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they need to learn their organization’s relationship to its broader
environment.

Hard skills are about getting the job done. The tendency is for these skills

to be oriented toward technical and managerial specifics. Soft skills make
the difference between a job that gets done and a job that gets done
exceedingly well. However, soft skills are far harder to teach and pass on.
Yet, they are the key to persuading other people to follow you. Clearly,
both types of skills are important, and effective leadership requires a
committed approach to mastering both.

“Soft skills” can be seen as the behaviors people demonstrate as they go
about their occupational tasks. How does the development professional
interact with a business prospect? How does one staff member work with
another staff member with whom he or she is experiencing conflict? How

proficient is the individual in leading a team?

On the behavioral side, leadership requires an exceedingly high degree of
skill in working with and for others, holding others accountable to their
commitments, and marshaling others to work together toward the
achieving of the leader’s vision. It cannot be assumed that employees
being groomed for new leadership roles will be proficient in building the

network of relationships that is so crucial to effective leadership.
Furthermore, these relationships should go beyond the organization itself
and into the broader domain of activity of the organization in the
community or region it serves.

Unfortunately, many leaders fail to embrace a concern for human
relationships within the organization instead busy themselves with non-
leadership tasks, such as managing the work their staff or volunteers
should be doing. This occurs, for example, when the CEO insists on
reviewing every response to inquiries, or when Board members micro-
manage the development organization’s activities.

The more one’s role involves leadership, the more the job must focus on
blending the occupational and the behavioral, the technical and the

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