Soft Skills ARE the Hard Skills When It Comes to Leadership

Go to http://theleadershipcrucible.com for more leadership resources and get a complimentary copy of my book "The Leadership Forge"

The whole discussion around soft skills versus hard skills really irritates me.

Here’s why.

Soft skills ARE the hard skills.

A lot of people say that hard skills all you need, and yes, you certainly need to have the core competencies you learn in school and on the job. For example, you need to know about finance if you’re a CFO.

But those hard skills are not going to get you where you need to go as a leader, especially the higher up you go in an organization.

The fact of the matter is that soft skills are actually the hard skills because the soft skills deal with people. Because when it comes right down it people are much more complex and much more challenging than the hard skills you’ve learned.

Even more importantly you get paid to lead people and if you don't have the ability to do that—especially the higher you go up in the organization—you will not be as successful as you could be.

So let’s make a comparison here. If you're smart—if you have high IQ—that does connects to your ability to perform your professional functions. OK, got it. But study after study shows that Emotional Intelligence—your ability to monitor yourself and how you interact with others—trumps IQ when it comes to leadership.

What I'm saying here is that emotional intelligence and those soft skills are far more important than hard skills, especially the higher you go up in the organization.

Let's say you have an IQ of 120 which is which is pretty good, not in the Mensa category, but you do not have to be you a rocket science rocket scientist to be a leader. When it comes to emotional intelligence, if you have an IQ of 120, what we’re asking for in terms of EQ is 140.

From an EQ standpoint, leaders need to be off the charts. Yes, that’s a high number, but the great thing is that EQ can be trained and developed.

So if soft skills—which are actually the hard skills—are going to heavily impact your success, then by all means it’s time to get on it and do something about it.

Soft skills. When it comes to leadership, they’re the hard skills.

Go to http://theleadershipcrucible.com for more leadership resources and get a complimentary digital copy of my book "The Leadership Forge