Medical education and training is too soft on the soft skills

Business schools and other professional schools, like medical schools, are getting the message that employers want graduates with not just technical skills, but soft skills as well. The term "soft" is unfortunate since it seems to imply that they are not as valuable as reading a balance sheet or interpreting a blood test result. To the contrary, they are replacing technical competence as the keys to success. Paradoxically, it is easy to measure the hard skills but hard to measure the soft skills. But, that has not prevented many from trying to validate the instruments and document the correlation to career success or job retention.

IT ALL STARTED WITH THESE 4 C’S OF 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION :?critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. These are the skills that many teachers are familiar with and are already implementing in your classrooms. However, Brian S. Miller suggested the addition of more C’s and introduced the world to the new, augmented concept—the 6 C’s of education that include citizenship/culture and character and connectivity. He developed the concept after talking to his colleagues, listening to their suggestions, and studying the materials of education leaders of today.

The new imperative is how to apply these skills to generative AI content.

As reported in Linkedin , self-awareness, listening and communication skills — even “the capacity to infer how others are thinking and feeling ” — are now the most prized qualities in executives, according to research by recruitment firm Russell Reynolds. While pandemic pandemonium has only added to the urgency, demand for socially adept leaders began growing earlier this century as the perceived slate of stakeholders grew to include “not just shareholders and board members, but employees, customers, the public at large, regulators, activists, and more,” writes Axios.

We should ban the term "soft" from the cradle to career lexicon and rename it for what they are-critical to winning the 4th industrial revolution and hard to define and measure at scale. In addition, despite the please of employers for talent with these skills, many jobs simply don't require them. In many instances you just need to know how to run a computerized machine or robot to get the work done by yourself.

I've participated in several recent HIT conferences that focused on AI, data and analytics and how they are used to measure and facilitate value based care. The themes seemed to reflect how doctors will need to change and how educators will need to adapt to create a 21st Century workforce that can win the 4th industrial revolution. The reality is that high tech should be helping care givers be more high tough, not replace it.

“People skills are more and more important in an era where we have powerful and pervasive technology,”?says Paul Roehrig, chief strategy officer for?Cognizant Digital Business , a business and technology service provider. “It sounds counterintuitive, but to beat the bot, you need to be more human.”

When evaluating their hiring plans for 2017, 62% of employers rate soft skills as very important, according to?CareerBuilder . But a recent survey by the?Wall Street Journal ?found that 89% of executives are having a difficult time finding people with these qualities.

In fact, finding employees with soft skills are in short supply.? Companies across the U.S. say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find applicants who can communicate clearly, take initiative, problem-solve and get along with co-workers.

If you’ve been laid off, you might find yourself working in a job outside your industry — for example, in transportation, health care, social assistance, accommodation, food service, etc. — to support yourself and your family. Even if that job’s responsibilities seem far afield from your chosen career path, this is an opportunity to develop or elevate skills that are needed in any industry. This author discusses five soft skills to focus on during your time outside your chosen field — teamwork, influencing without authority, effective communication, problem solving, and leadership — and how to position them on your resume.

Here are 10 reasons why doctors don't play nice with others.

To be successful in the future, doctors will need to evolve from technicians to managers to entrepreneurs to leaderpreneurs. They, like others in the work force, will have to learn the 4Cs: communication, complex non-medical problem solving, creativity and collaboration, which, in most instances, they are not taught in medical school or residency.

Soft skills are about building your emotional IQ. ?Have you ever taken a course in negotiation and persuasion, conflict resolution, team building, leading chaos or high performance teams or managing with incomplete information?"

Soft skills are now called durable skills, so I guess we are recognizing that they are not just hard but loner lasting than the soft ones.

Releasing the innerpreneur , in part, depends on hardening your soft skills. Futurists argue that the new world of work will depend on workers with creativity, imagination, innovativeness, and ability to manage themselves and teams demanding complex interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination and leadership.

Consequently, some think that the MFA is the new MBA. ?and that liberal arts majors will be more in demand in the 21st Century economy. For entrepreneurs, technical skills might buy you a ladder, but you will need the soft skills to climb it.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack