Call Them Anything But Soft

I was recently doing some research about how to use coaching as a way to unlock and/or build skills within teams and organizations. The specific skills I was looking at were empathy, communication, collaboration, listening, emotional intelligence, creativity, and trust.

You may have heard these and similar skills referred to as “soft skills”. They encompass a set of skills that contribute to workplace success within a specific social context. In other words, they are skills that enable us to play nicely with others. And in today’s highly complex and interdependent workplaces, they are essential even in traditional “hard skills” jobs like finance, engineering, and software development.

I found that these skills are considered critical to both individual and organizational success. One report from CareerBuilder.com shows that 77% of surveyed employers feel that soft skills were as equally or more important than cognitive skills like reading, math, and science.

I also found that they are in short supply. A whopping 89% of 900 surveyed executives in a recent Wall Street Journal report found it “very or somewhat difficult” to find employees with the needed level of soft skills.

I know what some of you are thinking: “Kids these days!” But hold on. Before we add a generational bias and think that Millenials and Gen Zers can’t lift their faces from their screens long enough to learn how to properly socialize, an Adecco Staffing report found that 44% of executives surveyed found that their staffs are missing out on growth opportunities because of a lack of soft skills. I’m looking at you Gen X and Boomers!

The soft skills gap is real and it’s prevalent in all generations currently in the workforce showing up in both applicants and existing employees alike. 

Why Soft?

If these skills are so important and so hard to come by, why do we call them “soft skills”. Turns out it’s the military’s fault … partially.

In the late 1950s, the U.S. military became interested in studying skills for troop effectiveness that went beyond technical skills related to machinery. They learned that troop effectiveness had as much or more to do with how troops were led as it did with technical skills. Thus began the difference between hard or machine skills and soft or people and paper skills. 

Interestingly, in 1972 the military concluded that “no distinction should be made between hard skills and soft skills and recommended that the term ‘soft skills’ be eliminated from systems engineering terminology” (U.S. Continental Army Command and U.S. Army Defense School, 1972). But the die was cast and corporate America has been steeped in the hard and soft skill dichotomy ever since.

What Should We Do About It?

As you might imagine, labeling some skills as “hard” and others as “soft” has created no end to misunderstanding and played into historic biases in gender and race. 

Soft skills have been seen as both easy to learn and dismissed as useless when compared to hard skills. Soft skills have also been historically labeled as more naturally feminine and not necessary in the so-called masculine world of corporate leadership. People of color, especially African Americans, have suffered historic bias against both their technical and relational skills. Give a bias an inch, and it will take a mile.

Because of these and many other misconceptions in the use of soft skills, many in the business and academic communities are calling for a renaming of soft skills to something that is more attuned to both the reality and importance of soft skills. 

This call, while necessary and worthy, has led to a confusion of terms like Power Skills, Essential Traits, Human Skills, Interpersonal Skills, and the list goes on. If business and academia can’t create a standard label, this confusion will become as potentially damaging as the original misnomer. Regardless of name, however, the power and necessity of soft skills is only growing in the marketplace.

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet …”

~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Personally, I feel that pretty much anything other than soft skills is a better choice, but it would be nice if we could all agree on one term. Otherwise, we’ll continue to default to soft skills along with the unfortunate misconceptions and biases. 

What Does All of This Have to Do With Coaching?

Quite a bit actually, and for me it begins with self reflection and inquiry. Coaching is at its core a relationship built on self reflection. A coach works with individuals and teams to assess where they are currently, where they’d like to be in the future, and what’s necessary to get there. It’s a reflective and participatory process that can be used for improvements or changes in anything from batting averages to marital success to increasing personal and business agility.

It can also be used to do the hard work of developing so-called soft skills. It enables leaders at all organizational levels to cultivate emotional intelligence, enhance communication and influence, foster collaboration and team building, navigate change, and improve decision-making and problem-solving abilities. 

No matter what new label we give to soft skills, it’s pretty clear that the business of developing them is anything but quick and easy work. The research clearly shows that technical and/or domain knowledge is no longer enough in today’s workplace.

Whether you want to be a better teammate, leader, or person, coaching can help you unlock and develop these essential skills.

What do you think is a better name for “soft skills”?