For all you’ve heard about the American shortfall of scientists and engineers, and the time it takes to find a plumber or get someone to help with your computer, it may come as a shock to you that arguably the biggest shortfall in our labor force is… people-skills.
The so-called “soft skills”—e.g., communication, creativity, problem-solving, analytical thinking, adaptability, willingness to learn, respect, courtesy, professionalism—are apparently in incredibly short supply.
A 2016 Wall Street Journal found that nine out of ten Wall Street executives surveyed said that soft skills were as important (or more so) than technical skills and roughly the same proportion had trouble finding people with those desired soft skills. Another study concluded that almost half of European nations are facing a “critical shortage” of skills—reading comprehension, writing, speaking, active learning, and critical thinking.
But it’s only going to get worse: Deloitte researchers concluded that two-thirds of all jobs will be “soft skill-intensive” by 2030. (And they said that before ChatGPT came along.)
What should leaders be doing on this front?
People Skills Are Trainable
In 2013, a team of researchers went into five factories in India, offering on-the-job soft skills training to garment workers. It was an intense program—two hours a week for a year—and the curriculum included everything from communications skills and time management to financial literacy. More than 1,000 workers participated, with almost 800 others, tracked as a control group to measure the program’s effects.
Following the training, the workers who participated were more extroverted. They were being assigned more complicated work than the control group. They actively asked for instruction, planned on forthcoming promotions, and were more likely to seek more skill development.
At the program’s end, the workers were 11 percent more productive than they had been beforehand. After 20 months, the employees’ increased productivity had become a windfall for their employers—who had a cumulative 258 percent net return on the program’s cost.
Perhaps most striking of all—in most interventions, effects dissipate with time. Sometimes, the impact is gone within days. But this program had a stronger impact nearly two years after its conclusion than immediately following the training’s end.
At the same time, although it didn’t achieve statistical significance, there was a noteworthy spillover effect on employees who didn’t even receive the training. They still gained as much as 70 percent of the benefit of the program because they were learning from their coworkers.
Okay, impressive, but I’m sure you’re wondering if you’d see benefits of soft skills training in other contexts.
A Stanford team started to answer that in 2020, with 44 women working at a North American biotech company.
Once or twice a month, over a period of nine months (during the height of Covid), these young women joined in six one-hour-long online sessions with small peer groups or a facilitator to discuss issues such as communication skills and “leading with confidence.”
Even though it was a fraction of the Indian program’s intensity, the women on the biotech staff saw their soft skills increase an average of 9 percent. The women in the program reported that they were more confident in their abilities. And of those who’d said so, they were receiving higher evaluations from their managers, and the women were more likely to remain employed at the company a year later.
By contrast, Covid’s isolation apparently took a toll on a comparison group of women who didn’t have that support. Their soft skills dropped 3 percent below baseline.
Quick Shots:
Technical skills and other work with quantifiable skill sets have an estimated shelf life of 5-7 years—which researchers think will get even shorter as Artificial Intelligence (AI) does more of the work for us.
In a study of 263 Brazilian industrial projects, the soft side of the risk management protocols predicted almost 11% of the project’s success and was responsible for 25% of the contribution of the “hard side.”
Researchers concluded that Fortune 500 companies tend to hire CEOs who look like their predecessors, and CEO attractiveness does predict that they get paid more. But here’s the thing: While a CEO’s appearance may predict their salary and if they get hired in the first place, it does not predict a company’s financial performance.
OCD’ing on OCB
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) describes the things that someone at work does that are nowhere in their job description, but the place just wouldn’t be the same without them.
Also sometimes described (by scientists, really!) as “good sportsmanship” and “being a good soldier,” OCB is when someone comes in early and stays late to help another team member finish a task. It’s taking time to train the new confused employee. Covering for peers, fixing an error in a report before the boss catches it. Cleaning up the breakroom when it’s a mess. Bringing cake in birthdays, donuts when there’s a needed morale boost, and sending a get-well note to those who are under the weather. Although it’s a less popular form, OCB is also being a squeaky wheel, complaining to the boss that something’s not right and needs to be fixed.
OCB has been found related to firm-level profitability, efficiency, reduced costs, increased quality in manufacturing, sales, academic achievement, customer satisfaction, and employee absenteeism and turnover. It also can benefit individuals’ performance, well-being, and recognition. And it can act as a social contagion—with more people stepping in to help within an organization.
There are downsides to OCD, if it goes too far, for example, when the Good Soldier’s temporary backstopping is expected to permanently cover for institutional deficits, it can lead to “citizenship fatigue.” And it can lead to a worse work-life conflict, as extra time and attention are directed to work rather than to family and friends.
Recognition for OCB is important, but it can be tricky because a lot of it is unseen by the higher-ups. And, by definition, it’s not part of the actual job, so performers low in OCD may—legitimately—object to the fact that OCD is valued/encouraged/rewarded at all.
In Your Sight:
Leaders low on charisma tend also to be low on strategic thinking. But leaders very high in charisma tend to be shorter on the operational front, so they have trouble executing all those big visionary plans.
Leadership traits don’t function independently. They work in conjunction with other traits. And, according to researcher Mary Crossan and colleagues, good judgment is at the center of everything.
I’m not sure if I completely buy this yet, but, fascinatingly, according to some researchers, character (as in “having a good character”) is a skill. Because it’s about what you do in a specific context, in light of your values, and thus it’s situational and learned. You get better with practice and with good role models.