Confucius said this long ago:
"Demand much of yourself and little of others, and you will keep resentment far away."
When I had fewer years under my belt, I used to pride myself on having good 'soft skills.' I resolved to be the teammate who took the lead on the thankless work and set an example, who made the environment easier for colleagues to work in, and I actually acted that way.
But recently, I'd been holding others to standards far stricter than necessary.
This happened in an interview I sat in on not long ago. One candidate said, "I wanted to make a lot of content, but the company kept assigning me other work, so I decided to leave." I asked him back, calmly, maybe a little coldly:
"Couldn't you have just worked overtime to make the content? If you really wanted to do it, that is."
I don't know how that candidate rated me as an interviewer. But when I replayed it myself, I realized, too late, that I'd said something really harsh. I had taken my own standard, that if you want to do something, the sacrifice it takes is a given, and demanded the exact same thing of someone else.
This sharp-edged conversational habit turned inward on the organization too, and I clashed with a lot of teammates over the past year. Nobody could rebut my logic of "Is anything I said wrong?", but I could feel people slowly drifting away.
I may have beaten people with correct words, but I was failing to win their hearts.
Back to what Confucius said. Being strict with myself didn't naturally turn into generosity toward others. If anything, all I'd confirmed was that the harder a person drives themselves, the easier it is to hold others to that same strict yardstick.
As strict as I was with myself, I needed to make a conscious effort to lighten that weight for others.
Maybe real soft skills aren't about saying 'the right thing,' but about leaving enough room for the right thing to actually reach the other person.
