Podcast 1: What Are Soft Skills Anyway?

Hosts Dr. Tobin Porterfield and Bob Graham explain what soft skills
are, using powerful examples from business. 
Bob Graham ‘0:22': We’re going to explain what soft skills are in
general, and explain them in a way that gives people a better
understanding. Let’s start with the big question first. Why soft
skills now?
Dr. Tobin Porterfield ‘0:58': We know from our research that soft
skills go back almost 50 years. So they are not new. But what is
new is, we are in a hyper-competitive market now, where technology
and globalization have saturated how we do business. The speed of
change if you are working at Apple, SAP or a company like that, is
greater. The hyper-competitive world is hitting all of us, from a
small business up to a global corporations.   The environment
we work in is different. Then, within our organizations we are
facing a multi-generational workforce; the people we work with and
the way we work are different.
Where Soft Skill Are Affecting Small Business
Graham ‘2:03': Give me an example or situation where soft skills
are playing a role with a small business?
Porterfield ‘2:09': We know even the term small business can a
landmine, because we can be talking about a hardware store or some
other business with 3-5 employees up to a small company with 100 or
150 employees. But those soft skills still come into play. We’re in
an environment where we have to be able communicate with our
customer, we have to be able to listen, we have to be able to
respond to changes in the marketplace.
Graham ‘2:47': That makes sense. I have certainly seen that in my
own small business. Things change, customers change. You have
ownership changes; you have management changes, or even you have
companies that change their focus like overnight. One day they are
doing A and the next day they are doing B. It’s the soft skills
that really allow us to adapt to those things.
Porterfield ‘6:04': I think you make a great point. We are involved
in a virtual world.
What Soft Skills Really Are
Porterfield ‘3:23': We are throwing around the term “soft skills”
and most people are familiar with it it.   Our argument is
that soft skills are what make us responsive and allow our
organizations to not be complacent in the face of all of these
changes going on in our hyper-competitive business world.
Is Soft Skills The Right Phrase?
Porterfield ‘3:43': Soft skills can be a challenging term. We have
had people respond to us, Don’t even use that term. Don’t even call
them soft skills because it makes them seem second class. IT makes
them sound unimportant. Use critical skills, communication skills,
managerial skills, and I know there are a lot of other terms out
there.  
Graham ‘4:14': Non-technical skills is a term we see a lot in
literature.
Contrasting Soft Skills with Technical Skills
Porterfield ‘4:19': These soft skills are not your technical
skills. For a marketing person, those technical skills might be
understanding the message and how to take that message out to the
market, how to develop that message.
Graham ‘4:40': The tools that you would use, whether you would send
out a press release and other types of specific things that you can
put your finger on.
Porterfield ‘4:50': If you were an architect or an engineer, those
hard skills or technical skills become more obvious because I need
to understand tension strengths and all kinds of other technical
details of my work. So then, you might say the soft skills are
everything else.   But I like to use a working definition that
soft skills are the portfolio of skills that allow us to work or
operate within the context of an organization.   The soft
skills are the glue that allows us to move those technical skills
into the ...

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