Why Soft Skills Are Not That Soft

Often perceived as secondary to the more established hard skills, it can be tempting to dismiss soft skills. Yet, they are central to virtually everything you do. Ultimately, not mastering them will turn out to be a disadvantage.

How can you communicate effectively? What is the best way to solve a problem? How can you persuade others? What are the techniques to be a good team leader? The answers to these questions can help you build soft skills. Under the pretext that they’re not as important as subject-matter knowledge for our jobs, less time is spent to improve them.

Here are four reasons why soft skills are actually not as soft as portrayed.

#1 Soft skills are hard to acquire

All soft skills have one thing in common: they are not part of formal education. The higher education system deploys far more resources to develop technical skills, leaving most people lacking in soft skills. In the same way as you can’t learn how to code by only watching an hour-long tutorial, soft skills need constant practice too. For example, you can’t become a convincing public speaker unless you put yourself in that situation often. Some people are lucky enough to get a form of rigorous training. They either get a taster as entry-level employees or more substantial coaching once they reach leadership positions. But unless you…