Following last week’s post about soft skills being central to framing your career story, my partner and I were debating our respective definitions of soft skills. In this week’s adventure of #engineerathome, I wanted to share our different definitions and delve into this topic a bit deeper.
Soft skills definitions:
He: what makes you effective at work
Me: how you do your work
Here’s one more, a summation of the general description on the internet:
- Character traits and interpersonal skills that characterise a person's relationships with other people
How do you define it? Do you like one of those ideas?
It got me thinking about how the definition of a thing changes how you perceive it.
Here’s an example:
You get asked a question in a Monthly Business Review. You admit to now knowing the answer and take it as an action item. Later, to answer the question, you comb through a mountain of data to identify a trend. You take that insight, craft a balanced summary and share it with your leadership chain. You get a one-line email from your VP saying, “Thanks”.
A job well done.
From my definition of soft skills as ‘how you work’ here’s what I think are displayed:
Humility in admitting you don’t know something
Ownership of the action item
Effective distillation of complex information
Managing up aka executive communication - surfacing the right information
I asked my partner, he agreed with the above but would add:
5. Influencing others to align with the insight and make progress for the team
If we were to get input from the internet definition ‘character traits and interpersonal skills’:
Would distilling complex information make the cut? This makes you effective at your work – it’s what allows you to distil 12 spreadsheets with 1K datapoints into an 8-word sentence describing a trend for someone unfamiliar with the space - but is it not a soft skill by this definition?
What about ownership of the action item? That feels like a character trait in this definition…or is it?
I think that were I got caught up on the internet definition is the implication that soft skills are natural talents that you don’t have to work on. If you had to read some books or work with a coach to develop empathy and active listening skills – does that no longer make those soft skills?
I offer these various descriptions of soft skills to poke at the definition in your head. When I speak with clients about their soft skills, they struggle to see them – it’s almost like I’m asking them to look at themselves from the outside. If you are in this boat, I recommend taking a look at prior feedback, speaking with current and past co-workers or managers and giving it some thought yourself. It also makes a great topic for coaching.
Some thought starters for you –
What makes you more effective at what you do than other people? How do you do your work? Or, as my partner would say - what makes you effective?
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