It’s the stuff great leaders are made of.
Communication, Listening , Giving Feedback, Cooperation, Problem Solving, Delegating, Observing, Coaching, Encouraging, Managing Conflict.
But too often these so-called “soft skills” are downplayed- both in the hiring process and in the design of training and development opportunities.
Whether the term “soft skills” was developed with good intentions or not, our minds lead us to think “soft skills” are unimportant, wishy-washy, lack a means of measurement, and can’t be taught nor developed.
It’s time we throw out this term of “soft skills” and replace it with a term that properly represents these skills that transform technical gurus into great leaders. How about “core skills” or “foundational skills”?
Time after time, we’ve seen that organizations staffed by employees with strong “core skills” are not only the most effective in their professional lives, but they generally thrive in their personal lives, as well.
These skills underlie the very foundation of how employees and executives interact with customers, clients, supervisors, and with each other. Craig may be the best application development manager you’ve ever seen, but when he’s promoted, how is he ever going to lead a team if he lacks conflict management skills? What if he can’t constructively receive feedback?
As Stephen Paskoff writes in a recent Workforce Management blog: “Any respected leader will tell you it’s the ‘soft skills’ that distinguish effective leaders from outstanding operational producers, or, at the management level, distrusted tyrants.”
Think about it – who are the leaders that you look up to right now or in your past? Who are the ones that balance their creative, intellectual or technical skills with their ability to bring people in, listen, motivate, read 
non-verbals or cooperate? Who are the ones that demonstrate exceptional human relations skills that perfectly complement the other abilities they bring to the table?
Let’s stop demeaning these types of skills as “soft” and instead, as leaders, let’s help our employees develop these foundational skills that can help them become the leaders they want to be.
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Bravo and encore to your call to rename “soft skills”. I have been calling them people-skills for quite some time and the many research results of employers underscore the deficit of these skills in recent grads. Have a new project to teach these skills to Trade Schools students for workplace readiness.
And of course, there’s plenty of room for improvement in everyone’s people-skills. To that end, I share the following posts with you and your readers to contribute to the learning:
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3 Solid Steps to Improve Your People-Skills Right Now
A Unique Definition of Teamwork and 4 Gems to Create It
Many thanks for your post. I will definitely RT it on Twitter.
Here’s to a lifetime of people-skills improvement.
Kate Nasser
The People-Skills Coach