When Soft Skills Become REAL Skills

All human beings have similar wants and needs. We want honesty, respect, integrity, and trust. We want to belong to something bigger than ourselves and to matter.

The current state of global affairs and their effect on every level of our lives has exacerbated these needs, highlighting their deficit in our personal and professional lives. When we feel a lack of control over our lives in one area, we tend to seek regaining control in another. It is therefore predictable that people’s need for ease, joy and freedom would increase in a world where those things have been curtailed or disrupted. While many businesses have crumbled over the past few years, others have found new ways to provide ease, meet the joy of giving and receiving value, of genuine communication and authentic delivery, and allow people freedom of choice. These are the ones still standing.

Whilst our world may have changed and be changing still, our humanness hasn’t. Life may cycle. It may feel chaotic on one day and apathetic on the next, but our need for honesty, respect, integrity and trust has not changed — and those willing to focus on providing them are those who will always win through.

Focusing on the human element of what we do has, until recently, been described as a “soft” skill, somehow suggesting that it is secondary or less important than the “hard” skills needed to keep our lives and businesses running. To the degree that…