Over 70 years ago, Napoleon Hill realized that success for businesses comes from the people within those organizations. However, many organizations still fail to grasp this realization because soft or people skills still are viewed as secondary to job specific skills.

One of the executive coaching activities that I employ when working organizations through a change management process is to ask these three questions and listen to the responses:

When a person is promoted here at XYZ Company, it is usually because of her or his job specific skills or people skills? Usually 99% will agree that promotions are because of the job specific mastery.

As a person is promoted up the management ladder, what skills will that individual need? Job specific ones from the initial promotion or interpersonal (people) ones? Again, 99% will agree that interpersonal skills are primary to the success of that individual while job specific skills are secondary.

Within your organization as you promote your people, where is the focus on the training and development? People skills (what some call soft skills) or job specific skills? And once again, 99% will respond to job specific skills.

Then all of a sudden, the light bulb appears almost magically over the heads of many within the room. Management suddenly understands part of the reason for the difficulties or gaps in creating winning business teams and realizing success.

People development from individuals to team building is a necessary strategy to close the gap between planning and execution within the change management process. Those interpersonal or soft skills are much more critical to the success of any organization and can quickly turn a positive cash balance into a negative one. Remember, the old adage, people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. To improve your management team and increase your business wins begins by assessing your business goals and including the necessary people development processes to catapult you ahead of your competition.