The Wrong Focus

Over the last several years, I’ve seen more and more references - through basically every media channel I pay any attention to with ties to the overall workforce - to the importance of soft skills. More often than not though, these references are generalizations tied to manager and executive level roles with qualifying comments like this from a recent article on Forbes.com, “Soft skills generally refer to categories like leadership, communication and problem-solving. On the other hand, hard skills are the technical capabilities that can be quantified and measured.” Much of what I’ve seen points all the way back to a 1918 study by Charles Riborg Mann (published by the Carnegie Foundation at the time) stating that “that 85% of job success comes from having well‐developed soft and people skills, and only 15% of job success comes from technical skills and knowledge.”

I'm one of the loudest voices you’ll find concurring with that century-old study, but I take issue with so much of what I see tying those skills (almost) exclusively to the success of folks in supervisory or management roles. I also take exception to the notion that only hard skills equate to “capabilities that can be quantified and measured.” That’s crap! That’s also why so many companies are completely in the dark about what’s killing their profitability! Before we can effectively address our highest risk areas, we need to change our focus…

Think back to the SIS International Research study I referenced before stating that “the cumulative cost per year due to productivity losses resulting from communication barriers is more than $26,000 per employee. Not only that, the study found that a business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communications. Translated into dollars, that’s more than $530,000 a year.” I don’t believe for one minute that this falls solely on the shoulders of the folks in roles with leadership responsibility. I believe this downtime, and the communication issues contributing to it, is an issue that touches every team member at every level of our organizations!

This incorrect perception, the one that anything perceived as a soft skill is intangible, is killing our profit margins and it serves as a significant roadblock to building a culture that attracts the best people who have the hard skills that we do indeed need. With that in mind, let’s look at how this wrong focus can impact our entire culture (next time)...