Imagine an executive team that approves a reorganization. The objections come after the meeting, when people have already started putting the decision into practice. The executives know their areas of the business. By the time they share what they know, the teams are already acting on the decision. Treating behavioral skills as an add-on to technical expertise overlooks how that expertise shapes the work of a team. Raising a concern in time, revisiting a decision when the facts change, or coordinating a handoff between departments can change what the team gets done.

What are behavioral skills at work?

A behavioral skill is a learned ability that shows up in how someone handles a work situation. You can assess it by observing what the person does and how well they adapt their approach across situations. Take a manager who asks for objections. Inviting someone to speak is easy to observe. Understanding the risk they raise and weighing it in the decision, even if it means reworking the plan, gives you a better sense of the manager’s skill.

The term soft skills covers a wide range of abilities. To decide what to develop, start with the work people need to do. A production manager may need to interpret quality data and get two teams to change how they hand off work. Reading the data helps pinpoint the problem. Working out a new handoff with both teams is how the manager can get it fixed.

How do behavioral skills affect performance?

In a field experiment with women working in garment manufacturing in India, Adhvaryu, Kala, and Nyshadham (2023) estimated a 13.5% productivity gain from the soft skills program they studied. Gains were larger when employees who received training worked alongside coworkers on shared operations. The authors interpret that pattern as consistent with better teamwork. The estimate applies to that program and production setting. The difference across operations gives other employers a question to ask about their own work. Where does one person’s output depend on how well they work with someone else?

McEwan and colleagues (2017) reviewed 72 interventions with comparison groups across 51 publications. On average, teamwork training improved both how teams worked together and how well they performed. Both average effects were moderate after the authors removed outlier studies. A more complete handoff between departments shows that coordination has changed. Tracking how often cases have to be reopened because information was missing helps a manager see whether that change improved service.

In the World Economic Forum’s 2025 survey of more than 1,000 employers, respondents identified resilience, flexibility, and agility, as well as leadership and social influence, among the core skills they value. The survey captures employers’ stated priorities. An employer deciding where to invest still needs to identify the practice that would make a difference for its own teams.

Why do these skills matter when the work changes?

When a company changes its tools or shifts responsibilities, people may need to rethink what’s happening before they change what they do. A rule that worked yesterday can lose its value when the people with the information or authority to make a decision have changed. Teams can adjust as a reorganization unfolds when they know how to flag a problem and agree on a new way to coordinate.

In a simulation study, Marks, Zaccaro, and Mathieu (2000) examined how teams responded to an unfamiliar environment. Leader briefings and training in how to work together helped teams develop a shared understanding of the task. In the authors’ analysis, that shared understanding was associated with better communication and performance. The participants were students working in simulated teams. When responsibilities change at work, a manager can use a task that spans both teams to see whether they understand their new roles in the same way.

Consider a hypothetical reorganization in which two departments split responsibility for unusual customer requests. Each department head thinks the other one is supposed to rule on exceptions, so cases pile up. At the first review, one of them brings in a stalled case and gets both teams to explain how they read the new rule. They get a decision on who handles exceptions. The skill is to surface that disagreement early enough for people to get back to work.

What helps people use a skill after training?

Training transfer is the use of what people learned once they’re back on the job. In a meta-analysis of 89 studies, Blume and colleagues (2010) found a positive association between a supportive work environment and transfer. The relationship was stronger for what the researchers call open skills, such as leadership skills, which require people to adapt what they do to the situation. A manager can learn to ask for a dissenting view in a workshop. To use that skill at work, they need a meeting where the decision is still open and an objection can make a difference.

UNREST’s Change Skills® programs start with a recurring problem that people can observe and work on. If an executive team keeps reopening decisions, its members can practice asking for objections before they commit. If the team can do that in an exercise and proposals still arrive at meetings as settled decisions, the chair can also change how proposals are prepared and when they come up for discussion. The guide to designing behavioral skills training covers how to choose a practice, build training around it, and evaluate it on the job.

The same skill looks different depending on the role. For a project lead, working across departments might mean checking that the receiving team has the information it needs. For an executive, it might mean getting a decision on a dispute that neither department has the authority to resolve. What you observe depends on the problem the team is trying to solve.

Skill Behavior to observe Outcome to track
Handle disagreement Before making the decision, the chair asks for an objection and explains how it factors into the decision. Decisions reopened because a constraint someone already knew about surfaced after the meeting.
Work across departments At handoff, the team passing along the case explains what is still open and checks that the receiving team can proceed. Cases sent back for missing information and time spent getting the information needed to proceed.
Adjust how teams coordinate When roles change, the leads of both teams use an actual case to clarify who makes decisions about exceptions. Time to resolve exceptions and cases left waiting because no one knows who owns the decision.
Give actionable feedback After a task, the manager describes what they observed and agrees with the employee on one adjustment to try next time. Quality of work on subsequent tasks, assessed against the criterion the manager and employee agreed on.

How can you tell whether these skills improve the work?

One behavioral indicator is the share of major decisions where the chair invited objections and addressed any that came up before making the call. Define what counts as a major decision and how to tell whether the chair addressed an objection. Meeting minutes can show that everyone had a chance to speak. They can also show whether the chair addressed the substance of a concern. Then track how many decisions the team has to reopen because a constraint someone already knew about surfaced too late.

At the start of a program, the person responsible for the work chooses an outcome to track and records a baseline. They then observe whether people use the practice on the job and whether any improvement lasts beyond the training period. When several teams are involved, staggering the start dates or comparing with a similar team can help interpret the change. The team can then decide whether to keep practicing, change how the work is organized, or look elsewhere for the cause.

Frequently asked questions

Is a behavioral skill a personality trait?

A skill describes what someone knows how to do in a situation. A trait describes a broader tendency. A reserved person can move a discussion forward by preparing a pointed question and giving others time to answer. To develop that skill, a manager can observe when the person asks the question and how they use the answers.

Has someone mastered a skill if they can use it in training?

Doing well in an exercise shows what a person can do in those conditions. On the job, watch how they adjust when the situation changes. Someone who can restate a disagreement between peers may need a different approach when the other person controls their budget.

Who decides which skills to develop first?

The manager responsible for the work and the people who do it can start with a recurring problem whose consequences they can see. If cases regularly come back because information is missing, start with the handoff between departments. The teams can agree on what needs to be passed along and check whether the receiving team has enough to proceed.

References

Adhvaryu, A., Kala, N., & Nyshadham, A. (2023). Returns to On-the-Job Soft Skills Training. Journal of Political Economy, 131(8), 2165–2208. 10.1086/724320.

McEwan, D., Ruissen, G. R., Eys, M. A., Zumbo, B. D., & Beauchamp, M. R. (2017). The Effectiveness of Teamwork Training on Teamwork Behaviors and Team Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Interventions. PLOS ONE, 12(1), e0169604. 10.1371/journal.pone.0169604.

World Economic Forum. (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025.

Marks, M. A., Zaccaro, S. J., & Mathieu, J. E. (2000). Performance Implications of Leader Briefings and Team-Interaction Training for Team Adaptation to Novel Environments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(6), 971–986. 10.1037/0021-9010.85.6.971.

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of Training: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065–1105. 10.1177/0149206309352880.

About the author

Maxime Rabéchault is the founder and president of UNREST, a change enablement consultancy. He applies behavioral science to help organizations change how they work.