What Are Soft Skills, And Are They Truly Soft?
Soft Skills often are synonymous with the following terms:
- People Skills
- Social Skills
- Interpersonal Skills
- Communication Skills
- Core Skills
- Leadership Skills
Soft Skills are those skills, abilities, and essential qualities that a person practices and employs to develop personally and to interact effectively and harmoniously with others primarily in the work place for both professional and organizational success.
Soft skills consist of a combination of people, social, and communication skills, character traits, attitudes, and mindsets, as well as social and emotional characteristics, among others, which are sought for in all professions.
In a study conducted in 2016, 93% of employers term soft skills as either “very important” or “essential” (1). And in a similar study in 2015 in the UK, 97% of employers stated that soft skills are key to business growth or success. (2)
Therefore, if employers view soft skills as very important, essential and key to business growth or success, what are these soft skills? There are numerous soft skills. But in this blog I will list what I believe are the Top 10 Soft Skills:
- Communication Skills
- Leadership Skills
- Interpersonal and Social Skills
- Creativity
- Team Work
- Work Ethic
- Emotional Intelligence
- Time Management
- Adaptability/Flexibility
- Empathy
And Are They Truly Soft?
The term Soft Skills is usually connected with the term Hard Skills, technical skills required to do one’s job. Hard skills are developed in school, college, or on the job. When someone hears the word ‘soft’, he/she may imagine soft skin, a soft pillow, or the soft fur of a puppy. In this sense
the word soft means smooth or agreeable to the touch. But skills can’t be touched. However, the most common definition in this case is that which is not ‘hard.’
To distinguish between skills that employed machinery, which was referred to as Hard Skills, in contrast with those that involved leading soldiers and motivating teams, in the late 1960s the U.S. Army coined the term Soft Skills. These soft skills were social and interpersonal skills that related more towards the development of their soldiers and less technical in nature. They discovered that the training of soft skills was harder than that of actual hard skills.
Today the use of the term Soft Skills is still widely use in the military, organizations, companies, and in the general vernacular. To answer the question are soft skills truly soft, I would have to answer that they are some of the hardest skills to develop in order to be successful in the marketplace because they require humility, personal development, a willingness to change.
1. Wonderlics, 2016. Hard Facts About Soft Skills (pdf)
2. Kelvin Murray & Co, 2015. Leadership Communication, Some hard facts about soft skills