Why soft skills are the real hard skills

Have you ever worked with a colleague who always argues against your solution proposals? A team mate where you always run into misunderstandings all the time? A boss who simply doesn't understand what is important for you in your role? A friend where you already know: The next discussion will be as tedious and effortful as the previous ones. To a degree where you are about to lose your mind, because you are simply never on the same page. Or think about your significant other and the annoying discussions if the dirty dishes go on top of the dishwasher or into the dishwasher ??. Discussions that go on for years and drain your energy over and over again and leave you in a hopeless position, because you simply don't know how to convince or bring the other person on board. Or at least how to protect yourself from not letting these discussions spiral in your head for days and interrupt your sleep patterns at night...

Now compare this to learning powerpoint and how to insert a photo into your presentation. Or learning a language and remembering

"Hola, Phil,??cómo estás? - Estoy bien".

Or training your analytical thinking, learning how to do a due diligence or leveling up your business knowledge doing an MBA. Typically, we associate everything related to people skills with soft skills, while we refer to learning software, languages or training your technical or analytical thinking as hard skills. Now I am asking you – what is harder to learn and get right?

Exactly. I truly believe the real hard skills lie in interacting with people that are totally different to us. We all know the bias to prefer, hire and promote people who are like us. And how difficult it can be to work with people who's mental models don't match ours, who's values are different to our own ones and who feel like aliens to us (sometimes even living in a totally different solar system...). In an era where diversity and inclusion have made it to the top management agenda – how do we actually train our people to really connect with each other – even if opinions don't match?

How do we facilitate open and honest communication between people that results in them being closer to each other in the end – and not further away?

How can we create a feedback culture that is radically open while showing we genuinely care for the other person? The real hard skill is finding a way to a common ground, a way that allows you to work together successfully with people who are so unlike you. As leaders, we need to role model these behaviors that we want to see from the people surrounding us. So, one of the key hard people skills that I learned throughout my leadership carreer is:

In the moments when you want to move away from someone, you actually need to move towards them.

Not in an offensive manner of course. And not if the other person isn't in a state to listen. But it is usually in the moments when we think "(insert your favorite curse words here)", where we should take a second or two (or hour/s) to regulate ourselves and then make the move towards the other person. Even if it feels really hard to do so! Overcoming your own ego is simply a super tough job – a hard skill to learn and get right.

So, no matter where you are on your career journey, what were the really hard things for you to learn and get right?