Is the simple fact of being caring, creative, autonomous, agile, empathetic and communicative enough to create value in an organization? This question raises the issue of the balance between technical and behavioral skills, and the relationship between Soft Skills and Hard Skills. Is the current emphasis on Soft Skills to the detriment of Hard Skills? Our aim is not to set these two notions against each other, but rather to find a balance that complements them.
The growing importance of Soft Skills
Books on personal development have taken up an important place on the management shelves of bookshops. In 1972, Whitmore of the North American Army used Soft Skill to differentiate machine knowledge from all other knowledge, mentioning that technical knowledge alone is not sufficient to achieve a result. The Oxford dictionary defines Soft Skills as follows: "personal attributes that enable a person to interact effectively and harmoniously with others. " The number and titles vary according to the authors and the analysis prisms proposed. Ranging from around 5 to 30[1], Soft Skills are divided into several categories.
- behavioral skills such as autonomy, organization, boldness, stress management, etc.
- such as communication, leadership, tolerance, emotional intelligence, etc.
- such as creativity, curiosity, resilience, perseverance and so on.
Numerous Soft Skills development programs are offered in the professional world for managers to develop their ability to get their staff on board, by asking themselves about the best postures to adopt, taking into account their own style. Tools such as the MBTI or the matrix DISC help people to define their own style and thus make the changes they consider desirable.
Soft Skills are behavioral, psycho-sociological and cognitive in nature[2]. They are difficult to assess, as they are qualitative in nature. Professionals therefore use real-life situations, case studies that simulate reality, and analyses of past situations[3]. Personality tests are often self-reporting, and can be distorted by a desirability bias (stating what one would like to be, not what one is). A person's behavior can be explained not only by personality, but also by context. The work of Heckman and Kautz in 2012[4] had demonstrated with young children the possibility of evolving character traits and behavior by taking context into account.
Work in psycho-sociology and cognitive science, the enthusiasm for the behavioral dimension and the positioning of numerous players in this niche, such as coaches, have led to a strong development of Soft Skills diagnosis and development initiatives in organizations.
The glass ceiling of soft skills
We've all had the experience of trying to reproduce a technical gesture from a video in the form of a tutorial, whether in cooking or DIY. This is where we come into contact with the notion of technical expertise. Soft skills are important for interaction, but they don't replace technical skills. It's true that a number of service sector professions are coordinating their activities, but knowledge of the sector, customers, products and manufacturing methods are all important. Our aim is not to do away with Soft Skills approaches, but to position them in their rightful place in relation to technical knowledge[5]. If we were to focus on behavioral skills, we would forget the importance of technical prerequisites. The success of Soft Skills can be explained by their simplicity.
Responding to the current challenges of safeguarding and renewing technical skills
Demographic changes in the Western world are forcing companies to memorize and transfer their technical knowledge at the risk of losing it. This is a key issue for many organizations, and focusing on Soft Skills alone will not be enough to preserve competitive advantages.
Technological developments are changing the way we do business, particularly with IAG. But this requires a very good technical knowledge of the business to see it in a different light. It's not a question of doing away with softskills development initiatives, but of repositioning technical skills in their rightful place, both from an individual and collective point of view.
From an individual point of view, it's a question of defining one's trade and expertise through mastered skills: What can you produce, and with what level of expertise? From a collective point of view, what are the critical professions, and do we have sufficient skills? We talk about the coverage rate of strategic skills. Shouldn't HR approaches, which have sometimes focused on soft skills, take more account of technical skills? Some companies have set up their own in-house business university for this purpose, and are also incorporating behavioral elements. Work on Knowledge Management and its renewed approaches with the IAG are part of this Hard Skills dynamic, as is the creation of expertise channels. The balance between technical and behavioral skills aims to reintegrate managers into their jobs by proposing "technical-behavioral" managerial models.
In his book "Des managers, des vrais! Not MBAs: A Critical Look at Management and Management Education", Mintzberg argued that management should be learned in an experiential loop, not artificially. As a Forbes article headlined, management can't be learned, it has to be relearned. In some organizations, this shaping work takes the form of buddy systems and exchanges between peers, so that the expression of the technique is done with respect and for the development of the collective. As the epistemological current of ethnomethodology states, action is individual and the result collective.
- [1] Mauleon F., Bouret J., Hoarau J., (2014), Le réflexe soft skills, les compétences des leaders de demain, Ed. Dunod, 2014
- [2] Hoarau J (dir), (2024), Soft skills : The new keys to success : Reinventing skills for the future Paperback, Iggybook.
- [3] https://www.hbrfrance.fr/carriere/les-soft-skills-et-leur-evaluation-en-question-6038
- [4] Heckman JJ., Kautz T., (2012), "Hard evidence on soft skills", Labour Economics, vol. XIX, n°4, p.451-464.
- [5] Faure F., (2023), Le savoir-être dans l'insertion professionnelle des publics éloignés de l'emploi : entre employabilté et employeurabilité, doctoral thesis, Université de la Réunion.
Article written by Barbara Carrière and Nicolas Bartel (Eurogroup Consulting associates) and published in Forbes le 09/10/24
