“Soft Skills” Into the Collaborative Problem- Solving ...

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Incorporating “Soft Skills” Into the Collaborative ProblemSolving Equation Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi Industrial and Organizational Psychology / Volume 8 / Issue 02 / June 2015, pp 281 - 284 DOI: 10.1017/iop.2015.34, Published online: 28 July 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1754942615000346 How to cite this article: Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi (2015). Incorporating “Soft Skills” Into the Collaborative ProblemSolving Equation. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8, pp 281-284 doi:10.1017/iop.2015.34 Request Permissions : Click here

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References De Fruyt, F., & Wille, B. (2013). Cross-cultural issues in personality assessment. In N. D. Christiansen & R. P. Tett (Eds.), Handbook of personality at work (pp. 333–354). New York, NY: Routledge. Griffin, P., Care, E., & McGaw, B. (Eds.). (2012). Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer. Hoekstra, H. A., & Van Sluijs, E. (Eds.). (2003). Managing competencies: Implementing human resource management. Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Royal Van Gorcum. Hogan, R., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Kaiser, R. B. (2013). Employability and career success: Bridging the gap between theory and reality. Industrial and Organizational Psychology:Perspectives on Science and Practice, 6(1), 3–16. doi:10.1111/iops.12001 John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–139). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Neubert, J. C., Mainert, J., Kretzschmar, A., & Greiff, S. (2015). The assessment of 21st century skills in industrial and organizational psychology: Complex and collaborative problem solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice. Primi, R., Santos, D., John, O. P., & De Fruyt, F. (2015). The development of a nationwide inventory assessing social and emotional skills in Brazilian youth. Manuscript in preparation. Schmitt, Neal. (2014). Personality and cognitive ability as predictors of effective performance at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 45–65. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091255 Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (Eds.). (2009). 21st century skills: Learning for life in our times: San Franciso: Wiley.

Incorporating “Soft Skills” Into the Collaborative Problem-Solving Equation Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi Claremont McKenna College

In only a very few places, Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, & Greiff (2015) mention the role of communication and coordination among team members in collaborative problem solving. Although complex and collaborative problem solving is indeed an imperative for team and organizational success in the 21st century, it is easier said than done. Collaborative problem solving is critically dependent on the communication and interaction skills of the Ronald E. Riggio and Karan Saggi, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ronald E. Riggio, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College, 850 Columbia Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711. E-mail: [email protected]

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team members and of the team leader. The intent of this commentary is to shine a light on the critical role of interpersonal and communication skills in complex and collaborative problem solving. Skills in interpersonal communication, influence, and persuasion (as well as other factors, such as intrapersonal skills and ethics) are often collectively referred to as the “soft skills” of leaders and team members, as opposed to the “hard skills” of technical competence, cognitive problem solving, and decision making. In shared decision making and collaborative problem solving, there is little doubt that success is dependent not just on the technical process of making the decision but also on the soft skills of the parties involved. A host of studies suggest that effective communication is critical for solving complex, collaborative problems, ranging from the well-known studies of groupthink (Janis, 1972) to studies of the role of communication in moving groups toward effective decisions (Scheerhorn, Geist, & Teboul, 1994) to studies of communication breakdown leading to increased errors and poor decision making in aircraft cockpit crews (Sexton & Helmreich, 2000). Although most scholars cringe at the use of the term “soft skills” to describe the various intrapersonal and interpersonal skills required by leaders and effective team members, this rather vague term is used primarily because there are no agreed-on frameworks for capturing this vast array of skills (see Riggio & Tan, 2014). There have been some recent attempts to create a taxonomy of managerial/leadership skills, most notably a project outlined by Pichler and Beenen (2014), but this model does not seem to capture the vast array of skills that scholars believe fit under the heading of “soft skills.” To this end, a recent conference and edited book (Riggio & Tan, 2014) focused on reviewing the domain of skills that might fit under a comprehensive taxonomy. It is interesting to note that the success of collaborative problem solving is largely dependent on the soft skills involved in the process and the particular areas of skills that were the topic of the conference and book. What are these critical “soft skills”? Influence Tactics and Persuasion Skills

Collaborative problem solving requires moving a group toward a decision, but effectively critiquing the shared thinking and alternative courses of action are crucial to both arriving at a decision and making a decision that is of high quality. Conflict Management Skills

Quality group decision making will inevitably lead to interpersonal conflicts. A key role of formal and informal group leaders is to manage the collabora-

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tive decision-making process in order to ensure that the group arrives at a good decision in a timely fashion. Emotional Regulation and Emotional Intelligence

Emotions play an important part in group processes, and recent work on emotional regulation and emotional intelligence highlights the importance of member emotional competencies in effective group functioning. Collaborative decision making is likely to become heated at times, and members possessing skills in regulating emotions, and appropriately channeling them, is certainly going to positively impact collaborative decision making. Political Skills

Collaborative decision making is, at its core, a political process. Effective decision makers must understand the dynamics of politics and group processes in order to avoid stalemates, roadblocks, and self-interested motives that may halt the decision-making process, or lead to problematic outcomes. Moral/Ethical Orientation

One of the hottest topics in the study of leadership is moral/ethical decision making. When collaborative decision making involves making the “right” decision (in terms of ethics), then it is critical that members have good moral sensibilities to make an ethical decision. The value of laying out this list of leader “soft skills” is that it provides a framework to better understand the nontechnical aspects of leadership and to guide research efforts. Each category is, in and of itself, broad, and each could be considered as a separate topic and research area within the extremely wide domain of leadership. We may not have a framework that allows us to comprehensively manage this vast array of soft skills, but we are certain that they all may come into play in important ways in complex and collaborative problem solving. References Janis, I. (1972). Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Oxford, United Kingdom: Houghton Mifflin. Neubert, J. C., Mainert, J., Kretzschmar, A., & Greiff, S. (2015). The assessment of 21st century skills in industrial and organizational psychology: Complex and collaborative problem solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice. Pichler, S., & Beenen, G. (2014). Toward the development of a model and a measure of managerial interpersonal skills. In R. E. Riggio & S. Tan (Eds.), Leader interpersonal and influence skills: The soft skills of leadership (pp. 11–30). New York, NY: Routledge. Riggio, R. E., & Tan, S. (Eds.). (2014). Leader interpersonal and influence skills: The soft skills of leadership. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Scheerhorn, D., Geist, P., & Teboul, J. C. B. (1994). Beyond decision making in decisionmaking groups: Implications for the study of group communication. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Group communication in context: Studies of natural groups (pp. 247–262). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sexton, B. J., & Helmreich, R. L. (2000). Analyzing cockpit communications: The links between language, performance, error, and workload. Human Performance in Extreme Environments, 5(1), 63–68.

Assessing 21st Century Skills: Competency Modeling to the Rescue Katherine A. Sliter Performance Assessment Network, Carmel, Indiana

Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, and Greiff (2015) rightly argue that today’s business world requires employees to frequently engage in nonroutine, creative, and interactive tasks. The authors go further to describe two potentially important skills—complex problem solving and collaborative problem solving—which they believe can address gaps in our current understanding of employee skill assessment. I contend however that the authors might be reinventing the wheel with this framework, given that the already popular practice of competency modeling satisfies the very deficiencies that the authors argue exist. To expand on this argument, I will first provide a brief history and discussion of what competency modeling is, followed by an explanation of several key benefits of this approach in terms of addressing the authors’ concerns. Then, on the basis of my applied experience as an external consultant, I will discuss how I might use competency modeling to address one of the authors’ own example scenarios, which should help identify ways in which competency modeling subsumes Neubert and colleagues’ approach. Competency Modeling in the 21st Century

Competency modeling is a popular concept in the business world, with a growing number of organizations implementing competency-based methods and many practitioners extolling the benefits of competency-based approaches. Despite its modern reputation, the concept of competencies and competency modeling is not new: Harvard psychologist David McClelland is often credited with introducing the term in 1973 (McClelland, 1973). Interest in the concept took off rapidly after that time, with a survey in Katherine A. Sliter, Performance Assessment Network, Carmel, Indiana. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Katherine A. Sliter, Performance Assessment Network, 11590 North Meridian Street, Suite 200, Carmel, IN 46032. E-mail: [email protected]