Soft Skills

Dear Brandeis community,

 

There is a Washington Post education article that has been making the rounds the past month, one that fits within a genre of reportage I think of as, “How to get a job at famous tech company X.” Often there is an element of surprise intended to animate such pieces—i.e., they don’t hire exclusively for coding skills! I have been surprised at how frequently the same truths get trotted out to whirl around Facebook and surprise everyone anew, but perhaps that’s just a commentary on the collective attention span. In any case, the core of the news this time is from a 2013 self-assessment Google did of its personnel data (though, sadly, the article does not tell us whether the assessment included any critical engagement with demographics and diversity, issues around which have certainly plagued Silicon Valley):

 

In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis by crunching every bit and byte of hiring, firing, and promotion data accumulated since the company’s incorporation in 1998. Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others with different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

 

The imagined aha! moment that educators will have is that we should be teaching ethical behavior, critical thinking, and collaborative engagement—and certainly while this is old news at Brandeis, in the public school system it remains a slow process and necessary change. I saw examples of our students being good coaches, communicators, and empathic problem solvers at last weekend’s Jewish day school basketball tournament, where our teams ran roughshod over the competition in the friendliest, most supportive way possible—they were both the best basketball teams on the courts and the kindest kids in the gym.

 

My curiosity, in running across this piece, is the origin (and therefore meaning) of the term “soft” skills. Like many figures of speech, we use it habitually and assume a shared meaning, without interrogating our own sense of that shared understanding—generally, we’d all agree that soft skills encompass the types of communication and interpersonal skills that make a person easy to work with. But why do we call them soft? I have Googled around on this question, and not found a satisfactory answer (Wikipedia attributes it to a 1972 military conference, but the conference was already on “soft skills,” so the term must predate that event), so I’m crowdsourcing it to the Brandeis community—do any of you have an origin story for “soft skills?” If so, please email me! I am very curious, and would love to know more.

 

Next week, we’ll have a guest author writing the Word of the Week, and I’ll be leading an interview with that person on Yudcast. 

 

Wishing you weekends filled with all the skills, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan