Skillsets and the 21st Century Workplace
‘Skills’ is a word that is used widely in our society – ‘they’ve got skills that pay the bills’ goes one of our idioms. The concept of skill plays an important role in sports, politics, business, hobbies, and just about everything we do as people. Webster’s gives us this: a skill is ‘the ability to do something that comes from training, practice, or experience.’ This is helpful but incomplete. There is no doubt that our training, practice, and experience all contribute to our skills, but what are skills and how do they relate to our modern workplace?
Our skills can be divided into two categories: hard and soft. Hard skills are generally technical, specific, and useful in a given context. So, if you have the capacity to type 150 word per minute, you have great hard skill in using a keyboard. The ability to work math problems, use computer software, operate various types of machinery, or build a building are all great examples of hard skills. In a modern workplace, with constantly evolving software, technology, and systems, hard skills remain tremendously important and valuable. Much of the time when we think about skills, we have these in mind.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are less technical and more interpersonal. They are applicable in a variety of different contexts and environments, are less concrete, and tend to be more difficult to teach. Sometimes they fall under the umbrellas of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ or ‘Competencies.’ There are numerous examples, but here are some of the more common ones: empathy, diplomacy, personal accountability, negotiation, flexibility/adaptability, effective communication, and situational awareness.
Clearly, both types of skills are necessary in our businesses – it doesn’t matter how empathetic my contractor is to my point of view, I need my house to be built, and I need it built in such a way that it is safe, sturdy, and reliable. But more and more companies are seeing the necessity of hiring talent that has a well-developed soft skillset. Employees are having to work with people who are different from them (geographically, ethnically, sexually, etc); new innovations are being implemented all the time and employees must be taught what they do and how to use them; businesses are becoming less ‘building-centric’, more decentralized, and more team oriented – to be a star in an environment like that requires highly developed soft skills.
Most likely, we all knew that kid in high school that ‘just got it’, that had a default aptitude for a particular subject, and we also knew someone who ‘just didn’t get it’ (in my case, the ‘it’ was calculus). This applies to our soft skills as well: some people, through experience or predisposition, excel naturally with soft skills and others do not. When I took calculus, I never got anywhere when I said ‘I just don’t get it’ – our teacher encouraged me to keep practicing in order to learn the skill, so I did and passed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to examine in more detail some of the soft skills noted above and some ways to get better at them. The starting point, though, is self-awareness: in order to improve your soft skills, you have to first be able to accurately identify which ones are strengths and which ones need growth. So, assess yourself as honestly as possible, and recruit your family and friends for insight as well – we’ll start with empathy in our next post.