Business Education

Employees Have These Skills You’re Probably Overlooking in Your Business

Employees Have These In current conversations about emerging technologies like AI, workplace experts consistently highlight the critical role of human skills. However, eager to embrace the latest state-of-the-art tech, some companies may be undervaluing these essential qualities – characteristics that can be exceptionally valuable.

A recent Deloitte survey of 1,000 employees found that only 52% believed their companies prioritized “human skills” over technical skills. This perspective contrasts sharply with employees’ personal views: 95% described human skills as “always important” and “timeless,” with 87% identifying qualities like adaptability, leadership, and communication as essential for career growth.

Many employees also expressed a preference for employers to prioritize skills such as “teamwork and collaboration” over technical competencies like “AI integration and data analysis.” Without this emphasis on human skills, respondents worry it may have long-term effects. Specifically, 94% are concerned that future workers might lack the “necessary human skills” for the workforce.

While tech investments are clearly a priority for companies (average tech budgets increased to 5.49% of revenue in 2023 from 4.25% in 2022), there’s a notable gap in implementation. A survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that while AI adoption is growing, it remains far from widespread among employees. Additionally, 70% of respondents in Deloitte’s survey reported being trained on new technology, only to see it quickly become obsolete. Consequently, employees want more interpersonal development, like mentorship and shadowing, along with a stronger focus on human skills.

How to Identify Human Skills

Since employees and employers alike value such skills and they can be mutually beneficial to both people and businesses, it’s important to identify individuals who possess these traits. Here are some ways small businesses can pinpoint critical abilities, such as communication, collaboration, and negotiation skills in their employees:

Communication Skills

Observe how employees communicate with customers, clients, and colleagues. Do they speak clearly, actively listen, and express themselves well?
Review email and written communications. Are they well-organized, concise, and appropriate in tone?
Look for employees who are comfortable presenting information to groups, articulating ideas, and engaging in discussions.

Additionally, take note of employees who can explain complex topics in simple terms and tailor their communication style to the audience.

Collaboration Skills

Watch how employees interact and work with others on team projects or tasks.
Do they contribute ideas, support their teammates, and share information freely?
Observe if they are able to compromise, resolve conflicts, and work towards shared goals.
Take special notice of employees who volunteer to help others and can take direction as well as provide it.

Also, pay attention to their personal disposition. For instance, if they demonstrate empathy, patience, and respect when collaborating.

Negotiation Skills

Evaluate how employees handle discussions around budgets, timelines, and other work-related terms. Do they prepare thoroughly, listen actively, and propose mutually beneficial solutions?
Identify individuals who can remain calm under pressure, make concessions when appropriate, and reach satisfactory agreements.
Look for employees who can effectively communicate their position, understand the other party’s perspective, and reach a compromise.

You should likewise keep an eye on their tactics. For example, if they are persistent yet flexible in their negotiation approach.

By observing these behaviors in day-to-day work, small business owners and managers can get a sense of which employees possess strong communication, collaboration, and negotiation skills. These soft skills or “human skills” are essential for success in many roles and can be just as important as technical expertise.

Want to Accomplish More?

Do you want your company to grow faster and earn more while you spend more time with your family doing all the things you started your business to do?

We can make that dream a reality. Give us 30 minutes and we will show you how to get your life back. Skeptical? Good! Put us to the test.

You can call us for your free appointment at 480-636-1720, or, if you prefer, send us an email. You can also visit us at Waters Business Consulting Group to learn more about us and the services we offer.

Like this article?

Use Your Past to Build a Better Future

May 16, 2017 No Comments

Mistakes, missteps, adversity, hurt, and failure. All of these are negative experiences, at least, at first impression. We’ve all dealt with heartache and heartbreak, with disappointment and resentment. So many pessimistic experiences and impressions can easily discourage to the point of apathy. It’s choosing another path to deal with such occurrences that’s one of the single most difficult things to do in life, and in business. There’s just no avoiding the fact that mistakes will be made, perhaps even to the extent of leading to outright failure of a company, even for entities that are established and realizing a profit. No matter the size or presence of a brand, it can deteriorate and ultimately flounder to the point of no return. We’ve seen this before in the business world, particularly in giants: Blockbuster Video, Circuit City, Borders Books and Music, Radio Shack, Montgomery Wards, Steak & Ale, the list goes on and on. Use Your Past to Build a Better Future One obstacle to overcome is being creatures of habit. Sure, these definitely differ from person to person, but regardless, remain part and parcel of our day-to-day routines. It’s quite easy to let this phenomenon creep into a business environment, and sometimes, with the best of intentions. Habit (read: practice and procedure) can be a good thing. It can also be a death knell, and when you can’t pinpoint the root cause, make you susceptible to more than one failure. The more clearly you understand your strengths and how they enabled you to get to this point, the more effectively you can leverage them into a bright and fulfilling future. It’s important not to regret the past. Instead, you must appreciate all of your positive experiences and find a way to learn from the negative ones. —Business Insider Our past is part of who we are, but, it doesn’t have to define who we are or what we can become. If you think about it for a moment, your past is one of the most valuable weapons you have in your arsenal leading you into the future. This is so understood, it’s actually become a set of quintessential cliches. We see these motivating messages all the time and get a lift. That feeling subsides and it’s human nature to let the past work its negativity on us. I share with my clients that although my successes are something I appreciate, it is my failures that provided me the learning to excel and help others accelerate their success in less time and less mistakes. Failure is the precursor to success. Failure is an event so do not let it define who you are. Use your past to empower yourself and move forward with your future: Change small things, one at a time. There’s a technique in the world of psychology known as, “solution focused brief therapy.” In short, it works by putting focus on building solutions instead of problem solving. It works in a splendidly simple way: you change one small thing at a time. It could be waking-up 10 minutes earlier, exercising just a little every day, or working on this or that skill. Whatever it is, when you become better at it, you’ll feel a genuine sense of accomplishment. Take-on tasks you regularly avoid. Speaking of exercise, this is one thing many people avoid, though it certainly isn’t the only one. You might not like talking on the phone, going-over or creating certain documents, or some other task. Here again, whatever it might be, incremental change is key. Know and accept your weaknesses. You might not be good at this or that, and that’s perfectly okay. For entrepreneurs, this is a very difficult concept to accept. Being natural self-starters, optimists, and enthusiasts, not being able to excel at something is foreign and frustrating. When you do accept your weaknesses, you’re actually demonstrating your own strength, particularly if you bring-in someone else that has those exact skill sets. Look at yourself through another’s eyes. You probably get compliments from time to time, though these might not be overt. Take stock in each one by accepting them for what they are, and know it’s how the person who gave it truly feels about you. [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”26833294″]

When the Owner Becomes the Bottleneck

July 15, 2026 No Comments

How commercial landscape companies build leadership teams that scale, and create greater owner freedom Most commercial landscape companies are built on the back of one person. The owner wins the early customers. Builds the first crews from scratch. Develops the relationships. Solves whatever operational problem comes up that day. Approves the big decisions. Handles the difficult employee conversations. Steps in personally when a customer is unhappy. Finds a way to make payroll when it’s tight. Keeps the whole thing moving. In the early years, that level of involvement is often exactly what the business needs. But somewhere along the way, the same leadership style that built the company starts to hold it back. The owner becomes the person everyone waits on. Managers hold off on decisions until they get the nod. Employees learn to escalate a problem instead of just solving it. The important customer relationships all live with one person. Strategic thinking keeps losing to whatever fire is burning today. And the strange part is, the company keeps growing while the owner keeps feeling more trapped, not less. At some point, the owner stops being the company’s biggest growth engine. They become its biggest constraint. At Waters Business Consulting Group, we help commercial landscape companies make that shift from owner-dependent to leadership-led. The point isn’t to push the owner out of the business or make them less important. It’s to build a company that’s stronger than any single person, including the one who started it. The hidden cost of owner dependency Owner dependency is easy to miss because it usually just looks like dedication. The owner is deeply involved, decisions happen fast, customers know exactly who to call, and employees trust that the owner will step in and fix whatever’s broken. All of that feels like strength. But when too many decisions flow through one person, the cracks start to show in ways that aren’t always obvious at first: decisions slow down, managers never really get the chance to develop, accountability gets fuzzy, the same operational problems keep resurfacing, employees get frustrated, and scaling gets genuinely hard. The owner’s workload keeps climbing. The business carries more risk than it should, and it’s worth less than it could be. From the outside, everything can look fine. Revenue’s up, crews are busy, new contracts keep coming in. Inside, the owner is quietly carrying far more of the business than is sustainable, and the company can’t really grow past what one person can personally manage. The warning signs Almost no owner sets out to create this kind of dependency. It builds up slowly, one small moment at a time. A manager asks for help, and the owner just gives them the answer instead of coaching them to find it. A customer has a concern, and the owner jumps in and handles it personally. A decision comes up, and the team waits rather than acts. Before long, everyone’s learned that escalating is just easier than owning the solution themselves. A few signs tend to show up when this has gone too far. Every real decision runs through the owner. Managers might have titles and job descriptions, but not the actual authority or confidence to make a call on pricing, hiring, a customer escalation, an equipment purchase, or a scheduling problem. When one person has to sign off on everything, the whole organization moves at that person’s speed. Managers show up with problems instead of solutions. Strong leaders identify an issue, weigh the options, and bring a recommendation. In an owner-dependent company, managers just hand the problem over and wait for instructions. The owner solves it, the manager doesn’t grow from the experience, and the exact same type of problem lands on the owner’s desk again next month. The owner can’t actually step away. Take a real vacation, or a week at an industry conference, and does the business keep running the way it should, or do decisions just pile up until you get back? A company that can’t function without the owner constantly present might be successful, but it isn’t scalable yet. Critical knowledge only lives in one head. If the owner is the only one who really understands the key customer relationships, the history behind certain pricing decisions, what “good” actually looks like operationally, or where the company is trying to go strategically, that’s a real risk. Knowledge that never gets shared or documented becomes a wall the company eventually runs into. Growth is creating more work instead of more freedom. A healthy business should open up more options as it grows. If every new customer, crew, or service line just adds more directly to the owner’s plate, the company is expanding faster than its leadership infrastructure can support. More revenue isn’t buying more leverage. It’s just buying more responsibility. Why hiring more people doesn’t fix it When owners start feeling overwhelmed, the instinct is usually to hire: another estimator, another account manager, another supervisor. More hands on deck can genuinely help, but hiring alone doesn’t solve owner dependency. A bigger team without real structure often just creates more confusion. Employees need more than a title on a business card. They need clearly defined responsibilities, real authority to make decisions, expectations they can actually measure themselves against, timely information, honest feedback, and accountability for the results they’re responsible for. The goal was never just to add headcount. It’s to build leadership capacity, meaning the organization’s actual ability to make sound decisions, manage performance, and execute without the owner having to direct every single move. Build the org chart around clear ownership As a company grows, responsibility tends to get blurry. Sometimes two people both think they own the same issue. Sometimes everyone assumes it’s someone else’s job. Real clarity starts with a few basic questions: who owns this result, what authority do they actually have, how will success be measured, what can they decide without asking the owner first, and when should something get escalated instead. Clear ownership doesn’t mean less

How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business

February 13, 2018 No Comments

Social media can really become a workplace problem. And, it’s always a good idea to have an effective social media employee policy. But, it is also one of the most powerful marketing tools business have at their disposal. It’s free. It can potentially reach thousands to tens of thousands of people. Plus, it’s very easy to use. Well, that’s not always the case because some businesses actually don’t quite know how to use it correctly. Why Social Media is an Important Business Tool Social media is an important business marketing tool because it’s part of our day-to-day lives. The vast majority of consumers are on at least one or two platforms. Therefore, the exposure is far and wide. It’s not just about branding and marketing outright, either. Social media offers customers yet another contact and engagement point. Customers should know you are serious about promoting your company, about announcing when there is a new milestone, about company news that might make them want to buy a product, not just laugh at a video. They need to see effort, not occasional hits. —Inc.com There are plenty of instances where companies have used social media to their advantages. (Of course, there are plenty of examples where companies have publicly dropped the ball.) But, more often, social media is an avenue to build a following. The more followers, the more interest and sales a business receives. How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business To really tap into the power of social media, you should know some basic ground rules. If you’re going to make it work for you, it’s important to understand how to go about it. Otherwise, you’ll simply be wasting your time. Here are some helpful tips for how to use social media to promote your business: Make all profiles uniform. Most businesses set-up more than one social media account. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are among the most popular. Whatever platforms fit your business, they should all be uniform. In other words, present the same “face.” The same profile picture, the same bio or about, and so on. This provides a seamless experience and avoids confusing people. Provide value. Whatever you share, it should have some sort of value. Be it advice or just good for a laugh. And, you should always use the 1-in-7 rule — one post overtly promotes your business, the other six provide valuable information. Showcase your expertise. It’s always a good idea to periodically share insider information. (No, not the kind that goes against insider trading rules.) Rather, the kind of information the average person does not know or know much about. Ask questions that beg answers. The whole point of social media marketing for business is to get users to engage. So, ask questions that are conversation starters. And, when people respond, be sure to interact. Use images to your advantage. It’s a well known fact that posts with images gain a whole lot more attention than text-only posts. Use interesting, mood-evoking images for the best results. How do you use social media to promote your business? What techniques work best for you? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.