Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

How soft is soft, and how hard is hard?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Over a long lunch with my closest friends, the conversation ranged widely, with plenty of intensity, depth, reflection and laughter (as usual). One of the many questions that came up went something like this: "How soft are soft skills, and how hard are hard skills?" We were talking about the skills a leader needs to have and keep building.

Hard skills usually means the technical skills of a profession, and soft skills the less tangible ones that, today more than ever, also shape a leader. As I wrote in an earlier post, the goal is for the two to complement and balance each other.

The Royal Spanish Academy defines "hard" as something that "resists being worked, scratched, compressed or deformed, that does not lend itself to taking a new shape or makes it very difficult," and "soft" as "gentle, kind, mild." According to HBR, hard skills include aggressiveness, follow-through and speed, while soft skills include creativity, listening and teamwork.

We clearly tend to favor one kind of skill over the other. We naturally give more weight to someone’s talent, for example, than to their persistence in reaching a goal. Balancing hard and soft is what lets you go beyond the expected result. So if someone is highly talented and one of the two comes naturally, what do they need to build the other?

Reflecting on the words soft and hard goes beyond mastering either set. It means being aware of how they complement each other, knowing when each one fits the situation, and continuing to learn and develop both. For instance, how soft is it, really, to learn to listen actively, to show empathy, to communicate assertively or to be fully present in a conversation?

Likewise, years after my MBA, I wonder how hard it really is to learn financial analysis, financial planning, strategic analysis or accounting principles. To be clear, I’m all for finding a balance between the two and, above all, for rethinking what we mean by "hard" and "soft."

In the end, I believe both sets share common ground: the purpose behind the goal and putting our skills to work to reach it. When we act with purpose, the labels fall away. Someone focused on the task, the goal and the vision, with a deep sense of why they’re doing it, will find and develop every skill they need to reach and exceed what they’re after. Along the way they’ll discover that both matter equally and that together they secure the long-term success of whatever they set out to do.

Have a great week, all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. A few resources to go deeper:

• HBR: In Leadership, Hard Skills Trump Soft Skills
• NYT: Running G.E., Comfortable in His Skin

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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