The Term “Soft Skills” is Misleading; There is Nothing “Soft” About Them
Most companies are desperately lacking in teaching leadership
Soft skills have become more important as technology, such as AI, advances, and we absolutely need to hero people that know how to inspire others and drive the greatest morale within our teams. But Simon Sinek points out that “soft skills” are not soft at all. In fact, if we were to use two categories for skills people have in the workplace, they would be hard skills and human skills.
Hard skills are needed to do your job, and human skills allow people to be better leaders.
“We have to teach human skills if we want people to learn how to be better leaders. We don’t teach people how to lead. We promote people who have high performance and we expect them to know how to lead, which is nonsense.”
— Simon Sinek
Author, business coach, and inspiration to people searching for their life purpose, Sinek is known for his progressive thoughts on business and life.
How Navy SEALs choose members in their elite group
To unpack human skills, Simon Senik steps us through how the most elite group within the Navy SEALs pick their members.
Navy SEALs define and measure performance in all the traditional ways. However, they take into consideration trust over performance.
People who we can’t trust are toxic team members.
Navy SEALs would prefer a medium performer they can trust over a high performer they cannot trust.
Human skills to identify people for leadership management
Businesses accidentally keep promoting toxic team members because they over-index on performance.
Companies do a horrible job of identifying people with the right leadership attributes:
- Listening
- Empathy
- Patience
- How to have difficult conversations
- How to have effective confrontations.
YouTube Video: There’s NO Such Thing as “Soft Skills” | Simon Sinek
“I have a pet peeve, I hate the term soft skills. There’s nothing soft about them.” — Simon Senik
Final Thoughts
Great organizations align their business with a great culture and identify toxic people before a hire takes place.
Psychological tests can identify personality traits, or an organization might screen for toxic people with a cultural motto, which you might see on a job description “we don’t hire big egos.”
As per Simon Sinek’s video, peer reviews are a great way to identify the right people to help build your business into a great organization.
🧠 📚 Want insights and strategic tools on how to turn your side hustle into a successful business? Read my book on Amazon → Content Titans: How To Create 6 Figures in The Digital Economy.
Thank you for reading,
Rick Govic
