What Are Soft Skills - And Why They’re the Most Important Set of Skills for Leaders Today

In leadership conversations over the past decade, soft skills have moved from a side note in HR slides to the core of what separates successful executive teams from the rest. If you’re a mid-level executive or seasoned leader, you already know what soft skills are - human traits and skills like communication, empathy, adaptability, teamwork, etc. 

So rather than defining what soft skills are, this article explores why they matter, how these skills relate to identity and career potential, and why they are now the most strategically important set of capabilities for people wanting to grow in business - or arguably - in life. 

‍

From Army Manuals to Boardrooms: The Origins and Evolution of “Soft Skills”

I'm always fascinated about the origin of terms we take for granted in everyday business.  And this one is no different in terms of its curious start.

The term ‘soft skills’ was not invented by a business school or a training organisation as I suspected - it came from the U.S. Army in the late 1960s. As the Army developed their training doctrine, it needed a way to differentiate skills related to ‘people and processes’ (like leadership and supervising) from those related to ‘machines and equipment’. 

Early documents described hard skills as those involving “hard” physical systems, while soft skills were job-related abilities that involved people and paperwork, but not machines. By 1972, the Army was formally using the term in training manuals to characterise these non-technical, people-oriented skills - even if their definition at the time sounded like a pretty vague and therefore dismissive add-on to the most important skills.

From there, the term migrated into education and business in the 1980s and ’90s as employers recognised that technical competence alone, wasn’t sufficient for people to succeed as leaders in complex organisations. It started become clear that the highly technical ‘subject matter expert’ - with no communication skills - wasn’t going to attract followers or loyalty in large & diverse teams - no matter how expert.  

As team silos became more interconnected and collaborative, the demands on human interaction - negotiating, motivating, influencing -  grew. However, the hard vs soft label stuck - like many things - we never question the status quo.   So inadvertently, it created a hierarchy implying that soft skills were “nice-to-have” or less serious than ‘hard skills’ - possibly because there were (at that time) no recognised or formal ways to acquire such skills.  

Today, leaders recognise that these human-centric capabilities are not in fact soft in any way - least of all impact:  the leaders who have these skills  influence organisational performance, innovation, culture, and resilience in a world where technology is increasingly disrupting and automating many tasks, skills and jobs we’ve taken for granted.

‍

‍

Hard to Learn, Harder to Measure: The Paradox of Soft Skills

One of the biggest challenges with soft skills is that everyone thinks they have them, but few know how to prove it. Hard skills are relatively straightforward:  you take a course, pass an exam, earn a certificate, and voilà - you can claim proficiency in SQL, project management, Python or whatever. These skills are constructed, audited, documented and easy to evidence.

Soft skills, by contrast, are intangible. You don’t get a certificate in “patience” or “situational awareness.”  You evidence them through behaviour, outcomes, perception, practice and context - and that’s deeply subjective.

This raises three important questions for leaders:

1. Can you measure soft skills?
   Not easily. Traditional assessment tools - structured evaluations, observation, 360s -  only approximate them, because they rely on human judgement, not objective tests.  And everyone’s opinion on ‘mastery’ of a soft skill, differs.
   
   
2. Are soft skills innate or learned?
   There’s no binary answer. Some are linked to personality traits, early socialisation and even neurodiversity. For example, someone with ADHD may find patience and sustained focus more difficult; someone raised in a culture where bluntness was normal may need deliberate practice to adapt to more subtle or diverse communication styles. These dimensions don’t negate the possibility of growth - they influence the path nedded to get there.
   
   
3. What’s the role of values and identity?
   Soft skills are deeply intertwined with people’s personal values and personal wiring eg personality.  Emotional intelligence and empathy can be stronger in some people than others - and can often come from how individuals have learned to interpret social signals and urgency.  This capability can be shaped by DNA, upbringing, culture or personality. At the same time, individuals can choose growth values that push them beyond their known and wired instinctive behaviour; for example, someone not naturally reflective can develop self-awareness through deliberate habits and feedback loops.
   
   

In short, soft skills are harder to learn precisely because they are behavioural, contextual and tied to human complexity. That’s also why they are harder for organisations to teach en masse - blanket courses and workshops, have been proven to rarely change behaviour.

‍

Beyond the Binary: Introducing a Third Layer of Skills

For many leaders this is the revelation:  skills aren’t just hard and soft. There’s a third category we at Actvo call Learned Skills -  sometimes also referred to as professional skills. 

These live in the ambiguous space between innate behavioural competencies and formal technical knowledge.  And that’s what makes them so precious. 

Learned skills are:

• Experiential: You acquire them through real work, not classroom certificates. Participation in projects, pushing boundaries of curiosity and creativity.
  
  
• Contextual: They depend on environmental signals, reflection, iteration and adaptation.  They take philosophical thinking, to know you have.
  
  
• Hybrid: They draw on both soft and technical skills.  They combine both, to be effective.

Examples include influencing without authority, conflict resolution, facilitation, leading change, and complex problem framing. They require some foundational soft skills sure - hard to do without  emotional awareness, communication agility, resilience - but people with the skill, translate those into professional outcomes.  It’s the difference between skills - and capabilities.  Learned Skills are capabilities that are based predominantly on the presence of soft skills. 

This is why executives with strong learned skills are so highly valued -  not because they can memorise frameworks (we’ve got ChatGPT for that now!), but because they can navigate ambiguity, motivate teams, and have the wisdom from learned and past experiences to drive outcomes across unknown and diverse boundaries. 

These are the abilities leaders repeatedly return to when roles stretch beyond defined KPIs.

‍

The Strategic Inflection Point: Why Soft Skills Are the Most Important Skill Set Today

We are at a moment in the evolution of work where soft skills are not just complementary to hard skills -  they are foundational to organisational success:

1. Technology is automating technical tasks - not human interaction‍

There’s plenty of research that proves as AI and automation accelerate, the value of uniquely human skills like communication, collaboration and critical thinking is on the rise and highly in demand. Tasks that require empathy, perspective taking, ethical judgment and contextual understanding remain outside the reach of machines.

And if you think about it -  they are the human capabilities that are often critically needed to underpin successful technical execution.

2. Performance outcomes increasingly correlate with soft skills

Studies consistently also are finding that soft skills influence business outcomes: an original study by the Carnegie Foundation was the earliest claimed that 85% of on the job success is attributed to soft skills versus 15% to technical skills alone.  And are validated more recently by studies by Linked In Learning that indicate that 91% of talent professional consider soft skills critical in hiring decisions. 

Organisations with employees strong in soft skills show higher productivity, better team cohesion, and superior adaptability in uncertain environments.  This is because they have already learned how to translate these skills into learned commercial strengths and competencies. 

3.The modern workplace demands fluidity and collaboration

Remote and hybrid work, cross-functional teams, and globalised value chains all increase the coordination cost of work. Soft skills like communication clarity, cultural agility, empathy and conflict navigation are not optional - they are proven to be the glue that holds distributed teams together.

4.Career mobility depends on adaptability and learning agility

Recent research shows that foundational soft skills directly influence career progression: people who master communication, curiosity, creativity and adaptability advance faster, earn more, and learn new abilities more quickly than those with narrow technical expertise.

‍

The Path Forward: Personalised Learning for a Diverse Workforce

Because soft skills are so tightly tied to individual wiring, context, and developmental history, the days of one-size-fits-all courses rarely work. Leaders can’t just “send everyone on a soft skills workshop” and expect transformation - the future is about people being able to create their own learning experiences, that’s personalised to how they are wired.  Here’s why it matters:

• Different people learn differently. Some learn best by doing (experiential practice), some by observing and reflecting, some by reading and modelling behaviour, others through projects and experimentation.
  
  
• Soft skills development requires feedback loops. If skills are behavioural and contextual, individuals need real-time feedback on how they show up - not just theory.  So they need to agree on a plan to learn, and get feedback on whether they are.
  
  
• Growth happens over time, not in a single session. Habits, resilience, self-awareness and adaptability require sustained practice in real contexts.  They need time to cultivate - fail, try again, and grow the skill authentically - not textually.
  
  

That’s where modern learning platforms like Actvo show their value. Rather than generic training content, Actvo blends a variety of learning activities matched to people’s personal profiles - including starting with the basics like their personality preferences, values, learning styles and career goals -  to support real, measurable growth in both foundational and learned skills that people actually value. 

‍

‍

For leaders, this means we do the heavy lifting - by designing personalised learning plans that help your people develop the soft skills that matter most to their roles and their ambitions. Some will benefit from reflective journaling and coaching; others from stretch projects with mentoring; others from structured observation and peer feedback cycles. 

The key is not what’s easiest to deliver, but what’s most effective for real behavioural change.  And you get to support them, rather than have to coach them, to achieve this.

‍

Conclusion: Reframing Soft Skills as Strategic Core Capabilities

Soft skills are no longer a fringe topic. They are fundamental to leadership performance, team effectiveness, innovation and organisational resilience. While the term may have originated in army manuals as a way of categorising non-technical skills, its modern significance is profound: soft skills shape how people negotiate complexity, build trust, influence outcomes and create human-centred work environments.

Executives who can embrace this complexity - understanding soft skills as behavioural capacities rooted in personality and values, experienced through learned practice, and developed through personalised growth pathways -  will be best positioned to lead in an era defined by human-technology fusion.

In a world where machines can outperform humans on technical tasks, the human element - empathy, creativity, adaptability and leadership -  becomes the true competitive advantage. 

Soft skills are no longer soft. They are the platform for learning.  And they are strategic.
And the future of work depends on them.

‍