I don’t like the term “soft skills”
The first workshop “Culture matters” of The International Scientifical-Educational Laboratory of Socio-Cultural Research took place on 15th March in Higher School of Economics. The guest of this workshop was Don W. Prince, the director of The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in CIS.
Don told about the CCL’s functions as an innovational center of high-level leadership education solving the leadership challenges of individuals and organizations. It works only for a few years in Russia (since 2008) whereas it was founded in 1970 in the USA. Russia has a new and challenging market so it’s a good opportunity for the experts from CCL to broaden their mind in the leadership field here. There is a difference between leadership comprehensions in different cultures. For instance in Russia it deals more with hierarchy then in Western countries. The participants of the workshop were particularly interested in cross-cultural differences in the leadership issues and peculiarities of being a leader in Russia.
It’s a part of the strategy of the CCL to consider leadership as the holistic process. It means an approach to the whole life, including work-life balance. Experts and coaches of the CCL strongly believe that everyone can develop leadership skills and become an effective leader. Don mentioned the main qualities of a leader and the boundaries challenging leaders. It’s a capacity to learn quickly and to make decisions that distinguish the real leaders. Don shared a secret that he doesn’t like the term “soft skills” because it means “unimportant”. On the contrary, they might be more important than hard ones because of complexity of problems challenging business.The partnership of HSE and CCL was also discussed during the workshop. Although it was the first ever meeting, Don considers the partnership with HSE logical and promising for both organizations.
CCL Web-site: www.ccl.org
Trainee Researcher
Olga Pavlenko