After nearly two decades of education and workplace learning experience focused on building meaningful learning opportunities for employees across industries and around the world, I have come to realize that it’s time we remedy the unnecessary bifurcation of what we refer to as “soft” and “hard” skills.
The origins of “hard” and “soft” are muddy at best, but we cling to them regardless, applying them relentlessly to all the skills we expect our people to demonstrate. I’m no big fan of the paradigm — it’s the notion of “soft” that rankles me — with its outdated, insufficient and borderline subversive subtext. These are people skills. There’s nothing soft about them.
