Why Soft Skills Are Essential to Your Leadership

The Great Canadian Leadership Podcast

The focus of business leaders has been shifting from task- or objective-driven to people-driven. That means soft skills such as effective communication, understanding, and collaboration have become increasingly important to leaders’ abilities.

In this episode, we have a great discussion with our guest Jennifer Lennox, a highly experienced HR leader on why soft skills are crucial in organizations and what leaders can do about it. Jennifer also shares how she found her voice to communicate and influence others and how her leadership career took off from there.

One of the major challenges for leaders is that they often find themselves multitasking and handling different priorities, but what's essential now more than ever is for them to put people first and adopt a whole new leadership style that is people-driven.

Finally, as a leader, your presence lingers, and your behaviour is often a topic of discussion at the dinner table. Therefore, it's crucial to be fully present and aware of how your people feel when they are in your presence.

Our guest: Jennifer Lennox is an experienced HR professional and the Vice President of People, Culture and Learning at AutoCanada a senior leadership position where she collaborates with the Senior Executive team, HR Team, and AutoCanada General Managers to create a world-class company culture. With over 20 years of experience in people development, talent acquisition, training, executive leadership and HR strategy, Jenn is a certified HR Executive (CHRE) and has worked for organizations of different sizes, including small business tech startups, large corporations, and the private sector such as CIBC, Home Depot, Alcumus and four years as the Head of People and Culture with the Humberview Group.

As with every episode, our guest Jennifer Lennox shares her ‘Failure... Ta-Da’ moment, and at the end we share the three stars and the next step you can put into practice from this episode.
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Check out more free resources on software and soft skills with webinars and tools. Also, check out our list of over 25 instructor-led Professional Skills Courses at The Great Canadian Training and Consulting Company.