Britannica Money (2024)

soft skills, nontechnical and non-industry-specific skills applicable to a wide range of tasks across many roles and professions, including interpersonal skills or “people skills” that enable individuals to work effectively in groups and organizations. Examples of soft skills include critical thinking, emotional intelligence, collaboration, creativity, problem solving, time management, flexibility, conscientiousness, and various communication skills. Hard skills, in contrast, involve specific knowledge and abilities that are unique to particular professions or roles.

The term soft skills was first introduced in U.S. Army training courses in the early 1970s to refer to interpersonal skills rather than the skills needed for operating machinery or using weapons.By the mid-1980s the business and education sectors had begun to adopt the term, and its meaning began to evolve to include widely transferable skills of several types. Use of the term has been increasing from the early 1990s to the present. Soft skills have been the subject of many books, such as The Leader’s Guide to Mindfulness: How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results (2018) by British author Audrey Tang and the classic self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People by American author Dale Carnegie (which was published in 1936 and predates the use of the term). Some business leaders have questioned the continued use of the term because it is too broad to be useful, whereas others think that the word soft suggests that these skills are easy to develop or optional.

In the workplace there is evidence that soft skills lead to more productive collaboration and lower attrition rates. The technology and science industries have taken a particular interest in hiring more employees with strong soft skills. In the past, hiring decisions in those fields focused on cognitive skills and technical knowledge. Multiyear studies on effective management and teams, such as Project Oxygen (begun in 2009) conducted by the American technology company Google, have shown that core skills such as mentoring, problem solving, listening, teamwork, and empathy are integral to a company’s success. By emphasizing the importance of skills such as presenting a clear team vision and helping employees with career development, Google realized a significant improvement in manager quality among 75 percent of its worst-performing managers.