Hi Max!

Interesting questions... great opportunity for discussion.  I had not heard of CSV before and I am thrilled that this “concept” exists - I have been actively practicing "creating shared value" for many years and am thrilled to have found a group such as Lead Change that subscribes to this approach of combining company and community interests... to unleash the next wave of growth and character-based leaders. Fantastic! We work, in harmony, to help each other grow better and stronger together. The results are exponentially significant!

Your questions have led me here... its a long rant, one that I feel passionately about... related to 2.“Finding Hard Ways to Measure ‘Soft’ Leadership”.

For me, soft competencies mean having the ability to connect and cultivate trust and collaboration (through authentic feedback). I have seen environments that devalue "soft" actions and yet these same actions are linked to being able to achieve business objectives. Example: an organization believes in providing their people with soft skills training (linked to achieving their business objective) but then, post training, the organization runs as before and these newly acquired soft skills are not integrated into business processes, recognized and encouraged.  Over time, training loses value as people start saying “training rarely changes anything!”

When implementing any training program, it's so important to look at the entire organization to see which of the areas of performance are causing the pain/lack of growth and to develop a solution that sustains learning and growth over time.  If soft skills training is the answer, “just” training may not fix the pain. The question is, how can this training achieve a return on investment where the new individually acquired skills are integrated, supported and encouraged? The answer may include implementation of processes that address other factors than just the knowledge and skills of employees, such as looking at feedback/communication, tools/processes, consequences/incentives, capacity, and motivation. A great example of this is to bring the managers/executives into the solution and train them how to encourage, recognize, and follow-up on the newly acquired knowledge &amp; skills.

Critical discourse: A discussion of organizational objectives and the holistic approach to meeting those objectives, in which one aspect may involve training.  The whole organization has to be willing to accept "soft" actions in the workplace environment for the training to stick... without this the chances of failure are greater... the benefits of new leaders and managers being able to truly connect and build trust and collaboration through an increase in Emotional Intelligence are lost.

There is so much more discussion and dialogue to be had (I didn't even get started on gender!)!  Thank you for getting the ball rolling.

Sonia