soft skills for tough jobs: building teams that work, one conversation at a time

’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.

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.