Breaking Down the In's & Out's of Soft-Skills

 

You can call them soft skills, power skills, foundational skills or work skills. We are talking about skills, abilities and competencies that transcend work environments and are not technical or work/content-specific. For example, being able to communicate in writing is a soft skill; being able to write computer code is not because we’d describe that as a technical work-specific skill.

 

Leadership is a soft skill because it cuts across work environments and

roles; human resource management is not because not everyone has the prerequisite knowledge nor would many people be called to apply these skills across the organization.

 

Step 1: Name the problem. This is not going to be a sequential guide, but if you cannot name the soft skill, you won’t be able to describe it, measure it or assign a credential to it.

 

Step 2: Describe the skill. It is important to describe or define a soft skill within a given context. If you expect someone to display robust decision-making skills, for instance, what would that look like? Would they research alternatives? Would they list the pros and cons? Would they prioritize? If you can operationalize a skill, you can more readily assess its existence.

 

Step 3: Don’t forget the context. A little self-disclosure; while I have no problem talking with people all day long for work, and while I was a former teacher, my presentation skills are reserved for the context of working online. If you come to my house and want me to teach you about gardening, don’t expect a powerpoint or an organized lesson plan. The context in which you expect a soft skill to be displayed is crucial. In describing a skill, be clear and precise about the context.

 

 

Fundamentally, I believe the reason we struggle with assessment is that we are too wedded to testing. It is absolutely possible to measure one’s knowledge via a test. It is also possible to measure the likelihood of someone knowing when to use a skill via a test. However, you probably won’t be able to measure a soft skill unless you see it in action (observe) and preferably see repeat performances so you know the skill is consistent.

 

Again, we’re talking about soft skills, not technical skills like being able to create a pivot table or draw blood. For many, this observation and documentation may seem subjective and “fuzzy.” I would argue that it depends on how well-trained the observers are and the quality of the instrument used for documenting or recording the observations. Even if you gave me the most detailed checklist or leveled rubric, I would need some training on how to score. And, the best rubrics are tested and normed so that multiple reviewers would achieve similar (if not identical) results. This is an extra task in the process, but an important one.