You ever notice that some of your coworkers in IT seem to always get the plum projects? Or they get to say “No” to their/your boss without worrying about repercussions? What about how other colleagues always seem to help them out first? It’s like a race and you’re always behind.

It seems so unfair. Your technical skills are the same if not superior to theirs. Why are they getting all the attention? Why do people help them out more while you’re over here in this cubicle toiling away without gratitude?!

They spend more than half their time just bs’ing around the water cooler while you’re getting the work done!

Why?

Because they have soft skills.

They are managing up, down, and across.

It’s something I had to learn stat when I starting working in operations at enterprises.

I learned that being a lone technical wolf was not going to cut it. I was not going to be able to do it alone. I could no longer be Atlas, the god with the world on his shoulders. Cast off your root cuz you’re gonna hafta smooze it, my friends!

Oh, I see your expression. That’s so fake. I can’t even ask for swag. I’m the one standing in the corner hoping you’ll notice me and hand me one. Besides, everyone should ALREADY NOTICE my technical superiority! Plus, I AM ROOT. *thug pose*

We all respect your technical chops. It’s the reason you have the job!

At the same time, these enterprises are large and projects span geographic regions, teams, and budgets. If you want to move up into the more strategic roles, you’re going to need more than technical skills to get those projects done. If you can’t talk the other department into sharing budget, you can’t get the job done. If you can’t get the job done, you’re not getting that promotion because you have not demonstrated that your skills can rise above the technical.

When I first began, my objective was very simple and genuine.

I wanted to get to know the team members in the other teams adjacent to mine. I wanted to understand how my work and my team impacted other teams. I also wanted to know how they impacted our teams. And, most importantly, what they cared about and what they were trying to accomplish. If I knew their objective ahead of time and what metrics they were trying to achieve, I would bear that in mind when I came asking.

And I came to learn something when I went about my sleuthing. Since my intentions were not demanding and only for educational purposes, folks were really nice and open because they could see that I was showing consideration for them.

When I finally needed assistance, I knew how to ask because I knew each departments’ needs and goals and I could line up the activity for a win for both sides.

Very importantly, if I could help others, I was very willing to do it. I tried not to ask for something back.

Some of you may say, “That’s just normal relationship building. When you work with people on a day to day basis, you already know these things.” Oh really? Do you know what each person’s personal career goals are? Do you know how they view their manager? Do you know how they view your coworkers? That’s right. I mean that you must not be superficial.

A number off you has just written this off because you feel it’s a waste of time. Would you say that you are a waste of your coworkers time?

I don’t want to imply that this is the only thing you need to do. No. By far, we need to explore listening skills(Try reading The Charisma Myth), conversation skills(Take a Crucial Conversation course), and more. But I think having your heart in the right place is a great start and I really want to emphasize it.

One way to think of how to move in this direction is this:

Invest in others and they will eventually invest in you.

Ok, enough soft talk. Let’s talk about an example from my life. As Tom Cruise once said, “Show me the money!”

Once upon a time, I worked for a multibillion dollar global enterprise at the headquarters. We were so large that the folks manning the datacenter were an entirely different crew. We had server teams, database teams, storage teams, networking teams, etc. We could not make a change in the any of our processes without compliance approval. As you can imagine, getting a server racked seemed like an act of God. First, you had to have the budget to buy the server. Then, you had to get legal to sign off on the vendor. You really hoped that vendor was already in your Accounts Payable list. Then you filled out plenty of paperwork to get a PO issued against a quote. If all went well, the hardware would arrive. Then the internal processes began. Shipping would inform us it was delivered. It was then time to submit a compliance approval to install the server. The compliance request would be scheduled with all the other compliance requests. Usually, compliance approvals came twice a month. Ok, now the request went to datacenter crew’s backlog.

As you can see, there are plenty of pockets in this long process that demonstrate that, in an enterprise, no one task is completed by one person. Even if you had the authority, any of the people involved in this process could hold you up. God forbid you piss any of them off! Some of my coworkers pissed them all off. Funny how they never completed their tasks on time.

So from this one example, I had a coworker that put in a server request to the datacenter crew and had been waiting 3 weeks already for them to rack and cable his servers. I did not know about his request but I put in my own request and my request was done the same week while he was still waiting on his. In our hallway conversation, he discovered this difference and I began to witness firsthand steam emitting from a human head. What was the difference?

I believe the difference was in my relationship with the datacenter crew. I knew this crew. I knew the lady working the nightshift had rental properties. I knew the datacenter manager had a grand daughter. The datacenter manager was the one that taught me about the changes in the server memory configuration when Intel made the changes. I also knew the datacenter crew was not afraid to call me and ask me to do something for them and most importantly, I thought of them when I did my work. I knew what were the repercussions for the datacenter crew if they did not follow protocol because I asked them. They taught me datacenter best practices. I told them what I needed and they told me how to do it best. When I put in my request, they knew it was coming because I had told them ahead of time and filled out their request properly. I respected their policies, their jobs, and their limitations.

My coworker would walk in and pretty much act like he was better than them. Guess whose request they granted first?

I hope you see some of what I’m trying to you tell when it comes to soft skills. There is a lot packed in that story that I can expand on but I touched on:

• Listening skills
• Collaboration
• Building real relationships
• Investing time in and with others
• Learning from people, not just books
• Learning about other people’s jobs
• Communication
• And finally, being human by practicing empathy & compassion

You can google and find additional materials on each of these subjects alone as they are deep topics. There are both tactics and new thought processes that are required to build soft skills. I did not do this overnight. It was a thoughtful and methodical process over decades. But these are the skills that have propelled me forward wherever I have landed. Tech skills are simply one dimension of your job. We all do these things at various levels. I’m being mindful of what level I’m working on and it has made all the difference in my job satisfaction. I hope that you will dig into these topics as well, use them in your work life and find success!