Time to Take a Hard Look at Soft Skills

Technological innovation is advancing at a frantic pace, and it seems that every day we are reminded of the ever-widening gap between the technical skills that industry desperately needs, and the skills that current and prospective employees possess. MIT and other STEM universities are committed to giving students these tools

But there is another skills gap that receives less attention and which I believe is critically important, especially for students of engineering and science – the “soft” skills deficit. 

Soft skills include communications, leadership and the ability to work in teams. These are distinct from “hard” skills such as mastery of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), which generally receive a lot more recognition

To be clear, I am not downplaying the importance of technical skills; I’ve spent a great deal of my professional life teaching them to students! And there is no doubt that as a society we need to address the rising demand for this type of skills set.

But let’s not overlook the vital importance of soft skills, especially among young professionals. Let me draw on my own field of supply chain management to illustrate what I mean.

Imagine that senior management at a manufacturing company has identified an opportunity to cut costs by centralizing the procurement of freight transportation capacity. At present, each plant buys its own truck transportation services, which means that the company is unable to leverage the huge volumes of goods that it ships. A new, centralized procurement strategy is created, and a young manager is dispatched to convince seasoned procurement executives at each plant to adopt the new strategy. 

The junior manager is fresh out of graduate school and her knowledge of the latest procurement technology and management techniques is excellent. But she’s not a good communicator. 

Using mathematical programming techniques, the young professional demonstrates that the new procurement strategy is optimal. She even simulates “before” and “after” scenarios to demonstrate the potential impact of the new strategy and its robustness on various demand levels. The manager then puts together a decent PowerPoint presentation to make the case for adopting the strategy. But her message is flat and uninspiring, and easily drowned out by supporters of the status quo. Her mastery of the new procurement software acquired by Corporate is second to none, but she struggles to sell its merits to experienced plant managers.

This is just one small example of the kind of change management challenge that a young professional might encounter. If his armory of skills does not include effective communications, he is likely to struggle. 

A lack of teamworking skills has a similar outcome, especially in a globalized workplace. Today, there’s a good chance that individuals will be expected to participate in cross-functional teams scattered across multiple countries and cultures. They must have the ability to work across these boundaries while contributing to the team.

A common communications pitfall is that many technically-oriented professionals, especially those in the early stages of their careers, rely primarily on the use of logic to convey valuable information. This is fine if the audience is on a similar technical wavelength. However, the message must be crafted differently for mixed audiences, where the average level of technical literacy may be lower. For example, it might be necessary to make the message emotionally appealing and to inject it with vision.

Young professionals who lack communications know-how can find this difficult. Moreover, the upcoming generation of managers has grown up in a world dominated by social media. Attention spans are short, and all too often social communication is conducted screen-to-screen – not person-to-person. 

Consequently, educators generally must pay more attention to teaching soft skills. At the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, we’re developing fresh approaches to teaching soft skills in our 10-month Supply Chain Management master’s program.

An important lesson we’ve learned is that inter-personal communications are best taught in a classroom environment, where individuals experience face-to-face interactions. The Socratic Method, which involves in-class debate, is an effective vehicle for honing communications capabilities. 

It’s significantly more challenging to effectively deploy Socratic teaching in an online environment. This is an important insight, given the rise of online educational programs such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). As I argued in my LinkedIn Influencer post The MOOC has Arrived and Education Will Never be the Same Again, MOOCs represent a major advance in education, but they are not a good platform for learning soft skills such as inter-person communications. 

That is one reason why we’ve created a blended master’s program in supply chain management, combining online and physical classroom instruction. For more information on this program see my LinkedIn Influencer post, A New Class of Education Makes the Grade. 

But it’s not only educational institutions that should help an individual develop soft skills. Companies need to ensure that these skills are incorporated in professional training courses and are nurtured in the workplace. Many of them offer such training opportunities, but this is usually limited to large multinationals. Many smaller companies do not.

As we rush towards a more automated, impersonal world where technological prowess is held in high esteem, non-technical soft skills have an increasingly important role to play.