Want a promotion? Your performance counts but your behavior counts more

The young computer engineer stood before the whiteboard confidently solving complex coding problems one after another. Thinking he had the Microsoft job well in hand, Satya Nadella turned back to his final interviewer, Richard Tait, who asked him a most unexpected question: Imagine you see a baby lying in the street crying. What do you do? Nadella thought for a few seconds and then said he’d call 911. As Tait (then a Microsoft manager, later an entrepreneur and venture capitalist) ended the interview and walked a stunned Nadella to the door, Nadella asked him what had gone wrong. “You need to develop empathy,” Tait told him. “When a child is crying, you pick them up and hug them,” he said. That was 1992. Nadella is now the CEO of Microsoft, but he often recounts the story as a moment he learned that leadership requires more than technical prowess. It’s an insight that still holds true nearly 35 years later: Employers want people who can read what the moment calls for rather than default to the technically correct response. The power of soft skills Studies show that companies hire and promote people into leadership positions who demonstrate “soft skills”—the ability to collaborate,…