Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into by the end of this episode. Please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Today on this episode, I would like to talk about Project Oxygen, which is a project that Google...
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participated in for 12 months and collected data from over 10,000 managers in order to find out exactly what makes a better manager. And as you know, on this podcast, we always emphasize the importance of soft skills in addition to technical skills, especially in the engineering industry, because we know that it takes more than just strong technical skills to succeed.
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in this industry. Engineers work in a high pressure, high strenuous work environment. And dealing with challenging situations requires that a professional be strong in interpersonal and soft skills. Because when you have soft skills, it makes it easier for you to work with others, you are able to create healthy relationships at work and in person, and you can actually express your ideas to management effectively.
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That's one of the things that my previous guest, Bobby D explained on how he was able to climb the corporate ladder because he was able to take ideas and express to management why the idea would work, what would happen if the company that he worked for was able to implement it. So back to project Oxygen. As I said, this was a 12 month project that Google embarked on and they decided to test their hiring hypothesis.
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since they launched the company in 1998. Now, when CJ Brin and Larry Page started the company, their idea was to hire computer science majors and graduates from these elite universities. Everybody's always looking for Ivy League, Ivy League, Ivy League. Therefore, over the years, when they decided to launch Project Oxygen, this was a 12-month study of whether their hiring practices were actually yielding the results that they had foreseen.
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And one of the qualities that they realized after doing this project was, when it comes to their top employees, STEM expertise came in dead last. Let me say that again. When it comes to the most important qualities of their top employees, STEM expertise came in dead last.
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obviously STEM standing for science, technology, engineering and math. I know that's surprising for anybody listening, but here are the reasons why after doing this project Oxygen and the results that they were able together, here's the reason that they made that variable statement. They said the seven top characteristics of success at Google are soft skills. Let me repeat that.
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The seven top characteristics of success at Google are soft skills. Number one, being a good coach. When I started working back in the nineties, I had a mentor, he coached me through all things corporate. No matter how much college teaches on your technical skills, on the actual work itself, you actually have to be in the corporate workplace in order to know how to go about doing your job. So.
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Having a good coach, having a good mentor, having someone who will help you adapt, who will adapt you to the systems and to the processes is very key. And being a good coach means that you are able to build and motivate a team because everybody's different. Everybody comes from their own backgrounds and perceptions and way of doing things and their way of believing that things work a certain way. So...
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In order to build a team that's gonna accomplish major goals, you need to be able to motivate them to work towards a common goal. You need to be self-aware, meaning you know what your strengths and your weaknesses are, and you are able to articulate parts where your weaknesses need that gap to be filled. Also, you need to be an active listener. If you're a good coach, you're an active listener as well.
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You don't come across as someone with all the answers. You need to be open to new ideas, open to new ways and innovative ways of doing things. The second characteristic of success at Google is communicating and listening well. We emphasize the importance of communication on this podcast and listening as we always say, two ears, one mouth, use in proportion. Listen well.
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As I mentioned with one being a good coach, the first one, it is very key to listen well. They always say that when you speak, you already know the things that you know that you're speaking about. But if you listen, you are actually going to learn more. So learn to listen and learn to love listening. If somebody is speaking to you, in order to see whether you were able to listen well,
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Repeat back what they said, just to make sure that you decoded the information in the way that they intended. Also when speaking to someone, especially face-to-face, you maintain eye contact and the nonverbal cues of showing that you are listening, whether your face changes if they say something shocking or whether you smile if they say something pleasant as they continue to speak. This is one thing that we, most of us, if not all,
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suffer from is sometimes we have this bad habit of while the person is speaking, you're busy formulating the answer while your friend is telling you the problem, you're busy formulating the advice you're gonna give them. Sometimes they just want to rent and let it out. So stop taking your brain on the path of formulating an answer, a response, advice, or something that you think is going to make you sound smart. Just listen intently.
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Be attentive and don't be quick to formulate answers. Just let the information sink into your system. Number three characteristic of success at Google, possessing insights into others. When you have insight into others, that means you understand them very well. But are you able to understand people that you hardly listen to? And are you able to understand people that
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when they present their ideas, you shut them down just because you're the boss and you know everything. Therefore, it's very important to have a deep understanding of others, especially those who report to you. Because sometimes, especially as humans, it's hard for us to be vulnerable. That's why I love Brene Brown's work. It's hard for us to be vulnerable. We always, especially at work, want to put on this front, oh, I have all my stuff together.
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I need to look good in front of my bosses so that the next time there's a promotion, they pick me and things like that. So if you have a leader who has a deep understanding of his subordinates and he takes the time to know them on a human level and not just see them as workhorses, he will be able to have insight into them so much so that sometimes if there's work to be done and they struggle in a certain area.
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he is able to even have an idea on how to go about overcoming that instead of just shutting things down and saying, oh, they're incompetent or they don't know what to do. You need to have good insight into what others are like and what they go through. Number four, Project Oxygen. What is the fourth characteristic of success at Google? Having empathy. We talk a lot about empathy, especially since the Zoom era that we've come to since the pandemic.
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being digitally empathetic, learning how to show understanding and emotion and being human towards your colleagues and supporting your colleagues. How do you have empathy? Validating their feelings. Now, validating feelings doesn't mean you agree with everything the person is saying, but at least you are able to acknowledge the fact that
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They feel a certain way about something or have they have this idea and you give them the platform to express themselves. It doesn't mean you're always going to agree and you seek out to understand them. And most importantly, challenge your own biases about people. Everybody's different, especially if you work in a diverse work culture, different cultures, different races, different genders, different nationalities, everybody's different. Learn to sometimes ask yourself, go inward and ask yourself,
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Why am I so triggered about this person saying this? Is it because they're saying it to trigger me or do I hold an inner bias that makes me think that somebody like them shouldn't be challenging me in a certain way? Also challenge your own assumptions, not just about people, but about work as well, about ideas that people bring to you. And you must show genuine interest in your colleagues and in your team. That's how you're going to build a team.
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The fifth characteristic of success at Google, critical thinking. I don't think schools teach this as a curriculum, but I really think they should, because I think not just kids, but even as adults, it seems like this is the one skill that is not emphasized enough, but it's very key. When it comes to critical thinking, there is not a lot of managers that I know who like
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employees who just sit on their desk and say, okay, boss, just give me the work, I'll do it. And then they submit it and they say, okay, I'll sit on my cubicle, I'm waiting for the next one. There are times when you need to analyze, look at the idea, look at the project, look at the work and think to yourself, what are the possible outcomes of this if I do it this way? What if I do it differently? What if I change it this way? What could potentially happen?
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if I go a different route than what we've been doing all this time? What if I present that idea? Be a critical thinker. Show that you have a brain outside of just being given the work and doing it the way you've been told. Critical thinking means you are able to look at what's in front of you. You evaluate it. You don't just take things that face value. And this is actually one of the very important leadership qualities because you cannot lead a team
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If you're a yes, ma'am, yes, sir, okay, done. I'll give it to you the way you said. There are times when even your superiors are wondering, does this person think beyond what we just tell them? So you need to show critical thinking skills. Number six characteristic of success at Google, be a problem solver. Nobody likes problem driven people, whether professionally or in a personal relationships.
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You know those people who just come to you with problem, problem, problem, problem. They leave you hanging there while you're stressed about the problem. They just told you and they walk away. They leave you with all that energy of just feeling defeated and down trodden. And you think to yourself, life really sucks. Nobody wants a problem driven person. Learn to be solution driven. Look at all possible angles on how something can be tackled.
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Begin with the end in mind, Stephen Arkavy's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. If you begin with the end in mind, you will at least know, okay, this is where we need to get to. So our challenge is to know the route we should take, the detours we should take in order to get there. But at the end of the day, this is the solution that we are looking for. As we said in the critical thinking point,
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evaluate and analyze the information in front of you in order to see how to potentially get to a solution. You need to act on it once you decide, okay, I think this is gonna get us there. Be adaptable if you need to take a detour, if you need to be flexible and tweak some things a little bit and learn to collaborate. Nobody works in a vacuum. One of my guests said,
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engineers or collaborators by nature. Cause you're not gonna program something that's just yours. It's gonna be attached to something else that somebody's working on. It's going to have to work together with another idea, another program that somebody, one of your colleagues is working on. So you're not gonna be working in a vacuum and thinking you're just this solo, I'm just doing my thing. Engineers are collaborators by nature. So learn to be in collaboration and team mode.
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and be objective. Being objective means don't be too attached to how you think things are supposed to be. We live in a very fast-paced world. You want to be able to be objective and see things from many possible angles. The last characteristic of success at Google is you must be able to make connections across complex ideas.
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Somebody else is working on something in the project team. If there's 10, 20, 100 of you, you must be able to make different connections on how what you're doing is going to connect with what the other colleagues are doing. You cannot think in a vacuum. You must be able to critically think and see beyond just your nose. You must have foresight. You must be able to have big picture thinking. And that's what leaders are.
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big picture thinkers, because they're not just bogged down with what they have to do in that's in front of their desk. They have to think bigger. They have to think team. They have to think company. Therefore, you must be able to make these connections and you can do that when you have developed both your critical thinking and your problem solving skills. So in conclusion and in summary, Project Oxygen, a
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project that Google decided to embark on to decide whether the hiring practices that were started by the founders were working as effectively as they would hoped, it was a very surprising ending when they realized that, wait a minute, after 12 months of collecting this data and finding out who's other top employees, STEM expertise came in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google came out to be soft skills, which are being a good coach or mentor.
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communicating and listening well, possessing insights into others, having empathy and supporting your colleagues, critical thinking, problem solving, making connections across complex ideas. I hope this has been very helpful to you. I hope after listening, you are able to sit down and actually think what are some of these that you still need to work on. We are all work in progress that you still need to work on.
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so that you increase your chances of being appointed team leader and in other different leadership rules as well. Because anybody who still thinks individualistically when it comes to especially the engineering industry, that is not what they are looking for. Because at the end of the day, engineers are collaborators by nature.