There’s a growing awareness about the importance of “soft skills” as critical to helping organizations perform at their peak. Soft skills are often defined as strong interpersonal communication skills, active listening skills, emotional intelligence and other non-technical skills that often defy being easily counted. Yet they are the very thing that hold a project team together. It’s like organizational cartilage. Team members with strong soft skills have the potential to transform the bones of a good organization into a great one.

These same articles about soft skills don’t often go into tactical details. I would offer two suggestions:soft skills are actually creative skills, and collaborative negotiation skills embody and wrap many soft skill definitions together.

At its core, collaborative negotiation is a collection of four components:

– It’s about spotting common problems.

– It’s also about understanding people’s motivations for taking action.

– It’s about creatively generating options that successfully meet your team’s criteria.

– It’s about collectively solving problems with your team, sometimes through generating totally new options.

Collaborative negotiation has the potential to move everyone forward while building trust.  Sometimes that skill can move you into unanticipated and delightful places.

Here’s an example: I once saved my boss’s boss $500,000.  I saved her deferred costs because I understood data in a way no one else did at the time. This was 2005 —not long ago. Yet data as a field in my organization was barely a thing, let alone the science it is now. I was a nerdy kid from a technical university that had somehow stumbled into the job. I did not know how my technical skills would help fight the good fight, but I was creative and curious.

I had heard my boss and the executive director talk about a dilemma they had — a big set of records was set to expire. There was a legal obligation to get these folks to renew their membership, which the organization typically did through phone calls and direct mail. As I began to examine the data, I found that almost all of these records had a dated source code on it — the day the member signed up. In fact, we had another 6 to 8 months before the legal obligation would expire. I managed to “rescue” about 125,000 records.

I knew from previous campaigns that we would spend anywhere from $3 to $5 per acquisition, so I multiplied the number of records that I had “rescued” by $4 (the average) and arrived at $500,000. I wrote up a quick memo, presented it to my boss, who in turn presented it to the executive director. I had helped dissipate a looming disaster and had bought the organization time.

There were other (literally) data-driven successes after that event, and each time I was able to show how my geekery had save time, money or effort (all strong motivation for the bosses). Each time, I gained more trust with my colleagues and leadership. This opened doors to support suggestions I would have on what new technology we should adopt in the future. The options I would present were all aligned with the strong motivators of saving time, money, and effort.

Through building trust through dozens of small negotiations, I secured approval to work an alternate work schedule. I negotiated an agreement that allowed me to work a compressed four-day schedule so that I could work on a personal project one day a week for a 3 month period. The bosses blessed the unprecedented agreement so I wouldn’t have to quit my job. Instead, they helped me expand my work life to make space for the personal project.

Most importantly, I never doubted my usefulness to the organization.  I knew exactly what value I was bringing to the table because I was forced to explain what I was doing. Having technical skills in a place where very little institutional knowledge existed before my arrival could have been a burden. I transformed it into a benefit by being transparent through communication. Data was (and is, for any operation) the backbone of the organization, and I helped my leadership understand the value of the data as well as the data nerd.

Ten years later, I still use collaborative negotiation skills on a daily basis. Knowing the needs and motivations of the diverse people I work with helps me create solutions that keeps the work moving forward. Is it a soft skill? Yes. But I like to think of it more as a creative skill or an improvisation skill, as well as an empowering one.

Because collaborative negotiation skills are so empowering, I developed a negotiation kickstarter campaign to raise funds so I could teach others. We hit our goal in half the time, and I’m looking forward to translating the manual into Spanish as well.

Being able to articulate the value you bring to any situation — and being able to creatively generate solutions where there might appear to be none — is vital skill, particularly for women.

If you would asked me where I first saw collaborative skills truly at work, I’d say it was from watching women managers — especially managers that are working moms. Mothers are the world’s greatest collaborators and negotiators. All mothers and particularly working moms are geniuses in creating their way out of conflict and making situations work (often on a shoestring.)

Perhaps the rise in the value of soft skills will also raise the value of working moms and women, too.