The Importance of "Soft Skills"
An article I recently read in The Atlantic - “How the Ivy League Broke America: The Meritocracy isn’t Working, We Need Something New” by David Brooks – established the ever-increasing importance of social-emotional skills in our volatile and dynamic economy. Social-emotional, “non-cognitive”, skills help us be more agile, mission-driven and curious.
I see this come up in my coaching practice quite often. Being highly intelligent and/or graduating from a renowned university certainly does not hurt one get into and ahead in the workplace. But it’s not sufficient - the courage and willingness to ask tough questions that prompt creative solutions, empathizing with your customers to meet them where they’re at, being able to flex and adapt as conditions require – these are some of the non-cognitive traits that help us thrive in the workplace.
Some nuggets from the article:
“...what good teachers seem to impact most effectively are “soft skills” – how to get along with others, how to stay on task. In fact, researchers found that these soft skills…are 2.4 times more important than math and reading in predicting a student’s future income.”
Of people who were fired from their jobs, 89 percent were [fired] due to “social or moral traits that affect their job performance – sour temperament, uncoachability, low motivation, selfishness. They failed because they lacked the right non-cognitive skills.”
“Our definition of ability shouldn’t be narrowly restricted to who can ace intelligence tests at 18. We need to stop treating people like brains on a stick and pay more attention to what motivates people: What does this person care about, and how driven are they to get good at it?”
Brooks argues that there are four crucial “non-cognitive” traits for performance:
- Curiosity
- A sense of drive and mission
- Social intelligence
- Agility
How can we cultivate these traits in our workplaces? How can we cultivate these traits in our youth? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
