110. The Confidence Gap: Why Soft Skills Beat Technical Skills

the top skills for all great managers are soft skills, communication, empathy, listening skills, presence, influence with that authority. Those soft skills are what set great leaders apart. And this requires investing in them because a figure to you make it is not sustainable. It works in some settings. Right, there are times where I've been called in front of a CEO and maybe I don't know that CEO super well. Do I feel super confident? Do I feel really ready to present to a board? Maybe not. Maybe that day I'm a little more nerve-wracked. But I'm still going to go in there with confidence. I'm still going to go in there knowing that I know what I'm capable of. But we don't want to fake it so you make it where you're going to take some job you know nothing about. I always joke you see those videos on TikTok where the individual is like, oh, what are your Excel skills? Are like my skills skills are excellent to advanced. And then they get there and they're like, what's a field look up? And they're like googling basic Microsoft Excel terms. You're going to build confidence when you're authentically curious about other people. You're working on your communication skills and you're building repeatable habits. It requires reps to get stronger. That is true physically and that is true with soft skills. Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game. So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secrets, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing. On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtain and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster. Today we are talking about the confidence gap and essentially how soft skills were make or break your career. So if you have followed me for any period of time, you know how important I think soft skills are. I think your ability to communicate, advocate for yourself, talk about your own experience, build a personal brand network, end up becoming so much more important in your career than your technical skills. And most careers stall not because your technical ability caps out or because there are new technical tools, oftentimes are very technically proficient, but because a lack of confidence in soft skills. We don't communicate, we don't know how to have presence, we don't know how to influence, and success, especially at the senior levels, is perception driven. It is about how people look at you and see you as much as it is about performance. We've talked about the nine box on the podcast before. If you're not familiar, I highly recommend checking out in my book, Secrets the Career Game, there's a whole chapter on it. But essentially the nine box is the plot between your performance and your potential. Potential is all about perception. How are you seen by the leaders in your company and that comes down to confidence and soft skills? The truth is technical skills might get you the job. You may be asked to write a query in an interview, you might be asked your data analytics experience or how you manage your project or what types of marketing campaigns you've led, that technical acumen might get you the interview and it might get you the job, but it won't get you promoted. And what holds most people back, especially as you start to get closer to those more senior levels, is not talent or technical capability. It is confidence. And so today we're going to dive in to why confidence ultimately matters more than you think. And how you can build it in a way that builds authentic to who you are and isn't just a sleazy car salesman tactic. If you sell cars, I'm sure you're super nice and not sleazy at all. That wasn't targeted towards you. Okay. So if I go back a couple of years, I had this client. She was wonderful, technically gifted, graded her job, but really lacked the senior leadership confidence and soft skills. And as we work together, she brought up multiple situations where she was asked for her technical opinion and she delivered it. But then in a meeting, maybe her boss led the meeting or maybe she wasn't allowed to attend at all or in a meeting with the CEO, it ended up getting handed to somebody else to actually tactically deliver on her recommendation. And I see this all the time with my clients, because if you're getting promoted to the senior associate manager, senior manager levels, you have to have some amount of technical acumen. You do, you have some amount of technical capability that has allowed you to progress to that level. But then people stall out. Then people stop moving out. Then people can't get promoted. And one of the biggest struggles that we have in the corporate role today is that managers don't know how to coach to soft skills. So you get feedback like, I need you to have better executive presence. I need you to be more strategic. I need you to work on your communication. But that same boss can't give you any tactical examples of what that means or where it's at problem. And you're not sure what you need to do and ultimately improve these areas. And so we have frustrated, we plateau, and our communication actually gets worse because instead of focusing on our technical acumen, now we're so hyperfixated on this communication struggle, we're frustrated by our circumstance, we become more reactive and the worst version of our communication shows up. So if we think about the confidence gap, this idea that some people are more confident that allows them to find more success and work. This is talked about in the confidence code if you're looking for a book. There's often given an example of men versus women, men tend to apply for jobs where they have about 60% of the qualifications and women tend to apply for jobs where they have 100% of the things listed in the job rack. Now we've done episodes before where I've talked about how I think this contributes to the wage gap in a way where women aren't applying for jobs when they're able to and therefore holding their own wages back. But it also means that when we're hiring very rarely with very few positions, our hiring managers looking to hire somebody who's 100% qualified. I see it all the time when I'm working with recruiters or when I'm working with leaders that they will have a position, they will post it, they'll have this wish list of, I want this person to have all of these things you're going to have. So I'll scale this in technical experience and they're going to understand how to do the maca reina and they're going to have this huge list right looking for a unicorn. And if they find somebody who has all of that, the feedback that I see all the time in recruiting circles is they're overqualified. We're not going to offer them a job because they are overqualified for the position because they met everything we wanted in that position. It helped you guys can't even believe the amount of times I sat on calls with recruiters, hiring managers, executives, we're like, oh, we found this person they're great, but they're overqualified. They're going to want to promotion too quickly because they have everything we need. They want people to grow in position. They want people to have opportunities to develop, but they want you to have the soft skills. They want you to be able to communicate that effectively. And this is where people make a mistake is overconfidence, right, pretending to be too confident in your capabilities leads to underqualified leaders, right? We've all worked for that one person who was exceptional at managing up at communication, but sucked at the technical side, right? We've all worked for them. But on the flip side, under confidence, keeps people who would be great in those positions, who have the technical acumen, who have the soft skills invisible, because you're not putting your name in the ring, you're not putting your name in the hat for these roles for which you hold 60% of the qualifications. And I see that as a very good rule of thumb. About 60 to 80% of the qualifications you should have. Now, I have a unique school of thought where when I'm hiring, I don't care at all about industry experience or even education levels. So I see these roles, it puts it all the time, like Royaleeen for somebody with an MBA who has 25 years in oil and gas. Great. I don't think either of those are particularly relevant to finding a person who's really good at the job. A lot of the time, I think, soft skills and technical acumen for execution are more important than industry knowledge and education. It's personal and kind of burgism. Okay. But if you have everything else on the list, you've run all those different types of projects. You've interacted with all these different types of groups. You've led these initiatives. You've led these team sizes. And the only things you don't have are industry knowledge. You should be applying for that job. You are qualified. An underconfidence. You think I'm being humble. I'm not ready. Maybe it's not for me. It is going to keep you invisible. It is going to keep you from achieving the goals that you have. Promotions and leadership opportunities go to people who project confidence. Not always the people who perform the best. If I look at myself in my own career, there have definitely been times. Definitely. Where I have gotten a role that perhaps I wasn't fully qualified for. It has happened because I have learned this art of confidence. I've learned this art of speaking up for myself, advocacy. And I was put in positions where maybe I wasn't quite ready. Okay. But I learned a lot. Right. Trial by fire. For sure. I've said it on the pop before. I'll say it again. If you worked for me in the first team I ever led, I'm so sorry. Nobody trained me how to do that. That was not ready. Okay. But I figured it out and I grew. And that's what I think is so key is you may be slightly underqualified. You may be slightly unprepared. But if you can project confidence, confidently project confidence, I'm not talking fake until you make it, which we're going to talk about in a minute. I'm talking truly believe in yourself that you can learn the things you need to be successful in that position. You should apply. You will likely do well in that role. And as long as you keep learning, you're going to continue to progress. And this reminds me, I had a client again, this would have been beginning of this year. I had an individual who worked for or was a client of mine. She was put into a position she felt she was underqualified for. We did a lot of work early on in her coaching, trying to understand why she felt underqualified. And it came down to the fact that she believed she didn't have a specific technical skill that a subgroup in her organization had. She didn't have that technical ability. And so we came up with a plan where she was going to sit in that technical role as basically a fly on the wall for like six weeks, shadow people sit in all these meetings to learn that skill. And what she found in those six weeks was there was nothing that this team was doing, asking, fixing that she had not done in some capacity over the course of her career. They were doing it differently. You're using a different technical skill, but it was the same execution. And we came out of our six months together with her growing. Okay, so how do I take my COO's job? Because I'm ready. These people don't know what they're doing. I want that opportunity. I want that scope. I'm ready for this role. And it is about understanding the components of her team that led her to have confidence in her own capabilities. Right? So if we think of these soft skills as career currency, right, building this confidence as a career currency, you have to build soft skills. You do. That's how you're going to get better. I wish I could tell you you could get another certification or another master's degree. It would help quick side note. 90% of the time, when I have somebody coming to me who needs to work on soft skills, the first thing they ask me is should I get a master's degree? Should I get a certification in this? Is number one question that I get, especially if it's a first time call with me? Number one question I get. And very rarely is my answer. Yes. Because what's holding you back at that level is no longer technical. It is no longer about assert. It is no longer about being able to prove on paper that you can do a task. It is about your communication, your confidence, and your soft skills. Now, there are times I recommend a certification or a master's program. If you're doing a big career pivot or if you're stepping into a new industry, there are definitely times. Right? Don't get me wrong. There are times and places and spaces where it is appropriate to get a certification or a master's degree. But if you're doing it because you can't get promoted to director, it is not because a master's program is not going to teach you how to communicate effectively. They're going to get to a stamp on your resume stamp. But it's not going to help you. So how do we fix it? How do we attack to go? How do we improve our soft skills? Number one, communication. There are so many episodes on this podcast about communication, but we're still going to talk about it. One, speak clearly. You are so in the weeds of the work that you do that you are not pulling yourself out to communicate effectively. There's a three-step process to everything I communicate to everyone all the time. Number one, context. Why are we here? What's the purpose of today? Don't jump into the weeds of why we're here. Why are you here? We're here because I have a question about A. That's it. It should be short, simple. Step two is what is the problem statement that we're trying to solve today in this meeting, in this proposal, in this session, in this team? What is the problem statement that we're trying to solve? And then the last step is your recommendation or your needs or your analysis and your overview of the answer. The mistake most people make is they jump to number three. So you're making a report on the number of birds in your yard. And you go into this meeting and instead of going, hey, today we're here to talk about the number of birds in the yard. I was asked with having to count the number of birds, but as you can imagine, that fluctuates over time. So the bit of a problem statement there. The answer that I've come to is ABC. But what most people do is they go, so I sat on my back porch and I looked at birds and I counted birds and I saw 32 birds the first day and 41 birds the second day and 53 birds the third day and then only eight birds the fourth day and I'm not really sure how to average us. We go straight to the details. It is so much harder to understand that for a leader than it is to say, hey, I was asked how many birds are in my yard. Obviously that number fluctuates over time, which created some inconsistencies and some problems in the data. Here are my recommendations. I saw a wide, a wide array of counts from eight to 53 over the time that I was reviewing it. We have a few options. We can average these across the amount of time. We can take the highest count and assume that even if they're not present every day, that high amount is existing in the yard or we can do another analysis where we review it from different spots in the yard to see if that changes the metrics that we receive. I'm making up examples. The latter is so much easier to digest than the farmer, but you have to speak clearly. You have to organize your thoughts. You have to follow those three steps. The three steps is key. You have to have authority over what you're saying. Don't I don't know. I thought about it. Maybe there's some birds and I was thinking that maybe I should need it. No. By the time you are going into a meeting into a presentation and getting somebody up to speed, you need to know what you want to talk about, how you're going to set the stage and the authority of the answers that you have in the recommendations. If you don't know the right move, come up with a few. Here are some things we could do. What do you want to do? That authority is going to lend to your credibility. Now, we don't want to get so married to a specific outcome that we lose sight of. The fact that the other person might be more senior need to make a decision. But we want to have that authority, that credibility. The second thing is it comes down to presence. This is nonverbal cues. This is body language. This is your energy your vibe. An executive tell me that at some point in your career, it comes down to chemistry more than capability. I thousand percent believe that. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, but what if they don't like me? What if my energy isn't high? What if I'm just a low energy person? What does them mean? That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if you're on a call, you're present. You're paying attention. Maybe you're taking notes. Maybe you're jotting things down, but you're active. You're speaking up. When you're in a room, it doesn't feel like you're distracted. Like you don't care about what's happening. Right? You must be present and you must have an engaging energy. So this comes down to little things like small talk. I hate small talk. All right. Nobody likes it. Nobody cares that the weather's turning. But if you can build connection, if you remember something about somebody, and you can bring that up in conversation, you can build authentic connection. You're genuinely curious about people and their spaces. That's going to build positive energy. I always joke. I go into a lot of meetings where I'm the only female representative. That's neither here nor there. But in the sessions, I tend to bring a light hearted attitude. I work with a woman who don't, who tend to bring a more serious attitude. I'm not saying one is better than the other. But for me personally, it's more authentic for me to bring an upbeat, happy kind of joking attitude to any sessions that I'm in. When I'm in a meeting, my leadership gets so excited. It's going to be high energy. It's not going to be boring. She's going to bring some humor to this. It's going to be great. And I have a reputation for that because that's how I choose to show up in that space. So as long as you are consistent, you're showing up in a positive way, whether that is light hearted or humorous, whether that is coming more serious, but with high authority and credibility, you want to be consistent and you want to be present with it. And then the last piece is influence. So how do you get by and for your ideas from people with whom you do not have the authority to manage? And this is hard. This requires based relationships. Steve loves Steve. He is not going to do what you want him to do just because you sent him an email one time out of the blue and copied your boss on it. He doesn't care. But if you have a relationship with Steve, if you interact with him, if you help him, if you're genuinely interested in his life, and then you need something and that something is also going to help Steve get closer to his goals, you'll be able to influence him. But it requires a based relationship. That's how you get by and you have relationships. I've talked about Nema Washi before. It's mentioned in my book "Secrets of the Curie Game." But Nema Washi is this idea that you're going to meet with everybody who's going to be in the meeting ahead of the meeting. One-on-one. You're going to get their feedback, their ideas. You're going to get them up to speed on your proposal. And then you're going to present to the group. That is going to eliminate so much disagreement in a public setting. Everyone's going to feel special. Like you asked for their opinion. You got their buy-in ahead of time. And you're less likely to face direct opposition. That is strategic. That is getting buy-in. And influence also comes down to how you frame ideas in the first place. So going back to what we talked about with communication. If you can't frame your idea as important, relevant to other people, clear in a contextual setting, it's probably not going to get buy-in. So you have to be strong there. There was a project at Google called Project Oxygen. And it assessed the managers at the top of leadership and what they had in common. And the outcome of that project was essentially the top skills for all great managers are soft skills. Communication, empathy, listening skills, presence, influence without authority. And this requires investing in them. Because figure-to-you-make-it is not sustainable. Great, there are times where I've been called in front of a CEO. And maybe I don't know that CEO super well. Maybe not. I'm still going to go in there knowing that I know when I'm capable of. But we don't want to fake it so you make it where you're going to take some job. You know nothing about. I always joke you see those videos on TikTok where the individual is like, "Oh, what are your Excel skills?" Are like my skills skills are excellent to advanced. Then they get there and they're like, "What's the field of luck?" Then they're like googling basic Microsoft Excel terms, right? Don't lie. Don't be inauthentic. Be authentic. But you're going to build confidence when you're authentically curious about other people. The more you present, the better you will get. The more you speak up in meetings, the better you will get. The more you do a task, the better you will get, right? You need to start taking some practical steps towards getting more reps. So first up is micro-winds. Build small habits that build your confidence. This could be something as simple as, "I'm going to start speaking up once in every meeting." When I say speaking up once, I don't mean "Thanks" right before you hang up. Okay? I mean, genuinely contributing an idea. Asking a question. Talking about how this relates to your team. Something. Some type of speak up in every meeting. You want to build feedback loops. So feedback loops is asking for input and normalizing improving in different areas. When I'm working on something soft skills related with my team, I often tell them I want to give you real-time feedback. So in our meetings, you may get pins from me they're not meant to be distracting, but I want you to have clear examples of where I feel we're deviating or where I feel we're doing really well. That is so helpful for the end of the individual to get that real-time feedback. I have someone who works for me who's working on summarization rather than detailed orientation. We're in a meeting and every once in a while I'll try and say, "Just to take a step back and anytime I say that, that person will message me and be like, 'Damn it, I got too far into the leads.'" Okay. But it's good because then we're building that feedback loop. We're getting better. We're improving in an area regularly. And the third thing is you want to build preparation. Those people who you see, who walk into a meeting, who lead a meeting with confidence, who say all the right things, who always have the answer, you think they didn't prepare for that? You think they're just winging it? I have clients all the time I tell them. Before you go into a meeting, I want you to write down every single person in that meeting and what they care about. And then write down how what you're talking about relates to what they care about. If it doesn't relate to what they care about, you're going to have a real hard sell. So you got to figure out what that connection point is. You clearly need them on the call. So why is it important to them? You have to prepare. You have to anticipate questions. Again, Nemwashi helps with that. Prepping your list of attendees helps with that. You can also ask chat GPHATGBT if I'm presenting on this topic. What types of questions do you think people would ask? It's great. Over preparation is key when you're improving your communication. The last piece of this is we want to start to create an identity shift. When you are introverted, when you are not confident, when you have limitations in your soft skills, we tell ourselves over and over and over again, negative things. I don't know if I've talked about this at length on this podcast before, but I have social anxiety. When I get into large groups, I feel uncomfortable. But then once you recognize that you start to tell yourself, oh, I'm anxious in social situations, I'm anxious. And then the next session, you know what happens? I'm even more anxious because now I have built this repeating pattern in my head of how anxious I get in social situations. You have to change the identity that you tell yourself. You need to tell yourself, I am the type of person who is confident in meetings. I am the type of person who can summarize information clearly. I am the type of person who has answers to difficult questions or knows how to find them. Start to shift your identity. I've been doing this with social anxiety in my personal life. Rather than saying, oh, I'm socially anxious, what does it look like? All these things I used to worry about. I listened to an etiquette podcast to talk about this and I thought it was brilliant. I'm the type of person who cares that others are enjoying themselves in social situations. So now when I go into a social situation, I'm thinking, oh, is anybody to drink running low? Did two people need to be connected in the room? How can I help so-and-so have a better time? That person standing alone, maybe I should go engage with them. Because I'm more concerned that I am the type of person who ensures others are enjoying a social situation, it takes a lot of the pressure off of me and a lot of that anxiety off of me. So you need to work on what your identity shift needs to be at work for you to step more confidently into your communication and into these presentations that you're going to be doing that are going to help you increase your executive presence and stop being so invisible. Start being visible. You're doing great work. You're technically proficient. Might as well get credit for it. Ultimately, technical skills are going to open the door for the job, but confidence and soft skills are going to help you progress and help you stay in it. This confidence gap affects promotions, it affects salary, it affects raises, it affects job offers. It will be at the heart of your career. And if you build confidence through constant practice, through those reps we talk about, and your mindset, you're really going to start to see your growth improve. You're really going to see your career start to hockey stick. That's where you're going to see that development. So homework. Your weekly challenge is in your next meeting. I want you to contribute at least one active thought in the meeting, even if it feels small. How it relates to your team, ask a question, make a recommendation, something. And I want you to consistently do this in one meeting a day this whole next week. Start to see how that repetition builds. Start to see how you get positive commentary and that's going to reinforce that ability. It's going to start to change that habit. It's going to build that confidence muscle. The truth is that you do not need to become louder or somebody that you're not. You just need to let others see the brilliance that already exists in you. And having poor soft skills is like hiding behind a screen. They're unable to see how good you are at your job because they can't see past the difficulty in communication. Make it visible, make it clear, make it influential, and you're going to see the growth. Hopefully you guys liked today's episode. If you did, go ahead and give us five stars. And then if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Otherwise we'll see you back here next week for another great episode.