Words are indeed important. The term "soft skills" is useful in the sense that it differentiates from "hard" technical skills, but it does have that less than ideal connotation of "less important." I'm currently in a technical design phase for a project, and I've been thinking about the fact that only about 10-20% of what I and my teammates are doing at this point is "technical design." The other 80-90% is reading between the lines, shaking out assumptions, preparing supplementary documentation to aid project managers, and other "people stuff" and "management stuff." I think your suggested term "collaboration skills" is a good one to capture all of the non-technical design activities we're doing.
I don't even like to say conversation, confrontation, collaboration skills are "non-technical". There are reliable techniques for these sort of things and "non-technical" seems to me a subtle suggestion that it's all magic.
Hi Esther,
I think you know pretty well that I do have a big respect for you, and I totally agree with your intent. So let me share the formally unpolite question: if you think that one might think soft skills are weaker or less important than hard skills, would you say also that software is less important than hardware?
As both proper hardware and proper software are necessary to make a good system, IMHO both hard skills and soft skills are necessary to make a good leader. And should your hardware or software be weaker than you would like it to be, you can still help out on the other side, I think the same is true for hard and soft skills.
Best regards,
Istvan Fay
In any process, we cannot forget that essentially we are dealing with people and behavior.
For a good fast read on both understanding and improving behavior in any relationship try
"Since Strangling Isn't an Option" by Sandra Crowe
I have found this very helpful in managing my teams.
leslie dow
Commenting by HaloScan
