I’m just back from spending four epic days in Nashville at my favorite conference event of the year, Workhuman. As is always the case after this event, I’ve got a lot of ideas swirling in my head from the great content and conversations.
Sidenote: I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. If you believe that we need to make work a more human experience, you need to get to this event next year. It’s a gathering of our tribe to connect, support one another, and gain the information and inspiration we need to keep doing this righteous work. Go to the event site and sign up for updates so you won’t miss it next year.
As you’d expect, there was a lot of discussion about what it means to create a work experience where humans can bring and be the best version of themselves.
The topics ranged from courage and vulnerability to mindfulness. There were experts who spoke about happiness, trauma, emotional resilience, and community. We explored the very real issues of equity, sexism, racism, and more that affect the workplace every day–whether we like to admit it or not.
At one point, I was having a conversation with someone and they referenced the importance of developing “soft skills.”
For some reason, when I heard the word “soft” this time, it was like someone slapped me across the face.
The phrase “soft skills” is a short-hand we adopted in HR and management years ago to describe those skills we need to work successfully with other people. When I Google the phrase, at the top of the page I get this definition:
personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.
When I heard the phrase used this time, it seemed so…wrong. So woefully inadequate to describe what we are talking about.
As I reflected on why it hit me as it did, it became clear pretty quickly.
These skills aren’t soft. Not even a little bit.
Soft Skills are Hard
Learning to be in healthy, positive relationships with other people is HARD. Yes, it may come more naturally for some than for others, but learning to be vulnerable (for example) is never easy. Some people go their whole lives and never figure it out.
Active listening is real work. You have to be committed and dedicated to it for it to happen. And even then, we get distracted and fail sometimes. It’s hard.
Empathy is also not easy to learn. Finding the awareness to see and feel not only outside of yourself but to then climb into another’s shoes to find their perspective is a developed skill. Again, hard work.
But, it’s not just that these skills are hard to learn and master.
Soft Skills make Immense Impact
When someone really listens to you and hears you, you remember that feeling. When someone sees you and recognizes your potential, it lifts you up. When someone shares themselves with you in a way that is risky for them, it draws you to them and changes your relationship.
These “soft skills” that we strive to train and develop in our leaders and employees are anything but soft in their impact on others. We’ve all witnessed or experienced the power of authentic human connection. I doubt that any one of us would choose the word “soft” to describe it.
So, I think we need to remove this from our language. These skills and attributes aren’t soft.
If we need a better word, perhaps we could consider vital or essential or human.
When we call them soft, we diminish their importance. And we give those who fail to recognize their importance the permission to minimize them. No more.
Creating a work experience that’s good for humans is hard. Being a leader or coworker who creates an experience for others that celebrates and welcomes the full splendor of their humanity is hard.
And it’s worth it. It is the work we are called to do.
So here’s my #Workhuman challenge to you:
- Remove the phrase “Soft Skills” from your vocabulary. Vow to never utter those words again so as to never unwittingly undermine the importance of these vital, essential, human skills.
- When you encounter someone who uses the phrase “soft skills,” engage that person in a conversation about the critical importance of these skills, how hard they are to learn, and why you don’t call them “soft” anymore.
Language is important. We need to choose and use our words wisely.
It’s time for “soft” to be removed from our vocabulary.
You are quite right; “soft” skills are the most difficult to master.
I always understood that the term arose purely because it was applied to those skills that were the opposite of “hard” – i.e., those that could be formally taught and certificated.
So I do get a bit of an irony overload when I see blog posts talking about “soft skills” and then proceeding to bullet-point a list of them, as if by doing that, they can be reduced to a checklist of things to do. I’ll even bet that someone, somewhere, offers training courses that will purport to give attendees a command of the “soft skills”. It goes without saying that such courses should be avoided at all costs.
I do suspect that the habit that a lot of companies got into of “refreshing” their workforce by purging many employees with lots of experience (on the grounds that they were old-fashioned, no longer “agile”, and not in tune with the needs of a vibrant, dynamic workforce serving vibrant, dynamic customers) contributed to the loss of such person-oriented skills because those experienced employees were the ones who had mastered interpersonal skills through that experience. Though that’s not to say that all experienced employees have a command of interpersonal skills; but they are the skills that only come with experience.
I had this same epiphany recently, in an online course, “Shaping Work of the Future,” from EdX/MIT. It was in our class discussion forum, going back and forth with a product engineer who was deriding this focus on “soft skills” in the workplace.
Those of us taking the other side spontaneously determined the term was doing us no favors.
You really hit the nail on the head, Jason.