Why Soft Skills Are More Important Than Hard Skills
Don’t underestimate the power of soft skills
Let’s define hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills — The skills that require you to get the things done. For example, if you are a computer scientist, your IT knowledge, such as programming and coding are your hard skills.
Soft skills — The skills that require you express yourself or to interact with your peers. For example, leadership skills, presentation skills, teamwork, work ethic, etc.
In general, society prefers us to focus on our hard skills. And this is why we need to do assignments, sit in for tests and exams during our college life. The purpose of these assessments is to determine how good are you in a particular skill set.
However, there are no actual assessments on whether you are good at presentation, or whether you are a good team player. They are difficult to measure and calculate. The result is ambiguous.
Accordingly, we used to judge a person based on their hard skills. And we seldom talk about their soft skills, only after we know a person for a long period of time.
From my perspective, it is simply not about hard skills or soft skills. It is about the Static Mindset or the Growth Mindset.
The Static Mindset
The static mindset focuses more on hard skills. For example, if you are a mechanic, your hard skill is to inspect and repair vehicles. You are proud of your skill and knowledge, and you enjoy doing that for the rest of your life.
As long as there are vehicles in the world, this is not a problem.
However, it is difficult to predict the future. What if the vehicles are banned? What if some new technologies replace vehicles? If you simply rely on your hard skill, and not developing something else during your life. You will soon be eliminated from society.
The static mindset is about staying in your own comfort zone, not willing to learn something new, simply rely on a particular skill set, or thought that you know everything in the world already.
This is the mindset that we want to get rid, and to develop ourselves into a growth mindset.
The Growth Mindset
The growth mindset focuses more on soft skills. You are open-minded to everything, you respect everyone and works well with different parties, you know the tricks to learn a new skill in a short period of time, you know how to present an idea to the mass, etc.
The growth mindset is about trial-and-error. In other words, you are not fear of failure, you are open up for challenges, willing to share your ideas and to acquire yourself with new knowledge.
You understand that a particular hard skill is prone to be eliminated, but soft skills will never be eliminated. They are personal.
No matter what kind of situations you are facing, your soft skills always come to action.
The growth mindset is more about the potential for long-term and sustainable development.
Hard skills do not develop soft skills, but soft skills develop hard skills
Takeaways
It is difficult to realize soft skills. They are easily forgotten.
The fact is all the hard skills are actually supported by the soft skills. The soft skills are your foundation before you developed them into your hard skills.
If you start to realize that you should start working on your soft skills, you will see another whole new world. This is the growth mindset.
