Globally, there is unemployment due to a dearth of soft skills. The importance of soft skills is felt strongly across global educational institutions to enhance employability and employment, and across global organizations to enhance productivity and performance.
Currently, there is inadequate research available on soft skills. There are several myths about soft skills since it is still an evolving discipline. It is mistaken for people skills, life skills, life management skills, and emotional intelligence, to name a few. Researchers, scholars, and educators find it hard to arrive at a universal definition of soft skills. They find it hard to create a standard curriculum. Additionally, there is an urgent need to explore tools and techniques for measuring soft skills to ensure effective training outcomes. Hence, it calls for intensive research to provide validity to this discipline.
What are soft skills?
Skills are usually divided into technical skills and general skills. Some of the general skills that are behavioral fall into the category of soft skills. Hence, soft skills are a collection of skills that are essential to survive and succeed in personal, professional, and social life. They are complementary to hard skills. Hard skills are also known as technical skills or domain skills. Soft skills can be described as the effective presentation of hard skills. Additionally, how you say it is as important as what you say. That means soft skills are equally important along with hard skills. Hard skills can be seen on your resume, while your soft skills can be observed in employment interviews. A judicious blend of hard and soft skills helps one become a successful professional and excel as an effective leader.
Soft versus hard skills
Soft skills are different from hard skills. Hard skills are technical skills and domain skills, while soft skills are non-domain skills. Hard skills are tangible that are measurable and quantifiable, while soft skills are intangible and cannot be easily measured and quantified. Hard skills are about what you speak, while soft skills are about how you speak with others. Soft skills are polite and pleasing ways of communicating with others, while hard skills are what you contribute in the workplace. Soft skills complement your hard skills. Precisely, soft skills are the presentation of your hard skills in the workplace. Soft skills are interpersonal skills, while hard skills are job-related skills. If hard skills are infrastructure, soft skills are superstructure. If hard skills are the foundation, soft skills are the cement. A judicious blend of both hard and soft skills is essential to achieve your professional success and fast-track your career.
You can find hard skills on a resume, while you can find soft skills during an employment interview. Hard skills get you an interview, while soft skills help you get your employment. Hence, both hard and soft skills are essential to get a job. After joining a job, soft skills help you survive in the workplace, while hard skills help you prove yourself professionally. Hence, blending both hard and hard skills is imperative in the workplace.
Soft versus hard skills―examples and illustrations
If you call someone physically handicapped, it is known as hard skills. Instead, if you call it physically challenged, it is known as soft skills. If you instruct smokers, 'Don't smoke’ is known as hard skills. Instead, if you communicate, 'thanks for not smoking', it is known as soft skills. If you talk about the 'generation gap', it is known as hard skills. In contrast, if you call it 'generational differences', it is known as soft skills. If you call them 'slow learners', it is known as hard skills. In contrast, if you call them 'differently-abled learners', it is known as soft skills. If you call 'problems' hard skills, it is known as hard skills, whereas if you call them 'challenges', it is known as soft skills. If you call 'weaknesses’, it is known as hard skills; if you call them 'concerns', it is known as soft skills. Succinctly, soft skills emphasize how you communicate, while hard skills emphasize what you communicate.
It is easy to measure hard skills, while it is hard to measure soft skills. It is easy to teach hard skills, while it is hard to teach soft skills. Usually, teachers teach hard skills while trainers train soft skills. Since soft skills are behavioral skills, it requires extra effort on the part of trainers to use various tools and techniques, including interaction, role-plays, active participation, and experiential learning, to bring out the desired behavioral changes in the participants.
How to acquire soft skills?
You can acquire soft skills by various means, including observation, reading, training, experience, and practice. Soft skills training equips you with skills, abilities, and knowledge. However, your interaction with others helps you acquire soft skills greatly. Since soft skills are behavioral skills, people must learn by trial and error, using their emotional intelligence and through flexibility and adaptability. You must be practical, realistic, and situational to acquire soft skills. Above all, you must learn from your failures to improve your behavior to gel well with others effectively.
You must develop emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. You must observe and understand people and their behaviors. Travel to unknown destinations to understand people. Talk to them to get along with them. Understand their cultures and behaviors. Traveling teaches tolerance and improves soft skills. When you travel to unknown destinations and communicate in a non-native language, you will be able to improve your soft skills effectively.
Reading soft skills is one aspect, and applying them is another aspect. Attending workshops and training programs helps you understand what soft skills are and how you will be able to acquire them; such programs conduct role-plays to bring out behavioral improvement. Here are some tools and techniques to improve soft skills
Be self-aware.
Avoid preconceived notions.
Keep your body language positive.
Listen to the speaker carefully.
Make eye contact with the speaker and reciprocate positively.
Empathize with the speaker.
Be flexible.
Praise people lavishly.
Make the speaker feel important.
Accept criticism graciously.
Interact with different types of personalities who are introverted, extroverted, assertive, submissive, and aggressive.
Above all, be adaptable.
Since soft skills are behavioral skills, you can acquire soft skills through physical interaction and trial and error. You must take intrapersonal and interpersonal feedback regularly to improve your soft skills. Succinctly, be proactive, be a good listener, improve interpersonal skills, and build relationships to acquire soft skills.
Can soft skills be measured?
It is hard to measure soft skills, but easy to measure hard skills. Research shows that soft skills are harder to teach than hard skills. Additionally, it takes a lot of time and effort to equip oneself with soft skills rather than hard skills. However, matching the objectives of the soft skills training with the feedback received from the participants can help measure soft skills effectively. For instance, every training program has a set of objectives, and the program is rolled out to the participants accordingly. At the end of the training program, the participants are asked whether the training has met their objectives, aspirations, and expectations. Since soft skills training is behavioral, it is hard to measure. However, taking timely feedback at the end of the training session helps greatly achieve the training takeaways.
Meka's five-level model to measure soft skills
Evaluation is essential to understand the effectiveness of any training program. It helps understand how far the training has impacted the participants and improved their behavior and performance. Additionally, it helps assess the strengths and weaknesses of the program and the pulse of the participants to deliver the training program better next time. Here is an innovative Meka's five-level evaluation model to measure soft skills training:
Conduct the training needs analysis to identify the current skills gap in the participants.
List out core objectives clearly to deliver the training.
Execute the soft-skills training program meticulously as per the objectives.
Align deviations or distractions from the training program.
Measure the training takeaways from the participants through questionnaires and effective feedback.
Sample questions to measure soft skills training
Consider using the following few questions to measure a soft skills training program:
Did the soft skills training transfer the knowledge, skills, and abilities to the participants effectively?
Did the soft skills training improve the attitude and behavior of the participants successfully?
Is the training worth investing time, money, energy, and resources?
Are the training outcomes as per the training objectives? If not, identify and address the deviations or distractions.
List out the three soft skills training takeaways that can improve the attitude, change behavior, and polish the personality.
The concept of soft skills is an evolving domain
Unfortunately, people often take the significance of soft skills lightly. The concept of soft skills is an evolving domain that people must take seriously; people must be educated about them.
Whenever a new discipline surfaces, people resist and mostly don't respect it because there is no strong research to substantiate its relevance. However, over time, people start accepting and respecting the discipline. For example, many people initially did not take management as a discipline seriously and expressed their reservations. Today, management as a discipline is a reality, now having a sacred and respectable position like many other disciplines in the world. Similarly, soft skills will evolve as a discipline over time as more research is done. To summarize, a proportional mix of hard and soft skills helps me excel as a successful professional and leader. Soft skills provide a competitive edge in this cut-throat world. They are an asset to employees and add immense value to global organizations. To conclude, soft skills are essential for everyone, from janitors to chief executives, to achieve the desired outcomes.
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