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One of my most popular articles is 101 Things a Six Sigma Black Belt Should Know. Of course, the list is primarily a list of technical tools and skills needed, but anyone who has worked as a change agent knows that there’s more to it than that. Soft skills are at least as important, if not more so. Some of the soft skills are people skills, others are intuition about a change project’s chances of success, and still others involve an understanding of the organization. When I teach Six Sigma classes I have several lessons and assignments around these topics. I thought it would be fun to see how long a list of soft skills I could come up with. Even more fun would be to see how many readers of this post could add to the list. So, here we go:

1. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to excite leadership about the need for change
2. The Six Sigma Black Belt should have an intuitive sense for which projects are right for their organization
3. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to assess a project’s likelihood for success
4. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to recruit sponsors for their change activities
5. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know who to turn for when they need a mentor
6. The Six Sigma Black Belt should understand the mix of personality attributes needed to make a team successful
7. The Six Sigma Black Belt should understand the team development stages and how to guide a team through these stages
8. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to resolve conflicts between team members
9. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know when to exercise control and when to release control in a team situation
10. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to plan and facilitate effective meetings
11. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be an effective public speaker
12. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to facilitate brainstorming sessions
13. The Six Sigma Black Belt Should know how to achieve consensus
14. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know what to do when consensus isn’t possible (e.g., nominal group technique.)
15. The Six Sigma Black Belt should be able to create a stakeholder communication plan
16. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to gain the cooperation of cross-functional stakeholders
17. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to assess restrainers and drivers relative to a goal
18. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to obtain the voice of the customer
19. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to learn about customer needs that customers may not be able to vocalize (e.g., Gemba, Follow-Me-Home)
20. The Six Sigma Black Belt should know how to determine the relative importance of different customer demands
21. The Six Sigma Black Belt should understand Kano analysis

This is all I have time for at the moment. I’m sure there are many other skills not on this list. Can we come up with a full 101 things? Your input is required!