“You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” - Simon Sinek
Let's start with the basics.
What are soft skills?
I like to think of a skill as a task or ability that creates some kind of value.
A hard skill is a specific task or ability that is easily quantifiable and usually possible to carry out independently. For example: writing code, driving a car and the ability to poach an egg are all hard skills. Soft skills by comparison inherently involve other people - they are the skills that allow us to navigate our social environments and the people in them. Things like teamwork, organisation, persuading, negotiating, leadership, managing - those are all considered soft skills.
Crucially, there is not a clear divide between our soft skills and hard skills. In fact our soft skills can increase or decrease the value of our hard skills. I’m sure I’m not alone in hearing anecdotal evidence of people who are amazing at their job on a technical level but terrible at their job in general. This is because there are many more things other than technical skills that make an effective employe. Things like how effective people are in teams or how well they communicate with other people.
In a future where more and more jobs are automated by artificial intelligence, the people who master their soft skills will undoubtedly be the most successful.
A recent post by Sam DeBrule revealed to me that "the McKinsey Global institute and The Obama Whitehouse, respectively, believe that “60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that are technically automate-able,” and “47% of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI technologies” over the next 10–20 years." With these figures in mind it's never been more important to master soft skills.
In this paper, 'The Story Behind the High Failure Rates in the IT Sector', Robert Goatham shares his research into why projects fail. Half of the six major factors identified are soft skills. Robert has a pretty interesting angle on this, he said 'IT projects are a complex web of interrelated decisions', if we can understand how to make better decisions the project will fail less.
Key soft skills to master.
Empathy
For me, empathy is the beating heart of a solid set of soft skills. As a developer, it easy to focus on our technical ability and troubleshoot problems in life the way we would code.
Body language
Gestures and body language play a crucial role in determining the success of our interactions with others.
Listening
Writing
Summary.
Check out my full talk here:
in February, I gave a full talk on the importance of soft skills. If you're looking for more tips an insights on how use and develop your soft skills, please check it out.
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