I wanted to share on my blog an article I wrote for LinkedIn on Soft Skills and Hard Skills. LIFE Leadership is in the sweet spot for business and personal development with its emphasis on Soft Skill growth. Soft Skills could be compared to Emotional Quotient while Hard Skills could be compared to Intelligence Quotient. Both are important but the picture of the iceberg below depicts their relative contribution. A huge thank you to CEO Chris Brady, the field leaders, and our many customers for your support.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

There is a leadership revolution brewing in America today. Companies have discovered that the mastery of technical skills alone does not make an employee a leader. In addition to the technical “hard skills,” a leader must also master the relational “soft skills” in order to advance personally and professionally.

While technical hard skills are typically learned during one’s formal education and supplemented with on-the-job training, soft skills, in contrast, are rarely taught in school or at work. Therefore, a potential leader must take personal responsibility for learning and applying the relational soft skills in his daily interactions with others. However, to do this properly, one must first understand the difference between a hard skill and a soft skill.

Perhaps the simplest method for differentiating between the two types of skills is to consider hard skills as science and soft skills as art. Whereas science focuses on objective numerical outcomes that can be measured, art focuses on subjective aesthetic outcomes that must be experienced. Hard skills (like typing speed, IQ level, or computer programming skills) can be measured objectively, while soft skills (like teamwork, patience, and persistence) can only be measured subjectively.

Soft skills produce impressive objective results because they are absolutely essential for great leadership. For instance, just because one cannot scientifically measure a leader’s influence, that does not mean it isn’t real or valuable to the company. It simply means that teammates experience the art of a leader’s soft skills despite the fact that those skills are not quantifiable. Of course leaders must have science-side competence (objective skills), but the difference maker is their art-side influence (subjective skills).

The second difference between hard and soft skills is in their scope of use. While hard skills are job-dependent techniques that can change with time and new assignments, soft skills are people-dependent and thus practically unchanging because they are based on timeless principles. When a person studies the leadership lessons from ancient Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem, he is struck by how soft skills of yesterday worked the same as they do today. That is to say, the art-side soft skills are timeless and relevant regardless of the profession one chooses, so long as it involves working with other people.

The third difference between the two skill sets is in how those skills are taught to others. Leaders can develop soft skills and even master them, but this doesn’t make it any easier to teach them to others. Unlike hard skills mastery, which can be taught in classrooms through memorization of rules and formulas, soft skills mastery must be learned in real-life experiences. In other words, hard skills can be learned in a classroom through instruction of the mind, but soft skills must be learned in life through instruction of the heart. Leadership mastery is rare because it is an art taught mostly through experience. It demands from leaders the ability to make decisions while juggling numerous initiatives, resources, and people to produce profitable results that honor the company and its people—not an easy assignment by any means and even more difficult to pass along to others.

Interestingly, today’s technological scientific age has not reduced the importance of soft skills but has, if anything, increased it. Nearly every company has impressive technology and brains, but only those with leadership apply the soft skills to adapt quickly. MIT Professor Peter Senge once wrote, “The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition.” Companies learn faster when leaders model and message soft skill development within their teams. The result is that more employees feel connected to the company, its leaders, and its vision, which means the organization will learn and change faster.

Not surprisingly, modern statistical research confirms the importance of soft skills. Google, in a study codenamed “Project Oxygen,” data-mined every performance review, feedback survey, and nomination for top-manager awards within the company. Google identified the eight most important skills for effective leadership and discovered that technical expertise ranked dead last out of the eight. Historically, Google’s management strategy was simple: leave the programmers alone, and when they needed help, they could reach out to their bosses, who were promoted based upon their mastery of technical skills. However, according to Laszlo Bock, Google’s Vice President of “Human Operations,” Project Oxygen changed their mindset. “In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Google’s findings are not really new but merely confirm statistically what was previously known intuitively, namely, that everything rises and falls on leadership. In 1936, Dale Carnegie described what Google’s study revealed when he wrote, “. . . 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people.”

To be sure, hard skills are vital for professional competence, but if a person desires to climb within his profession, he must not neglect his leadership soft skills. For true leaders combine the science-side hard skills and the art-side soft skills to build leadership cultures of trust and influence. Simply put, leadership is the only sustainable competitive advantage in today’s marketplace.

Dan and Lisa Hawkins: LIFE Coach Leaders

Dan Hawkins has become one of the top leaders in LIFE Leadership. Dan and Lisa Hawkins were recently recognized as new LIFE Coaches in Milwaukee and they continue grow in leadership. In this video, Dan explains the importance of not letting your current capabilities and results from stopping you from developing better capabilities, and thus, results. If Dan and Lisa can change to win, so can you.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

I am so excited to finally announce the release of a book I conceptualized over two years ago! I wanted a book that educates people on the viability of Network Marketing while answering common objections and teaching a winning mindset through the leadership train analogy. The Leadership Train will be released at the three LIFE Leadership major functions across North America on Friday, October 24. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Click here to order Leadership Train

The Leadership Train by Orrin Woodward 

All aboard the LIFE Leadership Express! Orrin Woodward’s new book, The Leadership Train, uncovers the mysteries of network marketing and debunks any fallacies and misconceptions about its value and validity. This captivating, easy-reading narrative details one man’s complete turnaround after struggling for years with finding fulfillment in his career and putting his family relationships at jeopardy because of it. Sparked by an unexpected reunion with a long-lost friend and coworker who has gained much more peace, happiness, and success since he left his fast-climbing corporate position and built a large network marketing business, Bobby Davis embarks on a journey that helps him find his true purpose and much more satisfaction in his work and personal life.

This is a dream builder’s dream come true! Not only do you as a business owner need this book, but you need to get this book into the hands of any others you meet who might be looking for something more in life. Learn how to build a successful network marketing business from one of the greatest networkers in history, and help others to do the same. Discover how to handle pyramid and other objections and wipe out any doubts, untruths, and false beliefs that prospective members and customers, and possibly even you yourself, might have. Grab your boarding pass and bring along as many people as you can because the leadership train is going places fast, and you don’t want anyone to miss out!

Endorsements for The Leadership Train

“Having worked in network marketing for nearly two decades, I have had the privilege and blessing of working with the industry’s top field leaders, executives, and business owners, and I have ‘seen it all,’ as they say. I really believe that only Orrin Woodward could have written The Leadership Train. There is no more competent researcher or practitioner in the industry. This beautifully crafted and informative allegory will take you on a journey that will challenge every belief or misconception you may have had about network marketing as well as about yourself. Orrin lays it all out—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and shows us how he and the other founders of LIFE Leadership have eliminated the issues that have plagued the network marketing industry for years, essentially creating a whole new industry in which anyone who is hungry, honorable, and teachable can have success. Homerun!”

—Tim Marks, Bestselling Author of Voyage of a Viking and Confidence of a Champion

“The world is made a better place each and every ordinary day by the millions of unsung heroes who serve others, sell and deliver great value to customers, and build enterprises that provide jobs, grow people, and secure families. The Leadership Train captures the heart and soul of this high and holy calling and will ignite a fire of unquenchable passion within the reader’s heart!”

—John Stahl-Wert, International Bestselling Author of The Serving Leader and Ten Thousand Horses

“No one builds a networking business like Orrin Woodward. In this marvelously entertaining and easy to read book, he shares the thinking behind his extraordinary success. This should be required reading for everyone in the profession!”

—Chris Brady, New York Times Bestselling Author of Launching a Leadership Revolution

“Hilde, Orrin, and I were waiting at a red light on Friedrichstraße in Berlin, and I asked Orrin, ‘Can you tell us that thing with trains and cookies and cream again?’ We all laughed because we had been messing around with it all day, and that is when we said, ‘You need to write that book! It is a profound message that will help millions of direct sellers across the world get the business success they hunger for.’ We are so happy the book is ready! We believe it will help our team to the next level. It will be one more ‘mandatory Orrin book.’ Thank you so much, Orrin, for the impact you have on our life and success.”

—Hilde and Ørjan Sæle, Authors and World-Class Networkers

“I had barely started this informative and entertaining book when the next thing I knew, I was finished. Captivating as it is, it’s actually a manual on how to build a successful network marketing business. Orrin Woodward is truly a master at his craft, and he provides answers to many questions here. Is there anyone else out there who wants to live a life of fulfillment? Then jump on the leadership train!”

—George Guzzardo, LIFE Coach and Speaker

“Reading The Leadership Train is like being a fly on the wall watching Orrin Woodward do what he does best: develop leaders who make a difference. If even just 10 percent of the people in our profession own this book, we will impact the world in profound ways.”

—Dan Hawkins, LIFE Coach and Speaker

“I couldn’t stop reading. Orrin Woodward has already proven to be one of the foremost thought leaders of the twenty-first century. Now he reminds us of the age-old adage ‘Facts tell, but stories sell.’ The Leadership Train is a fun fiction tale that demonstrates exactly what one needs to do to create financial freedom in direct sales, written by one of the greatest networkers in history.”

—Ken Dunn, CEO of Next Century Publishing

“Over the years, I have seen the potential of many people go unfulfilled because they couldn’t frame their own doubts and fears and then overcome them. Orrin Woodward has brilliantly laid out the emotions that so many people deal with as they try to get traction and succeed and then systematically shown readers how to grow as a leader and win. Orrin has always stood above all others in understanding not just the science but also the art of building a community, and in this book, he has combined that wisdom into a clear, heartfelt tale of one man’s journey as he builds the LIFE Leadership opportunity.”

—Claude Hamilton, Bestselling Author of Toughen Up!

I can’t encourage you enough to take the time and read this short story that has actually taken over 14 years to develop. Not only will you learn the principles, techniques, and concepts to help you make a decision about life and leadership, but it will also teach you how to build a successful Compensated Community. You will not only learn about business success but I predict you will also gather golden nuggets that you can immediately apply to make your life better. 

—Bill Lewis – LIFE Coach and Speaker