The soft skills, people skills, assertive kills, ability to speak up and express your point view and listen respectfully to others who disagree with you, are key to successful individual, team and company success.

The hard skills are measurable, quantifiable, and easy to put into a spreadsheet. This gives you an easy way to demand a bonus or track progress.

Hard skills are used as a tool to keep score.

The soft skills are essential, they are the real reason you do what you do.

Start with Why is a soft skill.

Ironically the hard stuff are easy and soft ones are difficult.

Often it is more difficult to speak up about something that bothers you without offending the next person.

More difficult to decide listen to your head and give up or your heart and soldier on.

Mattering, caring, loyalty, listening, patience, grieving, loving, trusting, courage, vulnerability, team playing, motivation, discipline, overcoming rejection, dreaming, empathy, self-control in the face of provocation, calm in the face of anger, are not soft.

When dealing with people, your soft skills are more important.

Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career or business.

Maybe we shouldn’t call them ‘soft’ skills.