Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills

In order to become a professional athlete, it is clear to everyone that hard skills such as fitness and body coordination are trained in order to maximize performance. In recent years, however, it has become common sense that every athlete and every team that plays at the top of the world undergoes mental training in addition to the classic physical program in order to get the most out of the athletes at that decisive moment. In the past, these were soft skills that only a few took seriously. However, those who did, were usually more successful in the long run, I also see this in our everyday lives. Our education systems are extremely good in the Western world, allows folks to set priorities and learn a lot at a young age. The question is, is what you learn now, just as relevant in 20 years?

It's more of a chicken-and-egg-discussion whether you should first learn hard skills and then later combine them with soft skills, or whether the right soft skills that you internalize from an early age lead to hard skills becoming almost logical and "as if by themselves" competencies.

In any case, I think fostering soft skill training deserves more attention – also in our education system. For me, the supposed soft skills often turn out to be very good “teachers” showing me where I can still catch up or where there’s development potential in order to advance my own career and make a valuable contribution to society. I am convinced that skills such as a sense of responsibility, the ability to work under pressure, the ability to deal with critics and to work in a team are important for young people in order to constantly re-orient themselves in our so-called VUCA world and to define their own sphere of influences again and again. They also help with hard-skill acquisition, which in my opinion is a lifelong process.

F.A.C.E. Junior und F.A.C.E. Teen: “My five Cs“

Together with my team from Klitschko Ventures I developed the method F.A.C.E. the Challenge, which focuses on people and the supposed “soft” skills. The method is aimed at the mindset, which helps turning problems into challenges. It can also mean you realize that you still have a lot to learn, nevertheless get caught up with hard skills in order to reach your goal. Utilize the challenge mindset, use the tools, so this does not lead to frustration, rather becoming proactive and catching any missing skills.

In order to transfer the method to children and young people, we have worked out what we consider to be the most important skills for young people. We call them the "Five Cs":

1.  Critical thinking: never take anything for granted and interrogate constantly what we see (images, news, conventions, opinions...
2. Creative thinking: learn to play with knowledge and combine pieces of information to create new ideas and make the world better
3. Collaborative thinking: alone we go fast, together we go far.
4. Complexity thinking: Embrace complexity means understand context more than just content, learn to make connections and identify causality.
5. Circular thinking: contribute to the conservation of the planet, this starts every morning. 

Especially in times in which artificial intelligence can "learn" more than a human being in a very short time, these abilities gain in importance. Many people are afraid that their workplace one day will be taken over by machines. If one considers one's own abilities only from the hard skills aspect, this fear is probably justified. However, it is often forgotten that creativity, empathy, networked thinking or team spirit are valuable skills that cannot be imitated by machines in the near future, in other words this fear is largely unjustified.

Of course, there are jobs that can take over machines in the interim, but the people who do these jobs are not doomed to wait until this day comes. They can become active and creative and develop new skills that qualify them for new fields of activity.

I think that young people should start early to acquire exactly these skills in order to be one step ahead of the machines, and above all, to look to the future without fear but with optimism. With a set of soft skills they have the confidence to know they are irreplaceable as human beings and can adapt to new circumstances if the situation requires it. In this way, they show their faces, not their backs to challenges.

For me, hard skills are an integral part of soft skills development. Or: Soft skills are the moving force behind my approach to hard skills.

“Back in the day”, I wanted to learn German, I was going to start boxing in Flensburg, I not only took German lessons, but I combined the useful with the pleasant. I also looked for a German girlfriend and a circle of friends with whom I could speak German. I learned the language I wanted to learn, but above all I used Creative Thinking and Collaborative Thinking of the 5Cs to achieve my goal while having fun.

#facethechallenge #softskills #movingforce #teenagers #skillsforfuture #keeplearning