Hi Pete
This is an area I know very well so I hope my input will be useful. I've worked for the last 10 years in the professional development industry. At the moment the company I work for specialises in developing sales capabilities, but in the past I've worked for organisations that focused more broadly on the area of leadership.
The skills you’ve referenced cover a range of areas, the largest of these is leadership. There are a few things about leadership that make it tricky; one it looks different at different levels of seniority in an organization. A CEO will need very different leadership skills to say a middle manager. Not only this, but what makes you successful at one level, will actually cause you to derail at the next level up. This is a common challenge for people moving up in their career. Is this perhaps what you’re experiencing; are you currently in a position where you’re responsible for people, i.e. they report to you?
Sales skills are a whole other area to leadership; rapport in something our company focuses on as a key sales skill but it is incredibly valuable for any and all. We teach the ideas behind ‘rapport’ as well as other skills such as having presence, the ability to relate to people, listening and checking your understanding etc.
Soft skills (we like to call them beavioural skills as opposed to technical or functional skills as you correctly identify them) are really hard to learn. In ten years of specializing in this subject what I’ve learnt is that people can change/develop their soft or behavioural skills but it is not easy. The reason it’s hard is because these skills are very closely linked to our personalities. Behaviour is not the same thing as personality, but it is a very close reflection of it; we express our personalities through our behavior. We are not salves to our personalities though, even if your personality doesn’t change, the way you express it can/does, but that change process takes time. Usually for people it happens as the result of their experiences but you can accelerate the process if you give people insight into what it is they should be doing differently, allow them a safe environment to practise, give them a compelling reason why they should change (without a burning platform why would you change? and then hold them to account for making the change.
You're not going to achieve your goals via a Masters degree. I know of the Masters in Leadership at Manchester; I studied at the business school there back in 2004 for an MBA and as part of that undertook a number o the modules on that programme. They are good theory and useful in part, but you’re not going to develop the leadership skills you’re looking for.
There are a number of ways you can proceed depending on what’s really going on for you, most of them would be best accessed through work as they are neither cheap nor particularly accessible to the consumer. The ‘lifestyle’ coaches, gurus self help books are all mostly nonsense or a waste of money. They aren’t going to do much than leave you poorer.
Organisational development programmes or business coaches, proper ones that cost about £1000 per two hour session, will work wonders. One to one coaching might be hugely beneficial for you in this situation. But as you can see, it’s not cheap and if you’re paying for it yourself, I would be really cautious.
This might sound out of line, but actually probably the best thing you could do privately, in terms of being really effective, is to get some good quality therapy. I;m speaking from personal experience but a few years ago I realized that I was having a very similar experience to you. Things weren’t quite working out as I expected they would and I knew I was ‘de-railing’. I knew I had some style issues and for me that was a hang over from childhood, from some pretty difficult things that happened to me. So I got a good therapist; someone who works a lot with very successful people in high power jobs (this particular guy had originally been in the army so not the kind of prissy background you might expect). What I achieved with this was awareness as to where the negative characteristics were coming from, what the signs were that they were about to manifest and what I could do to stop them. It wasn’t cheap but it was a lot cheaper than the coaching I outlined above.
Really this is a huge subject and if you’re serious about changing something it’s going to be a long journey. Feel free to get in touch with me by email and we can talk on the phone if it’s going to help. I’ve been pretty open here so hopefully you’d trust me to respect your confidence.
