Another degree may not be necessary

If you were racing for any position related to advertising, software writing, public relations, law, teaching, sales, nursing, marketing, journalism and a host of other careers, one of the key soft skills you would need to demonstrate before you would be handed a job would be your ability to persuade others to follow your course of action or support your initiative. 

 Applicants in the above jobs have to pass series of tests that examine their persuasive acumen and negotiation skills and their ability to get the other party to cross carpets or get off the fence to join their team.

That ability is so central to the above career areas that no reasonably serious company will staff its offices with persons without proof that the prospects generously possess these qualities.

If a company were reinventing itself after a long span of time in business and embarking on an aggressive rebranding campaign in the hope of reasserting itself among its peers in the industry, it would need the input of intelligent, advertising savvy and astute staff from almost the entire company to think through the artworks in every aspect of it; from design conception all the way to the psychosocial and economic value of the brand and analyse how this new initiative impacts on the image and fortunes of the company. 

An activity this demanding will require staff contributors to prove that their opinions are worth the while and that their contributions are as usefully priceless as the company itself. 

To excel at this task, staff will have to fall on their power of persuasion, and irrespective of the contributor’s department, affluence in the key skill of persuasion will distinguish the high fliers from the crawlers. 

For people in the sales and marketing departments, the power to persuade others and negotiate a way out of a potential stalemate or deadlock are qualities that are constantly in bed with them. 

Being able to clearly, concisely and passionately communicate your point either verbally or in writing, without compromising the logic and reason of the argument, avoiding the risk of crossing the red line and going into coercion in one’s efforts to persuade customers, co-workers or third party agencies with whom the company has transactions, will always be demanded of everybody in the company, irrespective of one’s department. 

Even though personnel in some departments are expected to display large doses of the qualities of persuasion and negotiation better, practically every personnel who wishes to get ahead in their career need to cultivate these talents. 

If you are a middle-level personnel in R&D department of the company, a day may come when you will need to persuade someone, convince them to cross to your side of the divide; you may need to negotiate a wage increase with your boss, try to convince your supervisor to okay your request to be afforded an opportunity to take advantage of a short training programme, to lead a new laboratory that is about to be inaugurated in a region, to put you on a plane to go head a subsidiary, and finally when your job is at stake, you need to persuade your boss that your continued stay with the company is a better bet than your expulsion. 

In all of the above situations, you will need to fall on your powers of persuasion and negotiation in order to get along.

Standing out in the whole subsidiary as the last resort when all have failed in resolving a deadlock is a smart way of getting along in one’s career. If by accomplishing one feat after another, you distinguish yourself as that person with the remarkable talents for calming genuinely aggrieved, important customers or third party agencies, your way up the corporate hill is likely to be fraught with less challenges than your counterpart who is not as talented along the lines of persuasion and negotiation as you are. 

When a situation with the potential to set the heart of the whole company throbbing occurs, the personnel whose name and image first pops up in the mind of the company will be a more valuable asset to the business than the MBA-holder even if the former come from below the ranks. 

If a highly dissatisfied first-tier dealer is threatening severing all business relationship with your company and taking her account to the competitor, a situation like this is capable of freezing the blood in the veins of even your bosses.  

The staff who figures out how to negotiate this dealer out of her initial position and persuades them to rescind the earlier decision is clearly an asset more valuable to the FMCG manufacturer than the designer-suit-clad senior managers who are clueless as to how to deal with the irate dealer. A personnel like this will move up much faster than the soft skills deficient MBA.

If the average Ghanaian is confronted with an option of choosing between taking a second degree and sharpening her persuasive skills, chances are high that the Ghanaian will bet her fortunes on an MBA certificate. 

As much as an MBA degree may teach one to look outside the box and get them wearing the most expensive suits, except where the opportunities inside the box have been exhausted, those with abundant amounts of persuasive and negotiation skills with a less advanced certificate may out-compete your advanced certificates and you. 

By the time the company is set to wrestle with the opportunities outside the box, your MBA may be too old, and you, too weary. 

Going back to school should not be the first option for a resident HR director or the remedies of a consultant paid to doll out little but game-changer pieces of advice to a company faced with human resource challenge. 

Taking time to understand the true needs of the company delivers more miracles than rushing to pick GIMPA or KNUST Business School application forms for the client. A staff deficient in key soft-skills may go back to add another degree and still be as clueless and unproductive as they were before going to school. 

Except where in the course of studies the beneficiary stumbles into subjects that awaken them from their lazy slumber and pushes them to invest their energies in sharpening their soft skills, the new advanced degree will only make of the person an advanced liability and the HR may still have to contend with mediocre staff brandishing some of the most advanced certificates.