It’s Not Hard or Soft Skills — Leadership is a Combination of Competency and Connection
There are certain terms, words, and phrases in retail and likely other industries that just do not make a lot of sense when you think about them. We accept them because they seem so common, yet when you think about it them, you wonder how they came into being. The terms hard and soft skills are two of those words. How did those become the terms used to explain the difference between the skills you use for your job (hard skills) and for managing people (soft skills)?
Somehow those two definitions became the way to describe people’s leadership performance as well. “His soft skills really need some work; let’s build a development plan around those.” Sound familiar?
What I found interesting while researching this article is how many definitions of hard skills referenced them as teachable, measurable, and unique to positions. While that is an accurate description of what hard skills tend to be, it implies that soft skills are not those things. Most definitions state that soft skills are transferable and not role-specific. I would agree that soft skills or human skills should be transferable within any role or job. Regardless of your position, you deal with people somewhere, somehow. But I completely disagree with the notion that they are not teachable. They are also measurable, just in a more difficult way than we think of hard skills.
I came across a short video from Simon Sinek where he shares his thoughts on this subject. You can watch it HERE. He, too, calls out that the two skill types are often pitted against each other versus seen as necessary and complementary of one another. He speaks further about measuring performance (hard skills) and trust in his example from the Navy SEALs. The idea applies everywhere. Leaders that build high levels of trust will also demonstrate high levels of human skills. In other words, they connect with people.
“We don’t teach people human skills. We promote people with high-performance skills and then just expect them to know how to lead.” — Simon Sinek
A great example used in the video is related to someone who has learned all there is to know about reading and analyzing a P and L statement. They become excellent at the ‘hard’ skill function of their job. Because of that, we promote them to a higher-level leadership role. However, no one stops to teach them how to be a leader. We assumed because they were so good at managing a P and L statement that they would then be great at leading other people who did that same job. We see that in retail all the time. The hardest worker moving freight from the backroom to the sales floor suddenly becomes a Supervisor or Manager. However, we forget that we never gave them the opportunity to learn or train on handling the new elements of the role and how to lead other people.
When we think about the best leaders that we have encountered, we think about people who knew the ins and outs of their job. They didn’t have to be perfect at all the different tactical items every day. But you never questioned whether they had a good idea of how things were done. We also think about someone who connected with us. They could have meaningful discussions, empathize with our situation, or listen to what was on our minds. They could connect with us on a human level. With that came trust. The demonstration of both made them stand out as someone we liked to work with and learn from. That sounds like a simple definition of someone who is an excellent leader.
Leadership is a combination of different skill sets. My thought is we need to look at them as competency and connection. The best leaders need to know some of the technical skills required for the role they are in and those they support. As a Store Leader, you need to know how the different functions in your location work. While you may not run a register every day, you need to know how it functions and how those in that role complete their job. To round that out, there needs to be a level of connectedness. Can you understand what their challenges might be, or listen to what obstacles they face when performing their duties? In many ways, understanding the functionality of the different roles will assist in connecting to those that do those roles. Whether you use ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ skills to define the different elements, or if you see these as competency and connectedness, there is no denying you need both, and they must work together.
How do you developing the balance between your competency and connectedness?
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