Soft Skills
by Linda Tarrant

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David Crombie, a former mayor of Toronto once said, "The words that we use to describe a reality, prescribe our reaction to that reality." That’s why language is so powerful. Words create pictures in our minds and those pictures elicit emotion and action.

There are words that make you "see red" and words that make your heart melt. There are words that inspire you to action and words that make you cry. That’s why, especially in business, we have to be sure that we use language that creates the images and attitudes that we want to convey.

For years I have been on what feels like a one-woman crusade to transform the language of business. Some of our terminology is obsolete, inaccurate and down-right irritating. One term that I want to eliminate from our business vocabulary is "soft skills." That’s business-speak for "people skills" which include topics such as communication, negotiation, teamwork and leadership. Why, you ask, is it so important to change or eliminate this term if we all understand what it means?

Well, let me give you my pitch! The term "soft skills" creates the wrong image in people’s minds and therefore they respond inappropriately to the significance of those skills. Try this out:

Describe ten things that are soft. (Let me help: pillows, air, fluff, a flower petal, Kleenex, toilet paper, a baby’s bottom, your heart, etc).

Describe ten things that are hard or tough. (Marines, steel, hardware, a hard-nosed business man, nails, your heart, etc.)

How do you want to be seen by your peers and bosses? Do you want to be seen as soft or do you want to have those hard skills under your belt so others will think you can make the tough decisions? The world may be changing, but I still don’t think a lot of business people see "soft" as admirable or desirable.

Now, imagine selecting courses from the Training and Development Catalogue that you feel will help you build your resume for the future. You look at the table of contents and glance through the offerings. One section is on Information Technology, one on Finance, another on Sales Training, and finally (at the end of the list) you come to the "Soft Skills." Listed in that section are Leadership Development, Team Development, Change Management, Creativity, Personality Inventories, and Personal Development. What message does that convey? I think it says that those "soft skills" are nice to have but not critical to the success of the business. They’re o.k. if we have time or if everything is going well, but they’re not really going to improve the bottom line. After all, these skills are "soft"!

You probably know people who just hate these kinds of courses. They think the material is too touchy-feely, airy-fairy, or philosophical. They don’t like the "ice breakers" or "sharing" their feelings. They don’t know why we have to spend so much time on this fluff. You can’t count it or measure it, so what’s the big deal? Just tell people what to do and get on with business. If we have to take time off, it should be to learn about the things that will really make a difference.

Yesterday I was listening to a consultant talking about mergers and acquisitions. He said only 50% of all mergers are successful after three years. When asked why some succeeded, he said, "It’s simple. There are six things that are critical to the success of any merger or, for that matter, to the success of any organization. Leadership, leadership, leadership and people, people, people."

Our current competitive environment demands that we learn all of the skills that are necessary to achieve good bottom line results and make the company profitable. Financial, technical and manufacturing skills are extremely important but they are the easiest to learn and the quickest to change. We can’t count on producing the same products year after year let alone doing it in the same way. If we’re going to be successful in this new world of work, we must recognize that the "soft skills" of the past are the essential skills of the future. Leadership is key to gaining and keeping a competitive advantage. We need to learn how to build high-performance teams that are filled with committed and enthusiastic people. We need to foster adaptability and versatility. We must encourage creative thinkers and we need to learn to communicate more effectively. So here’s where the challenge lies. These skills are the most difficult to teach, the hardest to put into practice, and they are thought of as soft. Three strikes...

So let’s create a new definition for tough. Imagine placing a piece of granite and a piece of leather on an anvil. Hit each with a hammer. What happens? The granite shatters into pieces, precisely because it is hard. It’s rigid, brittle and therefore, weak. The leather is barely dented, precisely because it is not hard. It is flexible, malleable, elastic, supple and soft -- and that’s tough. You’ve got to be soft to be tough in these turbulent times.

I actually think soft is wonderful. My concern is the images that "soft" creates in our mind and how we react to those images in a business context. If were not going to change the way we feel about the word "soft", then we need to change the way we describe these critically important skills.

If you’re interested in joining my crusade to transform the language of business to reflect the reality of changing times and changing expectations, just e-mail, call or even write me a letter. By the way, I have some other linguistic pet peeves! But don’t get me started, now.