Why Soft Skills Are an Organization’s Secret Weapon
Over the past couple of years, we’ve noticed a distinct trend in the requirement for custom training design that favours soft skills development.
Ever find yourself noticing something that leaves you curious?
Over the past couple of years, we’ve noticed a distinct trend in the requirement for custom training design that favours soft skills development.
Traditionally, organizations have placed a greater emphasis on hard skills – the technical expertise and specialized knowledge required to perform a job. But a growing body of research suggests that soft skills are equally, if not more crucial.
What are soft skills?
To this point, we’ve been engaged to provide training or speak at events about the importance of empathy, kindness, communication, collaboration, having difficult conversations, creativity, leading generative conversations, having a growth mindset, and how mindfulness helps to overcome the emotional impact of navigating change and innovation.
We even led a team of plant engineers with a highly unionized workforce through a creative problem-solving session that produced a surprising result. What was initially thought to be a throughput and equipment issue was a cultural issue.
When managers and supervisors made the effort to connect with employees through kindness, production increased and shift absenteeism, even on the dreaded nightshift, decreased.
And you know what was even more cool?
When these engineers realized they no longer needed a business case for new equipment, they looked to us for guidance on how to design and rollout a national training program centered around building relationships, kindness and mutual respect.
We didn’t go looking for these opportunities. They came from conversations with clients searching for solutions to address challenges in generating their desired business results: building workplace capacity, developing leaders, enhancing employee well-being or team culture.
So, what’s driving this trend?
Why soft skills are important
Our team had a great gab about this and was inspired to do a little research.
To us, soft skills are about how humans treat and engage with other humans in the work environment.
Reflecting on our experiences over the past couple of years our observation was:
Soft Skills are essential to enabling meaningful connections and interactions in the workplace
But our ability to connect and interact has had a wrench thrown in it over the past few years.
The work landscape has changed significantly. Remote and hybrid models have become the norm, and the importance of soft skills is becoming more apparent. As teams become increasingly dispersed, skills like communication, empathy and adaptability are essential for maintaining collaboration and cohesion.
Soft skills enable employees to navigate the challenges of virtual interactions, build trust and foster a positive, productive work culture.
Alongside the changes to how we work are the emotional toll of uncertainty and the aftereffects of the pandemic. Human connection through empathy, support and open communication help individuals cope with stress, build resilience and maintain their well-being.
What soft skills are needed
And why are they a secret weapon for organizations?
We’ve pulled together a top list of soft skills to enhance human connection and interaction given the realities of our hybrid and remote workplaces.
1Adaptabilbity and Resiliance
We’re living in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) where change is ever present. The ability to adapt and bounce back from setbacks is paramount. Employees who possess strong adaptability and resilience are better equipped to navigate uncertainties. They can quickly pivot to new challenges, embrace change, and maintain a positive, solutions-oriented mindset. This agility benefits the individual and also strengthens the entire team, fostering a culture of innovation and problem-solving.
Abilities like empathy, and clear communication are key for navigating these environments and flexibility, problem-solving, and emotional regulation can help employees navigate the ups and downs of work and life, strengthening their ability to connect with others in a meaningful way.
2Effective Communication
Clear, concise, and empathetic communication is the foundation of successful collaboration. In a remote or hybrid work environment, where face-to-face interactions are limited, the ability to convey information, ideas, and feedback effectively becomes even more crucial. Employees with strong communication skills can build trust, resolve conflicts, and ensure that everyone is aligned on goals and expectations.
3Emotional Intelligence
At the heart of meaningful human connection is the ability to empathize – to truly understand and share the feelings of another person.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage one’s own emotions as well as those of others. Employees with high emotional intelligence are better equipped to navigate interpersonal dynamics, empathize with their colleagues, and foster a positive, inclusive work culture. This, in turn, leads to improved teamwork, reduced conflict, and enhanced job satisfaction.
To develop emotional intelligence also prioritize soft skills such as active listening, and perspective-taking.
4Collaboration and Teamwork
The complexity of business issues leaders and teams are now dealing with makes collaboration essential for success. Employees who possess strong teamwork skills can work effectively with colleagues, share knowledge, and contribute to collective goals. Even if your employees don’t personally like everyone they work with, soft skills enable them to rise above differences, remember they share common goals and to work effectively together.
Skills like conflict resolution, negotiation and the ability to see the bigger picture are essential for successful teamwork. Soft skills like integrity, reliability and approachability are essential for cultivating trust. Demonstrating these interpersonal abilities helps to break down barriers and create a sense of mutual understanding and respect.
By fostering a collaborative environment, organizations can harness the collective intelligence of their workforce and drive innovation.
5Leadership and Influence
While not everyone may hold a formal leadership position, the ability to influence and inspire others is a valuable soft skill. Employees who can effectively communicate their ideas, build consensus, and motivate their peers can drive change and contribute to the organization’s success, even without direct authority.
6Prioritization and Time Management
Workplaces are rife with competing demands and constant distractions, the ability to prioritize tasks, manage time effectively, and focus on the most important priorities is crucial. Employees who possess these soft skills can maximize their productivity, reduce stress, and ensure that critical tasks are completed on time.
Integrating Soft Skills into Workplace Training
While soft skills may now be enjoying equal billing with hard skills for career success, there’s good reason soft skills have a reputation for being hard to learn.
We’ve found you can’t approach teaching and learning soft skills in the same way as hard skills.
As I was writing this blog, I was searching for an analogy to explain what it’s like learning and mastering soft skills in the workplace. I came up with Mixed Media Art.
If you’re anything like me when I first heard of this, you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. But I was intrigued. Basically, mixed media is a visual art form that combines more than one medium or material. Often it involves collage, assemblages or sculpture and makes use of paint, fabric, paper, and found objects. So rather than relying on say only acrylic paints to paint an image on a canvas, you can create your art piece using anything available to you.
I grew fond of mixed media as a creative outlet because it was improvisational – you showed up, waded in, accepted the reality of your supplies and skill level and got on with doing something. To me, it’s a forgiving art form. It was okay that I was a novice interested in developing my skills. If I created an unexpected outcome, the world wasn’t going to end. I could go with the flow and learn from the experience.
Why did I think of this analogy?
Because in our experience soft skills are best taught and mastered alongside a hard skill, preferably used within a business process, completed through collaboration and designed to achieve a specific business outcome.
So, using my mixed media analogy:
Raw Materials = Hard Skills
Artistic Techniques = Soft Skills
The Creative Process = Soft Skills Development
The Finished Piece = Business Result
Just as mixed media art combines various materials and techniques to create a unique and expressive piece, soft skills development in the workplace involves blending different interpersonal abilities and drawing upon constellations of soft skills to achieve a business result.
In the analogy, the raw materials such as paints, papers, and found objects represent the hard skills – the technical expertise and specialized knowledge that employees bring to their roles. These foundational “materials” are essential but not enough to create an impactful work of art. The techniques and processes used to massage and combine the raw materials are akin to the soft skills employees develop and apply in the workplace.
Skills like communication, empathy, adaptability, and emotional intelligence are the “techniques” that allow employees to thoughtfully and creatively leverage their hard skills to achieve the desired business result.
The important thing here for the artist is to prioritize experimentation with different materials and approaches to achieve their desired result. In the workplace, employees need to do the same in developing soft skills; they must be open to feedback, embrace challenges, and continuously hone their interpersonal abilities to land on their desired result.
To use a workplace example, let’s start with the soft skills collaboration and teamwork, leadership and influence and effective communication. Without a context to apply these skills, they are difficult to master. However, a great way to develop them is to learn the business process for stakeholder engagement (the hard skills).
If you teach your team a business process and draw connections to the soft skills they need, they can learn to master the soft skills through application of that business process.
In the stakeholder engagement example, your team would have to experiment, work in new ways, communicate with stakeholders, lead them through the stakeholder engagement process, manage priorities and time, as well as adapt to feedback, manage their own emotions and respond to those of the stakeholders. They’d also have to be willing to feel uncomfortable while learning to adopt and master this process.
And you thought you were simply teaching a business process. That’s a lot going on and a lot of opportunity for soft skills development. This is probably why soft skills have a reputation for being hard.
It’s not so much hard as requiring self-awareness and being mindful while learning. You can’t learn soft skills on automatic pilot. Being a conscious learner, working from the present moment and responding calmly to your own feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations maximizes the learning experience. Without self-awareness and a mindfulness practice, the full possibilities for soft skills development isn’t achieved.
Conclusion
If you’re still wondering why soft skills are an organization’s secret weapon, I’ll wrap up by saying this.
If you want to play the numbers game and look at soft skills development through the ROI lens, recent research has shown that investing in soft skills development can have a measurable impact on an organization’s financial performance through:
- Improved employee retention and engagement, thereby reducing costly turnover
- Enhanced team collaboration and productivity, leading to better business results
- Increased operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, ultimately driving revenue growth.
But in a world where we’re still navigating the changes to where and how we work, and our reliance on devices has dulled our ability to meaningfully connect, the development of soft skills is no longer a “nice-to-have”, it’s a strategic imperative for organizations seeking to drive sustainable success and create a more positive, collaborative work environment.
For both employees and employers, soft skills are fundamental for enabling the human connections, productive interactions and relationships that are essential for organizational success and individual mental health and workplace well-being.
By prioritizing these essential human abilities, leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams and position their organizations for long-term growth.
Wondering if soft skills development will help your team?
Book a complimentary 30-minute discovery call to run down the challenge you’re facing. We will listen to what you’re working through and help you figure out your next best steps. You may find validation that there is a training need. Or you may discover that we can help you find a better solution.
References and Resources:
(2024) LinkedIn Study: 30 Behavioural Interview Questions to Assess Soft Skills.
2024-09-30 DOAC – The Diary of a CEO (podcast) The Brain Rot Dr: We’re ALL Getting More Narcissistic! Spotify and Apple
