Management and has attained distinctions in all papers of the Cambridge International Diploma in Project Management. This has helped him develop training materials for management of Projects including Financials, Stakeholders, Quality, Risk, Procurement, Systems Analysis & Design, and Project Application Systems deployment. During the past 16 years, Robert has trained and coached corporate business owners and their team in addressing business issues, procedure realignment, provision of alternatives, proposing work-around solutions and business process improvements.

As a Principal Consultant with PwC and as a Consulting Manager at another big four regional consulting organisation, Robert has rolled out more than 20 projects that were multi-country and multi-cultural in scope in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia for industries such as Financial services/banking, Construction, IT suppliers, ERP implementation for project control for Construction, M&E, Engineer-to-order manufacturers and Software developers.

Robert has been engaged as an expert witness in Project Management arbitration proceedings and invited speaker at many symposiums, seminars and in-house events in the APAC region, Australia and Slovakia.  He has been reappointed as Adjunct Professor, University of Malaysia Pahang.