Introduction

After I spent almost a decade helping people develop their soft skills as a trainer and coach, I gathered some of the observations and generalizations I want to share. Even though they are very tentative they often proved useful for me and others and to date, I haven’t seen any theoretical or research-based approach bluntly contradicting what I’m about to present. Quite to the contrary, the more I learn the more everything seems to converge to a similar set of ideas.

But first I want to delineate the scope of what is about to follow. Here is what I will not do:
1) I will not endeavor to clearly identify what soft skills are and what they are not. I don’t think it’s possible. So far, I haven’t seen a definition of soft skills that is rigorous enough. And I will not try to be the first who will create it. All the definitions either list examples or contrast soft skills to hard skills which are technical and functional skills needed to perform some job or task. I will use my common sense and hopefully your understanding will be more or less aligned with mine.
2) I will not be explaining why soft skills are important. I assume that soft skills are important. Of course, this is not to say that hard, technical skills are not important. They are–but not enough if you cannot organize yourself, communicate efficiently, or collaborate with your colleagues. If you don’t consider soft skills important what fill follow most likely won’t be useful to you.
3) I will not be writing about which skills you should develop. In order to make use of the ideas I will offer you will need to have some soft skills you want to focus on. If you don’t have any of them in mind, I’d recommend spending some time thinking about them or collecting feedback from people around you. Also feel free to reach out to me and I can offer you some tools to help you with this process of discovering your developmental goals.

Now as I described what I will not cover, let me define what I will. Developing most hard skills is fairly straightforward. Difficult but straightforward. Developing soft skills, on the other hand, is usually not straightforward. It’s not uncommon to try and fail by not achieving any noticeable improvement. The purpose of this article is to explain what makes it so difficult to develop soft skills and what you can do to overcome these difficulties.

I also want to offer a disclaimer. My intention is to help you shift your mindset around soft skills acquisition. And even though I believe strongly in what I’m about to say, I know that reading about mindset doesn’t change the mindset. In the words of developmental psychologist Rober Kegan what does change it is

The persistent experience of some frustration, dilemma, life puzzle, quandary, or personal problem that is… Perfectly designed to cause us to feel the limits of our current way of knowing… In some sphere of our living that we care about, with… Sufficient supports so that we are neither overwhelmed by the conflict nor able to escape or diffuse it.

The ideas I will describe are going to be useless unless you earnestly reflect on them, put them into practice, and compare them with your current assumptions, beliefs, and approaches. I invite you to interact with the following text. Don’t only argue with it in your head though, also play with it, experiment with it. And read it slowly to notice your questions or objections. And feel free to reach to share them with me.

What will follow next are 4 major obstacles to developing soft skills I noticed. And for each, I will provide some guidelines on how to overcome them.

1. Our mental models of learning do not serve well for soft skills acquisition

Our mental models are constellations of beliefs, rules, and principles in a certain context. Mental models influence our behavior. Mental models per se are not good or bad. As Alfred Korzybski’s, the founder of general semantics, wrote:

A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

Many of our mental models are tacit, that is we act on them without full awareness of their structure. When a mental model is both tacit and not useful in a particular context, we will repeat the same actions even when they are not getting us where we want.

When we modify a mental map our new behavior will realign according to a new map. For example, if in our mental map disagreement is a confrontation, we will strive to win or make others lose. If we adopt a mental map where disagreements are learning opportunities we will be curious and listen to another party.

Most of our mental models of learning come from schools. School learning is not focused on soft skills. But because we spend so many years in schools, wittingly or unwittingly, we start to think about any learning through mental models of school learning.

Here are some of the premises behind school education that can get at odds with developing your soft skills (please don’t focus on them as criticism of the existing system–my intention in sharing them is only to highlight how they are inefficient in terms of soft-skills acquisition):
— There are (right) things we should learn. They are systematized, codified, and provided to us. Think of textbooks.
— Because things that should be learned are predefined, there are right and wrong answers. There are experts who objectively can tell whether our answers are right or wrong.
— Learning is about receiving: listening, reading, memorizing. Constructing and discovery of knowledge are secondary at best and often discouraged or deprioritized.
— Knowledge is verbal. Hence learning is verbal.
— The learner is not an active partner in the learner process. The learner is directed by teachers. Learner’s interests, preferences, and wishes are secondary. Objectives set by curriculum and managed by teachers are primary.

When we approach soft skills acquisition with a mental model such as described above, it leads to the following:
— We think that the right knowledge is out there, we just need to find the right expert or text that will provide us access to it. This often leads to procrastination (I will not learn or experiment until I find the right thing), shiny object syndrome (switching to a new promising approach, especially when faced with challenges), or ignoring common sense and what’s good enough.
— We consume information with the hope that it will change our behavior. And related to that, we prioritize ‘classroom’ time to real-world learning time. Unlike in schools, information is not enough. And cramming will not do.
— We don’t pay enough attention to the internal aspects of learning such as our needs, values, emotions, and past experiences. We give higher priority to expert opinions even though our internal data can provide crucial insights on how we need to approach and adjust our practice.
— We don’t trust ourselves with constructing and discovering new knowledge. If we don’t know something, the way to deal with that is by finding the right external, expert content rather than thinking, reflecting, hypothesizing, analyzing our experience, or even merely guessing.

All that constitutes immense, though often not noticeable, obstacles to learning soft skills. To counteract the influence of that inefficient mental model we need to examine it and update it with more expansive and useful ideas about learning. Often it means that we need to assume more responsibility for the process of learning and also we need to learn to deal with not knowing in a novel way.

Here are some of the characteristics of an alternative, more useful mental model:
— The world is profoundly uncertain and no one possesses the ultimate rulebook.
— We have the capacity for self-directed growth and learning and we need to learn to trust it
— Manage our learning journey. Set your learning goals, think about the measurement criteria and milestones. Get clear about the reasons for working on that particular skill and then the reasons behind those reasons. Review your progress, from time to time. Reflect on what’s working and what’s not working
— Before exposing oneself to new content and ideas, reflect on what you already know and whether you are making enough use of that
— Use scientific method. In the face of not knowing, hypothesize, create small experiments, reflect on the results of those experiences, reiterate.
— You are the best expert in your world and you can adjust your learning based on your self-awareness. Learn more about our values, core beliefs, and needs. Observe your emotions and thoughts as you rehearse, practice, and perform.

To summarize these with the words of pioneering organizational psychologist Kurt Lewin

we should consider action, research, and training as a triangle that should be kept together

2. Soft skills are inherently complex

Even though external manifestations of our soft skills are behavioral, including speech behavior, there is much more to them. There is a whole underlying tapestry of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive aspects. Because the behavioral part is more tangible and concrete, many people I worked with, by default, focus primarily on it. But it’s not enough.

Let’s take, for example, a new manager Peter who wants to be better at time management. He wants to accomplish everything needed in his new role in an 8-hour working day. Peter thinks that for that he needs to better prioritize and a have stronger focus on his priorities. But as he reflects more he notices another big thing at play. He’s afraid to interact with higher-level stakeholders and instead, as a way to procrastinate, he spends more time doing things he should delegate. Dealing with his inner fears is the most crucial part of time management for Peter, not prioritization or his focus. And to improve his time management Peter will need to work primarily on his emotions rather than his actions. Focusing on the behavioral aspect will have only a marginal impact.

To deal with this obstacle, think about what exactly constitutes a particular soft skill and what aspect of it would be the most impactful for you. What will you need to know to demonstrate this skill? What and how will you need to think? How will you need to act? Don’t forget about the state. So reflect also on how how you want to feel. Many people I worked with can easily describe what they want to be able to do. But then don’t consider how they want to feel while they do it. For example, they want to better influence the results of negotiation but they don’t think in what state they want to be in, e.g. ease or curiosity. Accounting for one’s state can be as important as for one’s behavior and we shouldn’t omit that part.

Another tendency that I noticed is that people tend to rely on knowledge as an antidote to emotions and feelings they avoid. For example, John doesn’t want to feel discomfort of uncertainty during difficult conversations. To avoid it he overprepares and overthinks all the possible scenarios and his in all of them. But as Morgan Housel incisively described it ‘knowing what to do tells you nothing about what happens in your head when you try to do it.’ There always will be something unexpected. And John will conclude that he didn’t prepare enough. That will lead to the vicious cycle of even more preparation. In this example, not knowing what to say is a symptom of the problem. Underdeveloped sub-skill of managing one’s state in the face of the uncertainty of human-to-human interaction is the root cause.

This leads us to another point. Apart from the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of a certain soft skill, there are also different sub-skills it comprises of. As we break it down into smaller and smaller sub-skills and focus on them, their acquisition becomes more manageable. For example, mastering public speaking is much more abstract than looking into the audience’s eyes. And it’s much easier to arrange practice for looking into eyes than for public speaking as a whole.

When you try to focus on a soft skill as a whole usually it’s going to be overwhelming because they are complex and messy. Split them into digestible chunks and figure out which chunk is the most impactful to focus on.

3. There are risks to our identity

Usually, the thinking goes something like this: developing soft skills is an addition. Here’s me and I will add to myself this new skill. That’s not how it works. Developing soft skills changes us.

With hard skills, it does work like an addition. Imagine Mary learned to chop vegetables as quickly as her favorite chef. She is still the same person. Her friends may be impressed with how quickly the onions were chopped but they will still see her as the same person. On the other hand, imagine that Mary stopped interrupting her friends as often as she did before and now she profusely demonstrates her curiosity. They will notice that something about her has changed.

As famous leadership scholar, Warren Bennis put it in the context of leadership development

A person does not gather learnings as possessions but rather becomes a new person with those learnings as a part of his or her new self.

To change who we are is a risky and scary business. It means leaving a part of us behind. For example, Mary grew up praised for how smart she was. And now as she wants to improve her listening skills she wants to stop interrupting people. Mary will need to let go of the need to show people how much she knows when a familiar topic comes up. For her being smart is a big part of her identity. And in her mental model saying smart things is what smart people do. Who is she doing to be if she stops sharing her smart thoughts? That’s not an easy question to be with.

The fear of losing oneself can become a very potent obstacle. When this dynamic is at play you may notice some or all of the following:
1) There are lots of shoulds, musts, and have-to’s. For example: they have to listen to me before making a decision, I shouldn’t offend people when I deliver feedback, I must be the most knowledgeable person to earn the trust of the team
2) You think ‘That’s not who I am’, ‘If I do that, I will betray myself.’ Or you negatively label people who possess these skills; they are political, incompassionate, rude, unqualified, etc.
3) You work on a skill continuously but nothing really changes. You procrastinate to do what you committed to do. Or avoid saying what you wanted to say.

When this obstacle is not addressed directly one of two things usually happens. When motivation and discipline are high people gradually achieve a shift in their identity. Usually, it requires time and can be quite stressful. Typical examples are switching from being an individual contributor to a manager or from being an employee to being an entrepreneur. Or alternatively, people decide that ‘it’s not for me,’ ‘that’s not who I am,’ or some other version of it and step back into the familiarity of their previous identity.

When people include some identity work it can help them change their self-perception quicker, more holistically, and with less stress (or sometimes the stress can be more acute but not as prolonged). It’s great when a therapist or a coach can facilitate this kind of work. They can hold the space as you explore your beliefs connected to your identity. And they can also point out some of the things that are not visible to you but visible from the outside.

But also there are some things that you can do on your own. Here’s are some guidelines:
— Develop self-awareness. Question your thoughts and emotions. If you think that you must share everything you disagree with, ask yourself: what would happen if you don’t? what kind of person do you need to be to be able to act differently when you disagree?
— Consider what doesn’t serve you well anymore. Do you have any habits, beliefs, or parts of your identity that are outdated? For example, a lot of people who become managers were top performers and had a strong identity as doers and problem-solvers. In a new role doing is not central to their role anymore. They need to say goodbye to it and develop an identity of organizer, facilitator, or influencer.
— Observe what values are in play. When we start acting in a new way it may feel as if we are betraying ourselves and our values. For example, if you want to develop more influence you may feel that you have to become sleazy and dishonest. Once you notice that, brainstorm ways to develop influence while remaining honest rather than doing something that isn’t aligned with your values.

4. Not having clarity about what to do

In developing soft skills rarely are there clear roadmaps. You don’t have something like scales to practice, calories to count, or a pulse that you can measure with a wearable.

But with our natural striving for certainty, any map can be appealing because it alleviates the discomfort of uncertainty. Books or online courses can offer some clarity and, indeed, useful guidance and advice. The price for their certainty is their one-for-all approach. A book, blog, or podcast do not know you and don’t know the specific challenges you may face.

My invitation to you is to craft your roadmap first before you search for the resources or content on a particular soft skill. Granted this roadmap can be loose and sketchy at first. You can refine it as you go.

By roadmap, I mean knowing answers to the following questions:
— Why it’s important for you to develop this soft skill? Don’t avoid asking yourself obvious questions. Many people I worked with assumed that a certain skill was a requirement for their promotion without asking anyone. More often than not their assumptions were baseless. (I had a coaching client who was about to do an MBA. As we explored this decision he realized it’s not really needed for where he wants to go in his career. Imagine how much time and money he was able to save)
— How would you know that you achieved a desirable level of mastery for that skill? What will be different in terms of how you think/feel/act/communicate? What others will notice? What will be good enough?
— What is missing right now for you to be able to think/feel/act/communicate in that way? Knowing the gaps and unknowns will make finding appropriate resources and filling them much easier.
— How will you notice and measure progress? What would be the evidence that desired changes are happening? How will you know that the progress is not there?
— Some of the answers will be unclear. That’s ok. Answer them as best as you can now and return to them from time to time. And when you have at least the first draft version of the roadmap ask yourself what are the smallest things you can do to move forward?
— While I’m inviting you to do more on your own when you are crafting your roadmap and then managing your journey, there are some models that can help with this. Here are some of them (note: I’ll provide only the briefest description and also add some links to learn more about them):

1. David Peterson’s Development pipeline describes a sequence of conditions required for change to happen: insight (knowing what to do) -> motivation -> capability -> real-world practice -> accountability. You can read more in David Peterson’s article.

2. Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey describe a process that helps overcome resistance to change. Very schematically the process includes answering the following questions:
— what to I want to be doing but not doing
— what I’m doing instead
— what is a ‘big assumeption’? what is the worse thing that can happen if I do it?
— what is the safest experiment I can run to see if a ‘big assumption’ is sound?
more in their book Immunity to Change or for a shorter introduction check out this video.

3. Kolb cycle describes a circular progression of experiential learning: experience -> reflecting -> conceptualization -> experimenting that again leads to experience. Here is more about it. In even more abbreviated form you can think of it as continuous iterations of action and reflection.

4. Robert Dilts’ Logical Level helps to split skills into different conceptual levels: environment (where and when), behavior (what), abilities and strategies (how), values and beliefs (why), identity (who), mission (for what). You can read more about here.

Conclusion

My aim for this article is admittedly ambitious. But my hope is that in it I was able to demonstrate some of the typical challenges, gaps, and omissions in the process of soft skills acquisition. Being aware of them will not turn the whole process of learning and practice into a cakewalk but it surely can save your time and energy. The downside is that what’s implied in my advice is hard work, often about facing uncertainty, being with it, and constructing meaning from it.

Also you probably noticed that my advice is on a meta level. That is because I don’t know what you need to do. I’d argue that nobody does. But luckily there are some practices to (1) help you uncover that on your own or (2) help you integrate external advice and guidance more holistically.

And finally, as I invited you at the beginning of the article, be mindful of the objections and concerns that came up as you read it. Some of them can be valid criticisms of what I shared and some are manifestations of your habit. To find out which one is which you’d try them out and see what works for you and what doesn’t. Also don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions about what I shared or if you want to learn more about some of the things I mentioned in the passing.