Increasingly, business schools are dedicating more of their curriculum to "soft" management training. Interest in soft skills such as listening and teamwork has increased in the wake of the growing number of managers whose responsibilities now entail attracting and retaining skilled laborers. Warren Bennis, an author and professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, says more companies are seeking managers skilled in the art of listening, negotiating compromises, and communicating. "It isn't just nice--these interpersonal skills," Bennis says. "It's about stuff that's necessary to lead a complex organization." To meet this demand, some business schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management have included classes and workshops in their curriculum on developing relationships and leading meetings. First-year students are now required to work with second-year "coaches" on leadership style and communication. The Stanford Graduate School of Business is revising its leadership-training program this fall to mandate that all first-year students take part in teamwork and management-simulation exercises, take personality tests, and assess their interpersonal skills. Executive coaches will be invited to sit in and provide advice.

Gartner Inc. predicts that within two years, 50 percent of firms globally will be employing wikis. Companies are using them as worker-written, updateable, and searchable data sources that can include acronyms, sector terminology, case studies, and client data. Businesses are also utilizing them as human resources site, in certain cases replacing the corporate intranet offering information on policies, benefits, and new-worker orientation material. In addition, wikis are being used as social networking sites, where workers can find out about their co-workers through personal pages. Wikis are a subset of the comprehensive "mass collaboration" movement, which includes social networking and blogging, states technology strategist Don Tapscott, who also co-authored "Wikinomics, How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything." He notes they are part of a change from hierarchical to a more open management structure in which individuals are asked to "collaborate across old silos."

While many corporate managers continue to believe that C-suite executives have the most power to change the way a company is run, lower-level managers can have as much or more influence on company culture and processes. However, they must make an effort to exert that influence and ensure that their leadership efforts reach both those above and below them on the corporate chain. Although many managers believe that moving from a service-and-governance role to a leadership role may be excessively risky, taking on more leadership is a way to stand out and potentially be considered for promotions. One way to do this is to gradually transfer service and governance responsibilities to subordinates, which shows that they are trusted, and use the extra time to come up with ways to change the department's structure or processes. However, managers should not try to add processes, as this tends to create resentment among the workers who have to carry the processes out; instead, they should simplify existing processes and make sure that their concerns are heard during decision-making periods. In addition, managers should cultivate their conversational skills so that employees relate to them as trusted advisers rather than obstacles to innovation. Top executives can also encourage greater leadership among lower-level managers by bringing up problems that have not yet been solved and spurring managers to design solutions.

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