I think we have all encountered people who lack soft skills whether it is in our personal or professional lives; maybe the brilliant doctor with no bedside manner or the interview candidate who has a fabulous resume but demonstrates a complete lack of social skills in the interview…
Soft skills are often associated with a person’s emotional intelligence or ‘people skills’ where as hard skills are associated with a person’s IQ, and technical knowledge. Hard skills are typically learned in school or from books but soft skills are harder to learn and are often developed on the job; for some people soft skills seem to come naturally but others need to learn on the job, often learning the hard way, having their lack of soft skills pointed out or brought up in a performance review. Hard skills are those where the rules stay the same when applied to different situations and in contrast the rules of soft skills change depending on whom you are working with, what you’re communicating or what the topic is.
Some of the more important soft skills are:
Keeping these soft skills in mind, think about the following situations…
A project manager is leading a team who has been tasked with building and implementing a new software program that will provide complex reporting functionality; in this situation it would be helpful for the project manager to have strong hard skills in addition to soft skills and a soft skill deficit could be overlooked if the hard skills are very strong.
A project manager is leading a team who has been tasked with moving the data entry work currently done within the organization to an outsourcer with the goal of reducing headcount within the organization; in this situation, the project managers technical skills are not as important as their soft skills. A project manager lacking the soft skills mentioned above could prove disastrous on a project of such a sensitive nature.
Now think about the project managers within your own organizations and how they demonstrate or fail to demonstrate soft skills and also think about how you fare with these as well… Not only are soft skills important for project managers but studies also show that individuals with high emotional intelligence often have more successful and fulfilling personal and professional lives; it’s not just about IQ anymore…