Recruiters have long included soft skills in their screening processes. These skills are mostly relational competencies. More often than not, they are more predictive of success than technical skills. Among them, emotional intelligence is essential for teamwork, motivation, managing challenging situations and achieving collective success. Whereas most knowledge- and experience-based skills may easily be verified on resumés or through tests, soft skills can be validated trough business cases, simulations or role-playing.
Since the covid period, “mad skills” have been given special attention. In a chaotic, unpredictable world, nonlinear, creative and even disruptive thinking and decision-making are required. Most managers and leaders will probably have to lead and motivate teams through crisis, make strategic decisions on the fly and demonstrate hyper-agility in thinking and doing. Mad skills are particularly necessary when conventional thinking and decision-making processes are failing to provide rapid, customized solutions to tricky challenges, or to bring fresh vision to manage complex transformations. They are often associated with unconventional, out-of-the-box and creative abilities to initiate or implement change.
Some say that a true leader can only emerge in times of crisis. Let’s take an example from the geopolitical sphere and analyze it from an HR perspective.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, led the country when it was under attack from its neighbor, one of the world’s strongest military powers. He has clearly demonstrated great leadership skills, if only in motivating his people, making difficult decisions, or advocating his cause in front of Western countries. Before the war and his election to the presidency, he was the creator, producer and lead actor of the TV series “Servant of the People”, in which he incarnates an idealistic history teacher who is elected as president of Ukraine. Leaving aside the political debate, I would like to invite you to consider your answer to the following question: Would you have recruited a TV writer- actor for the position of wartime leader who has to handle a collective crisis with life-or-death stakes? When he was elected, many commentators in the Western press presented the situation with amusement or incredulity. Probably because their analysis was based on a hard and soft skills. However, his success and power in time of crisis were rooted in his mastery of symbolic communication, typically a “mad skill”.
From the point of view of recruitment, promotion and management, one of the trickiest questions is how to spot these mad skills in " normal times ". How can we detect potential or underlying skills that have not yet been expressed in a previous career path?
Mad skills" are often considered to be associated with personality traits. Recruiters try to spot these offbeat skills in areas not directly related to the corporate world or a specific job. They can be expressed and developed in areas such as volunteering, sport, travel, unusual life experiences .... We can assume that the younger generation, who travel more, get involved in a wider variety of projects alongside work and zap around, will give themselves more opportunities to develop such skills.
A common belief is that these mad skills are rare, and that only a handful of people possess this kind of gift. However, given that these skills are so important in today’s chaotic world, it might be wise for companies to give their staff the opportunity to acquire or develop these skills. One way could be to allocate more time or support to “mad projects” initiated and developed by staff members, where they can live out their passion, take initiative and blaze new trails.
Beyond the talk, as manager and leader, are you ready to bring a little madness to your work, your teams and your company?
Illustration: publicdomainpictures.net
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