What soft skills for interim management?

On the one hand, there are technical skills, know-how, expertise: the famous hard skills.
On the other hand, there is interpersonal skills, personal abilities, behavioral skills: soft skills. Not appearing on a CV, it is nevertheless the latter who are the judge of the peace to “arbitrate” between several interim managers presented to a client company. They are also the ones that largely determine the success of the mission.
But what skills and qualities are we talking about? Deciphering.

Soft skills or the art of integration

Interim management means constantly renewed integration within diverse environments, sectors of activity and contexts.
Says therefore easy ability to adapt, to understand the context and the challenges of the mission.
It also means speed of diagnosis and identification of obstacles as levers for action.

During this founding and structuring stage that is the beginning of a transition mission, the manager calls on several types of behavioral skills:

• First of all, interpersonal skills: it is necessary to create links, to appear accessible, humble, listening and co-constructing. “You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression,” they say. Hence the imperative need to be able to appear from the first exchanges as an open, sociable and interested interlocutor.
• Empathy then: whether they intervene in a context of transformation, project management, structuring or crisis, the manager always joins a collective with an experience, expectations and uncertainties. But also a real motivation, a desire to succeed or to get back up. It is therefore a question of being able to understand and apprehend this context, to identify the level of commitment and mobilization, and then to deal with it as the starting point of the mission.
• Finally, communication: doubts and beliefs must be removed. It is important to be clear and precise about its roadmap, its steps and its purpose. It is necessary to reassure by “occupying the field”, by being transparent and legible, both to employees and management.

Once this first step has been completed, the mission completion phase will call on other types of soft skills to lead it to success.

Soft skills, guaranteeing the smooth running of the mission

The interim manager is on a mission: he has a transformation to lead, a restructuring to lead, a crisis to overcome. He is in project mode.
In such contexts, it is all personal skills that he will have to mobilize:

• Vision or visualization: i.e. the ability to see what roadmap and steps will allow them to achieve the set goal. This is done by knowing how to deal with the deadlines of time and resources allotted, by anticipating blockages, by mobilizing the forces present at the right time.
• Trust: as much one’s own confidence in oneself and in one’s ability to succeed in the mission, as trust in others, in their skills, their mobilization. The manager, no matter how competent and qualified he or she may be, will never achieve the goal alone. In addition, a trust given or re-established values employees and allows them to multiply their investment in the accomplishment of the mission.
• Boldness and creativity: it is important to be able to dare, innovate, think outside the box, to breathe new life into new methods. This is correlated with being solution-oriented, to both act as a problem-solver, while consolidating practices and operating methods for the future.
• Presence: the added value of the interim manager, as opposed to the consultant, is to be in the action. He is physically present, he is in the operational side, he carries out his project and his decisions, he accomplishes it alongside the employees.

We could add time management, stress management, motivation, a sense of teamwork, etc. But they seem (wrongly perhaps) less characteristic of the specificities of interim management. Moreover, let’s hope that all the soft skills developed above concern the greatest number of managers. Because in the face of technological developments, they appear to be one of the last bulwarks.

Soft skills, or the weapon against robotization

As the authors of the “Soft Skills Reflex” (Dunod editions) indicate: “the evolution of the world of work, with robotization, automation and artificial intelligence, forces us to focus on human capital, and therefore on soft skills.” We will therefore not immediately delegate our behavioral skills to robots (we can indeed imagine them being indulgent, benevolent, empathetic or valuing the right to make mistakes).
Good news! So, interim managers or not, bet and develop vision, confidence, audacity, presence. And don’t slow yourself down, our survival is at stake…!

Perrine Locatelli
Associate Director – HR and manager relations