What are Soft Skills?

Definitions abound. Here are a few:

• Personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. [Google]
• A combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients, among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills. [Wikipedia]
• Desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude. [Collins English Dictionary]

Certainly, relationships are a common theme - people skills. Extensions include individual skills like attitude and creativity, but these are not commonly understood. Sometimes it seems a bit like this:

• Hard skills: technical/domain skills; generally measurable
• Soft skills: everything else and often difficult to measure

There's an extensive, yet non-exhaustive list below. Note that some on the list don't fit all the definitions above - notably, the creative skills are not interpersonal skills. Note also that many on the list are qualities that are underpinned by other soft skills, for example, emotional intelligence underpins many other skills listed; this means it's good to be strategic about which skills you develop.

Why Do They Matter?

Ever heard this expression: Hired for his IQ and promoted [or fired] for his EQ ?

Soft skills are underpinned by emotional intelligence. Your technical skills get you in the door and in front of a keyboard, but if you can't get along with your teammates then there's going to be trouble and most likely your career will be halted at that point. Senior leaders will promote you when they're comfortable that you can lead a team. And if you continually cause a ruckus then they'll find a way to sideline you or move you on. It's that simple.

Soft skills are whatever skills are required to perform the social aspects of your role (or desired role).

Practically every technical person that has approached me for coaching has said, "I need to work on my soft skills." This was the genesis for this website and company name. Throughout school and university, we're trained to compete and continuously graded on a bell-curve against our peers. When we graduate we continue to distinguish ourselves based on our individual technical contribution and performance ... for a while. And then one day we find that more technical skills are not enough (this was my experience) and we hit a ceiling, right when it feels like we're at the top of our game. It's frustrating because it seems like it should be simple. It's just people, right?

How to Learn Soft Skills

• Soft skills are just that - they're skills, not knowledge. You don't get them by reading a book or a website, although reading about soft skills might help you reflect on what needs to change. Soft skills take practice, patience and a willingness to confront whatever feedback life has provided you - whether it's from your team, your boss or just a nagging sense of what you don't yet know.

And if someone has unhelpfully suggested you need to "work on your soft skills" then you'll also need to figure out which ones. Many managers don't have the language or skill to provide really useful feedback, so you might be left with the sense of a reprimand rather than a clear way forward.

All soft skills are learnable. Your current behaviour and/or challenges are not your innate personality - they're just thinking habits you picked up along the way. With timely feedback and support, specific soft skills can be developed in months rather than years, but the thing to note is it's very difficult to do it alone.

You'll have much better results if you partner with someone - a peer, manager or coach - who will provide you with honest feedback and hold you accountable for staying focused on your goal. Often a peer or manager can be sufficient, and this is a great place to start, but they have their limitations:

• Peers will probably have a similar skill level and so there’s lots you both don't know. There's also a tendency to collude rather than challenge your thinking.
• Managers may be more skilled, but there is often a conflict of agendas and reduced safety - the manager requires specific outcomes and must report to his boss etc.

A trained leadership coach can:

• Provide a safe, confidential environment that can greatly accelerate your learning.
• Provide regular insightful feedback around your goals and challenges.
• Assess your emotional intelligence and provide guidance on how to improve.
• Guide you through the process of exploration, experimentation and reflection.