One of the most frequently used, over used and often abused phrases in corporate jargon is ‘soft skill’.
To the uninitiated, it appears to mean a set of behaviours- all aimed at developing a pleasing personality, about being ‘nice’ to people. Many professionals I meet in training programs seem to hold this view.
A person seems to have ‘good’ soft skills if he has pleasant manners. While pleasant manners are definitely a part of the set of soft skills, it does not end at this simple definition.
It’s easier to understand soft skills and hard skills by drawing an analogy with computers. In a computer, you have the hardware (mother board, chip, screen, keyboard, etc…) which is tangible, and you have the software- the operating system which comprises of various programs. The software is intangible but it nevertheless runs the hardware. The computer would be junk without the software.
Compare this with the working of a human being. We have hard skills (writing code, operating a machine, etc…). These hard skills are tangible and quite easily measurable.
On the other hand, we have certain other skills which are not quite tangible and are difficult to measure. These constitute soft skills. For instance:
- The ability to transfer knowledge from one brain to another in a coherent manner.
- The ability to foster relationships.
- The ability to have a group of people work towards a common goal.
The difference between hard skills and soft skills is therefore all about the skills being tangible and intangible. Soft skill does not imply just being ‘soft’ in our behaviour.
Our hard skills can take us up to a certain point in our careers, but we need soft skills in order to grow beyond that point. Many young professionals today discount the importance of soft skills early in their careers, only to realize later that their careers have stagnated, because they didn’t spend enough time and effort in developing the necessary soft skills earlier.
Organizations too, of late, have realized the importance of soft skill development. They are doing more and more to ensure that their employees develop a balanced skill set of both hard and soft skills. They now understand that organizations comprise of human beings and not just ‘resources’.
The key to develop soft skills lies in understanding the cause and effect of human behaviour.
