Opinion: The use of the term 'soft skills' persists to the detriment of the very skills it supposedly encapsulates - so what should they be called?
Over the years, a variety of awards have emerged relating to all kinds of dubious ‘achievements’. The Darwin Award, for example, is posthumously awarded to people who die in entirely preventable ways, such as Robert Overacker’s doomed attempt to jet ski off Niagara falls in 1995, while the Stella Awards, named after Stella Liebeck, who was infamously awarded $2.9 million in damages from McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself in 1992, celebrates the most outrageous – and sometime fictitious - lawsuits.
Meanwhile, the Razzie awards doff their metaphorical cap to the worst movies of the year, the Bent Spoon Award dishes out the prize for the "perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle", and in more recent times the Plain English Foundation has started to showcase the worst words or phrases in the English language, with the now ubiquitous ‘moving forward’ taking the title in 2010 and the neoliberal nirvana of ‘dynamic pricing’ winning in 2024.
Although this last ‘award’ did not exist in the decades immediately after WWII, were it to have done so, one could wager that the term ‘soft skills’ would have featured among the prizewinners, and, almost certainly, the definition attributed to such skills by the U.S. Military would be odds-on to win in the category of ‘most nebulous, inscrutable, or unhelpful definition’.
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From RTÉ Archives, in 2004 the Plain English Campaign Foot In Mouth award goes to Boris Johnson for his words 'I could not fail to disagree with you less'
Specifically, the definition propounded by the United States Continental Army Command (CONARC), set out in CON Reg 305-100-1, defined ‘soft skills’ as "job related skills involving actions affecting primarily people and paper". Granted, the abstrusity of such a definition allows it to encapsulate skills such as communication, strategic thinking, teamwork and critical thinking, but it may equally encompass activities such as gift wrapping, origami, cuddling, snake-milking, and chicken sexing – all real, albeit somewhat niche, careers.
This term ‘soft skills’ and its resultant definition, emerged as a counterpoint to ‘hard skills’, which the military traditionally used to refer to technical job functions about which a great deal is known, such as mechanical procedures or programming. It is, however, wonderfully ironic that skills that were perceived as hard to grasp were classified as ‘soft’, while those which were easier to define and assess were deemed to be ‘hard’.
In defence of the U.S. Military, following the internal conference on the theme of ‘soft skills’ in 1972, which recognised the suboptimal nature of the initial definition, it was explicitly recommended that the flawed dichotomy between hard and soft skills be eliminated, being deemed both unhelpful and inappropriate. However, despite this open acknowledgement of the inadequacy of the term, over 50 years later, the use of ‘soft skills’ stubbornly persists, to the detriment of the very skills it supposedly encapsulates. So, what are these skills, and what exactly should they be called?
Read more: What are soft skills - and why are they so hard to teach?
Well, these skills ‘that shall not be named’ – for now at least – are typically understood as skills that do not exclusively belong to any specific discipline or job, but are simultaneously applicable across all different domains, careers, and life situations. Some are primarily cognitive (e.g. critical thinking, creative thinking), others are more interpersonal (e.g. leadership, teamwork), while some are more technical (data literacy and project management) and others are more holistic (e.g. personal agility). Indeed, any attempt to create a finite list would be a fool’s errand, particularly as new skills may emerge at any time.
Importantly, the relevance and applicability of such skills across all disciplines gives rise to labels such as ‘transversal skills’, and ‘transferable skills’, as well as ‘core skills’, ‘meta skills’ and the decidedly less catchy ‘horizontal skills’. Regardless of your preferred choice, there is a rationale for these labels, as they serve to emphasise the skills’ ubiquitous applicability, and as our workplaces and lives become increasingly defined by technology, more recent skills like digital literacy, data literacy and A.I. literacy have come to be included in under this umbrella.
Approaching from a different perspective, these skills are also referred to as ‘power skills’ on the basis that they may increase our ability to enact our own will, including influencing the thinking and behaviour of others. In this sense, these skills are agentic, offering us a mechanism to effect change and achieve desirable outcomes. It is clear, for example, how individuals who are strong in the domains of leadership, communication, conflict resolution, strategic thinking, collaboration, and intercultural competence have the potential to envision and articulate desirable future outcome to diverse audiences and stakeholders in order to successfully direct efforts and resources towards their pursuit and realisation. As such, while possibly sounding slightly cliched, the label of ‘power skills’ is certainly a defensible one.
In addition to this, we have the popular label of ‘21st century skills’. This is not simply in recognition that skills like data literacy and A.I. literacy are indigenous to modern times, nor is it claiming that skills such as critical thinking, logic, and ethical decision making were non-existent and/or irrelevant during the previous twenty centuries and longer - a position that would negate the contribution of Socrates, Hypatia of Alexandria, Confucious, Emmanuel Kant, Margaret Cavendish and so many more. Instead, the rationale for this label is based on the fact that such skills are particularly valuable at this precise juncture in human history. The increasing complexity and disruption that defines our social, economic and technological systems, the modern trends in career mobility, and the unprecedented pace of social and technological change, coupled with the resultant uncertainty that accompanies it, mean that these skills constitute particularly valuable currency in the 21st century on the basis that they help us to navigate an ever-more unscripted world.
Finally, recognising the rapidly expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence, these skills may also be labelled ‘human skills’. This fourth categorisation, following on from ‘transversal’, ‘power’, and ‘21st century’, can partly be seen as an attempt to differentiate ourselves from the mushrooming functionality of such technologies to ensure our continuing value in the labour market and maintain our precarious position atop the intellectual food-chain. Our capacity for creativity, our ability to motivate others, to empathise, to be agile and both foresee and adapt to change are not yet easily replicated by technology, whereas many process-based technical skills can now be automated.
From Vox, The debate over the Anthropocene, explained
However, the use of ‘human skills’ can also represent a call to action for our species. We live in the Anthropocene era, a period in Earth’s history during which human activity has come to have a major impact on the planet’s environment, climate and ecosystems. While Hans Rosling’s book ‘Factfulness’ attempts to serve as an antidote to the dystopian narrative of futurelessness that has emerged in recent decades, the ineluctable reality is that we face a polycrisis that is largely of our own making. Crucially, the myriad challenges and problems we face do not typically stem from a lack of information, but rather from a lack of these ‘human skills’; a lack of leadership, creative thinking, sustainability literacy, ethical decision-making, intercultural competence and futures literacy, to name but a few.
As such, investing in skills such as these is essential to both our individual and collective well-being, and it is for this precise reason that the continued use of ‘soft’ to refer to skills which are so central to humanity, in both senses of that term, is so misleading and regrettable. The misnomer ‘soft’ brings with it not only confusion, but a variety of negative connotations that undermine the value of the very skills we ought to be actively fostering in our homes, schools and workplaces. It is an entirely counterproductive label, positioning them as inferior in a false hierarchy, and normalises the idea that they are of secondary importance and cannot be truly understood. Yes, skills like creative thinking, personal agility and leadership are difficult to define and unpack, as well as nurture and assess, but this does not mean that we abandon any attempt to do so.
The reality is that many of the most important concepts in our lives, ideas like health, happiness, love, trust, and culture, stubbornly refuse to be tethered to the yoke of objectivity, but that does not render our pursuit to understand and cultivate them a futile or ignoble one. So, whatever we choose to call these skills, let our label of choice be wholly justifiable, and let’s try hard to no longer mis-title and undervalue them as ‘soft’.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
