What Are Soft Skills and Why Do We Need Them?

What are Soft Skills?

Consider this scenario:

You are new to a place and you fall sick. Since you do not know of any doctors, you decide to go to the nearest Clinic. After waiting patiently for your turn for about 30 minutes, you are called in. The middle aged doctor scans you through his thick glasses and asks “What are you here for?” It takes you a couple of seconds to realize you are being asked for your symptoms. You inform him of all your aches and pains. When you pause, he simply looks down at his notepad…scribbles a few notes and says “ok. Wait for the medicine outside.” The serious look on his face too intimidating for you to ask “But can you at least tell me what’s wrong with me?”

You collect the medicine but not satisfied, you seek another doctor hoping this doctor would divulge more than just dispensing medicine.

As you enter the doctor’s chamber, you are greeted with a warm smile. The symptoms are asked. While the doctor is scribbling on his note pad, he tells you his diagnosis and asks you if you have any questions. You ask what you have to and then wait outside to collect your medicines. When you collect the medicines, you find that the medicines prescribed by both the doctors are similar.

Which Doctor would you go back to in future and why?

It is obvious, knowledge-wise both the doctors are equally competent. Where the second one scores are his ability to make the patient comfortable (with a warm smile), putting the patient’s anxiety and curiosity at rest (by explaining plausible causes for the symptoms) and respecting the patient (by asking if he/she wanted to know anything else).

The knowledge of the doctors is their Hard Skill and their ability (or lack of it) to understand the patient and their needs and how to address them is what we call “Soft Skills”.

To further illustrate,

Hard Skills:  Hard Skills are mostly the subjects we learn in school and on which we are tested come under hard skills like Math, Computers, Reading, Writing, Sciences, etc.

Soft Skills: are a broad set of skills, competencies, behaviors, attitudes, and personal qualities that enable people to effectively navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. A recently released report by Laura H. Lippman and colleagues prepared for Child Trends, Lippman and colleagues sought to identify what specific soft skills improve chances of employment and productivity globally across sectors. They found the top five soft skills youth need to develop to improve workforce success include:

social skills (understanding and responding to others, negotiation, persuasion)
communication(assertiveness, presentation skills)
high-order thinking (problem-solving, critical thinking, decision-making, )
self-control(managing anger, sadness, stress,)
positive self-concept(self-awareness, self-motivation, and self-esteem)
What’s the use of soft skills?

 People with better soft skills have a significant advantage in life (as you can see from the example above, one would naturally, go to the doctor with stronger interpersonal and communication skills). If you reflect and think, you will find if 2 companies are offering similar kind of products, you would go to the one that gives you better service. Or if you are ordering a cake, you would be more drawn to the baker who takes the time to understand your needs and is courteous in dealing with you.

Outstanding soft skills can help an average performer climb the corporate ladder with great speed. People who know how to build great relationships make it to the corner office.

Listing some of the advantages of having good soft skills:

Better career,
Better personality
More successful in life
More resilient to challenges.
Make them more independent
Positive and stable relationships
Why Do Children Need Soft Skills?

Consider following scenarios:

1. Matt has just moved to the neighborhood and is a new student at a school. He is sitting at a lunch table where a group of kids are planning some activities for the weekend. He wants to be included but doesn’t know what to do.

2. Jordan and Alvin are playing and Alvin has the habit of coming too close while talking and even touching in a playful manner which is annoying for Jordan. Jordan does not like it but does not know how to ask him to stop without hurting his feelings and spoiling their friendship.

 When sitting and reading the situation, it seems pretty obvious what Matt should do – he just should get up and approach the group. Or Jordan should just tell Alvin to stop. That’s it! Done! But it does not come easily to all of us. Some of us struggle. While some of us seem to be socially adept from birth, others struggle with various challenges of social acceptance. We struggle for the right words, for the right tones and for the right body language we should use to convey our message without offending the others. And this is true especially for children today.

Lack of opportunities to learn from society– Earlier generation children had more opportunities for learning and practicing these skills with friends, extended family, cousins, and siblings. With families becoming nuclear and moving away from their countries, the opportunity to engage with anyone outside the core family has been reduced to an occasional once-in-a-while affair. Even for the families living in their own country, in their everyday life, children going from one class to another leaves very little room for them to have unsupervised time with their peers. Having someone always telling them what to do next does not give them enough opportunities to think on their own on-the-feet.

Digitally savvy but aloof generation: Today’s digital age has made the world a smaller place, but it is also responsible for making the next generation more aloof. This often shows in face-to-face communications as they are less able to effectively carry on a conversation. Some even struggle with simple conversational tasks such as asking questions, active listening and maintaining eye contact. So for Matt and most children like Matt, making new friends is a challenge. They just don’t know what to do!

Soft skills are traits that are expected of us but never really are taught to us. We are left to learn these skills on our own by observing our parents, adults around us and our peers.

Can Soft Skills be taught?

Billionaire, Richard Branson, who is known for his daredevil personality today, during his younger years, was extremely shy and would cower behind his mother when encouraged to interact with adults. When he was about seven years old, his mother decided to try and remedy this, so she forced him out of her car three miles from their home and told him to find his way back by talking to people. The test ended up taking him around 10 hours, according to his mother. A college drop-out at 16, Richard owns 200 companies in over 30 countries. He still considers himself a natural introvert and has said, “I had to train myself into becoming more of an extrovert.”

Learning soft skills is a life-long process, and by starting as early as one can, we can prepare our child to succeed in not just his academic life, but also in the future workplace. There are techniques and strategies that can be taught methodically that can make these skills easier to hone.

Choose and Focus on one behavior that matters the most to you and your child. Understand why it is important to you
Find methods and techniques you can use to systematically to bring about the required change.
Encourage and look for opportunities for the child to practice in real life.


In Conclusion:

According to World Economic Forum report, we are heading towards the Fourth Industrial Revolutions and it is said that 65% of the students entering the education system today will be doing jobs that don’t exist today. So, while we are uncertain today about what hard skills would be useful when they grow up, we can start training them on soft skills. In a difficult economy, people with strong soft skills find good jobs – often with a higher salary. Students who are able to acquire these skills not only find work in the career of their choice but they also experience stronger and happier relationships in their personal lives.

Learning Soft Skills is a lifelong process. And the sooner we start, the better we get.