Why it’s time we stopped talking about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills
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The way we discuss skills in the workplace is a thing of the past. For decades we’ve used the simple duo of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills to describe different aspects of our work, but we need better language if we are to survive in the workplaces of the future.
Let’s start with what we mean by hard and soft skills, a classification first used by the U.S. Army in the 1960s. They coined the terms in training manuals to distinguish between the abilities needed to operate heavy military machinery and those needed when dealing with “men and paper.”
The definition has since expanded to include hard skills, covering anything that requires specialized knowledge or high technical ability, such as bookkeeping, data analysis, logistics, IT, coding research, and hundreds of other categories that traditionally have a steep learning curve.
Soft skills, on the other hand, include communication, teamwork, creativity, leadership, critical thinking, and others. The list of these professions includes teachers, salespeople, HR, customer service, and dozens more.
Unfortunately, it is inadequate as a descriptive term. I’ve been researching a book on conflict in the workplace for the last few years. To better understand this, I trained at the University of Western Australia’s Mediation Clinic to become a nationally accredited mediator.
We will need all the skills we have to give ourselves the best chance of success.
Course teachers Professor Jill Howieson and Dr Darren Moroney often express their frustration that people believe it is easy to practice active listening, compassion and mediation.
“Every lesson we teach someone says ‘it’s like singing’ ‘Kumbaya’“They’ll say it’s a soft skill,” Howieson says, referring to the feel-good song often associated with ignoring real conflicts or problems.
Moroney shook his head at the suggestion. “The only people who call mediation a soft skill are those who can’t do it.”
The new era of artificial intelligence we are entering is changing our ideas about the skills we will need. Hard skills get easier and soft skills get harder.
Artificial intelligence allows previously difficult and technical tasks to be completed in seconds, but it falls short of solving our increasingly complex human problems. We need a better way to talk about how to future-proof our businesses.
This thought has been floating around in my head since I wrote it The top five skills we’ll need this yearThese; judgment, storytelling, collaborative intelligence, conflict management, and unlearning.
What they all have in common is that future versions of them will involve humans and machines learning how to work together effectively. So instead of the traditional dual skills and technical skills, we need a third category that covers this, complex skills.
Complex skills are challenging skills that live in the complex environment of people, technology and organizations and require a unique combination of skills.
To keep up and thrive in the workplace of tomorrow, you will need to combine AI proficiency with making empathetic appeals and use emotional intelligence as much as you use AI. Managing AI agents and humans simultaneously will require new and complex skills, so it needs its own category.
The language we use in the workplace is important. When we call something ‘soft’ we imply that it is optional or carefree. Anything ‘difficult’ refers to something that only a small percentage of people can master if they have enough time.
Both of these terms were created in the old world of business, and we are on the verge of a new world filled with more unknowns than ever before. To give ourselves the best chance of success, we will need all the skills we have—soft, hard, and complex—to navigate this path.
Tim Duggan is the author of: Korc Backward: The Revolutionary Way to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter timduggan.substack.com
Tim Duggan is the author of Working Backward, Cult State, and Killer Thought. He is one of the founders of Junkee Media and writes a monthly newsletter called OUTLET.
