Soft Skills for Tough Jobs - by Lucy Harrison (Paperback)

About the Book

'Soft' skills can unlock collaboration, performance and relationships at work, yet they're often the hardest skills to master; this book reveals what you already do when you're at your best, so you can be at your best more often.

Book Synopsis

'Soft' skills can unlock collaboration, performance and relationships at work, yet they're often the hardest skills to master; this book reveals what you already do when you're at your best, so you can be at your best more often.

From the Back Cover

Ever come away from a conversation thinking 'I could have handled that better'?

Soft skills are a dark art, but one you are already using when you are at your best.

With her simple NALED framework, Lucy Harrison has already helped hundreds of leaders be at their best more often. Now you too can choose to hold a different kind of conversation.

Designed and road-tested with busy industry managers, this guide and toolkit will help you improve team engagement, ideas and performance.

LUCY HARRISON is the founder of leadership consultancy the Harrison Network, delivering training and coaching in organizational development with a focus on human-centred leadership.

Review Quotes

"If you are someone who likes their self-help books to be chock-full of good, simple exercises, this book won't disappoint and, as some of the case studies show, at the very least it will give you the confidence to have the difficult conversations even if they don't always end in success....A useful, potentially even essential companion guide for anyone in the industry charged with managing a team."

"... it's well worth anyone reading this book to improve quality and effectiveness of their work and non-work-related conversations"

In my view the NALED framework for more intentional conversations is a game changer. I have been around the world of people development for many years and seen many models to support better interactions but this one stands out above the rest. Practical, memorable but most importantly proven in action.

This book has an important message; the challenges we face today are the toughest we've ever seen. To create better quality outcomes we have to shift the needle and have better quality conversations. This book is a powerful and practical field guide for exactly that

This book is all about how teams can work better by improving conversations and using soft skills more effectively. Lots of other authors have tackled this but I like the way that Lucy Harrison shares experiences from both work and non-working life and builds on what people already do rather than making out it's all something completely new or different. It's an encouraging approach and a lively read and I'd recommend it.

What i'm really taking away from reading this book is that it is possible to hold a different kind of conversation; one where a higher quality conversations allow relationships to improve and the levels of trust to increase.... Anyone who manages or leads others might benefit greatly from this book, particularly within work settings where soft skills are maybe seen as less important than technical know-how.

About the Author

Lucy Harrison is the founder of leadership consultancy the Harrison Network, delivering training and coaching in organisational development with a focus on human-centred leadership.

Having spent 15 years solving problems for organisations and people, one day she found a problem she couldn't solve. Her husband, a paramedic, was demonstrating symptoms of PTSD and depression and she couldn't fix it. Every time she tried to 'help', she made things worse.

Over time, Lucy discovered the power of choosing how she showed up to these conversations and then listening fully; the power of soft skills. The results were astonishing.

She has since identified the framework she used and taught it to others, stress-testing it with leaders in tough industry situations, from boardroom to shop floor and from nuclear engineers to emergency services. To date this simple framework has already improved connection, communication and engagement for hundreds of people, and in a recent 5-month leadership course, 70% of participants named it as one of their top three takeaways.

Lucy speaks at local and national conferences, and has recently produced cross-sector research for the Nuclear Institute as well as independently.