Are Soft Skills Really Soft?

My day job includes training and coaching people in the corporate world around the topics and skills of communication, relationships, and leadership. You know, soft skills. I’m not sure why we call these skills soft because every person I talk to about these skills tells me how hard they are to perfect. Truth be told, soft skills are really, really hard.

Very few of us have spent much time learning how to manage difficult conversations, difficult relationships, or how exactly to be a leader. We learned things like math, science, history, technology, etc. Those are nice skills, but they won’t help you much when your co-worker is screaming at you or you need to motivate an unhappy team to get a project done in the next few days. Most of those so called hard skills are a little cleaner and a little more clear than soft skills.

Soft skills are mucky and grey and they include feelings. At least daily, people tell me that they don’t like feelings. They don’t like to talk about them and they don’t like to deal with them. Good luck with that. If you work with humans, (let’s be honest, even if you work with animals – okay maybe not cats) you have to deal with feelings. It’s not just the other person’s feelings, it’s your feelings too.

A Three-Step System for Managing Soft Skills

So what are some good ways to manage these really difficult soft skills? I have a little 3-step system I find helpful and that I share with my clients. The acronym for it is AAC. The first step is awareness. This means to get super aware of what’s going on for you, what might be going on for the other person (people) and what’s going on in the situation at hand. Awareness means getting conscious about it all and getting out of reaction mode.

The second step is acceptance. This means to accept what is. Was a mistake made? Accept it. Was the other person annoying and difficult? Accept it. Are you behaving in a way that you regret? Accept it. Accept what is, accept the other person for who they are (because you can’t change other people), and accept your own feelings and responses. If you don’t accept what is, you are fighting things that can’t be changed. You’re wasting your energy and making your soft skills difficult again.

Finally, the “C” is for choice. Choose how to move forward. Don’t react, but rather get clarity on it all. Choose the next best steps for you, for the team, and for relationships. The other person made a mistake. Get aware of your reaction, accept the situation, and then choose to get curious with the other person versus angry. Your choice makes all the difference in whether your soft skill is difficult or not.

Always remember that you get to choose how you both look at and show up in any situation. Choice is power and with soft skills, we can have a lot to choose from if we decide to do so. Soft skills are difficult when we are in defensive, reactive space all day. When we avoid or hide from feelings, soft skills become unmanageable. So think AAC and go out there and tackle some soft skills. You can do it. I have total faith in you!

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC