The Manageable Intangible

In a world where new technologies are quickly emerging and shaking up the foundational needs for technical skills, soft skills are the elements that will give employees and companies a competitive, human edge.

During my past five-plus years of experience, spanning thousands of coaching hours and hundreds of clients, I have rarely had to help my clients develop their hard skills. Instead of technical topics, what comes up again and again is the how—how to navigate work more effectively, how to fulfill their ambition, how to speak up more, how to even emotionally show up more at work. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the importance of soft skills only continues to grow as the work world continues to change.

According to "The Future of Soft Skills in the Workplace," which summarizes a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 employees and employers by technology company Business Name Generator, 71 percent of employees believe that soft skills will be more or just as important in the future than now. Further, 84 percent of employees and managers believe that new employees must possess soft skills that they can demonstrate during the hiring process.

Both hard and soft skills are vital for shaping a well-rounded organization. Hard skills are concrete and measurable, often including technical knowledge or training gained through life experience, career, or education. Soft skills, on the other hand, are personal habits and traits that shape how someone works on their own and with others. Soft skills—such as integrity, teamwork, creativity, and emotional intelligence—usually involve interpersonal relationships and are trickier to quantify, but it's obvious when they're missing.

As talent development and HR practitioners, we are at the forefront of identifying, nurturing, and leveraging those crucial competencies within our organizations.

Challenges with measuring soft skills

One of the primary difficulties with assessing soft skills lies in their inherent intangibility. Unlike hard skills, which employers often can measure through standardized tests or certifications, soft skills are more nuanced and context dependent. That complexity makes it difficult to develop universal metrics for evaluation, which often leads performance assessments to undervalue those skills, resulting in skewed perspectives of how an employee contributes and what their potential may be.

Historically, organizations have tended to prioritize technical expertise when considering opportunities that give employees greater responsibilities, expanding scopes, or making promotion decisions. Having superb role-specific skills can make someone great at producing, but it does not always translate to being an effective leader, manager, or colleague.

As employers think about expanding employees' scopes or responsibilities, and perhaps specifically about promoting staff into management, companies need to ask whether those individuals have the necessary soft skills for project or people management, or whether they're simply good at demonstrating their role-specific or technical skills.

As expanded scopes and management roles require increasingly complex interpersonal skills, employers may end up with leaders who excel technically but struggle with delegation, cross-functional communication, and strategic thinking. If employers cannot measure soft skills, they certainly cannot adequately ascertain whether an employee has enough of the necessary skills they need to be set up for success at the next level.

To address those challenges and open questions, let's explore various tools and methodologies for assessing soft skills.

Observation and performance reviews

Performance reviews can come in handy as one method to both collect observations about an employee's performance and to provide actionable feedback on ways the individual can develop to better meet expectations. By incorporating specific behavioral indicators into reviews, managers can more accurately assess competencies such as teamwork, adaptability, and problem solving.

Biannual or annual review periods can be appropriate cadences to also discuss growth, goals, and development opportunities. Most companies use some version of a five-point scale; pairing it with verbiage to explain the scale (such as "Does not meet expectations" to "Exceeds expectations" or "Unacceptable" to "Excellent"), can help quantify an intangible.

That said, biannual or annual performance evaluation cycles are not enough for feedback delivery or alignment with individuals at any level. At least monthly, but ideally no less than biweekly, managers should conduct one-on-ones with their direct reports to share observations and feedback and realign on expectations for performance.

Observation and assessment enable managers, leaders, HR, and TD to identify team trends and get better insight into how each person's strengths and development needs map to the team in general. A map of the team's overall skills can highlight where a team may be over- or under-indexing on different skill sets. With that information, the company can start to see what skills need development or supplementation with additional team members, where feasible.

At the leader level, look at delivery as indicators. How are they with meeting deadlines? How about the individuals on their teams? Is there recent employee satisfaction or engagement survey data to provide details about the leader's behaviors and where they may be over- or under-indexing on those soft skills?

Implement a continuous feedback system that encourages ongoing dialogue between managers and their direct reports, focusing on both hard and soft skills development.

360-degree feedback

A comprehensive, 360-degree approach gathers input from an employee's peers, direct reports, and supervisors, offering a multidimensional view of how the individual's soft skills measure up. The process contributes to employees developing self-awareness, provides a holistic view of one's skills, aligns self- and external perspectives on strengths and development areas, and promotes iterative and transparent feedback cycles.

Questions to ask to assess an individual's soft skills can include:

• How effectively does this person communicate complex ideas to diverse audiences?

• In what ways does this individual demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence when interacting with colleagues?

• How well does this person adapt to unexpected changes or challenges in the workplace?

• To what extent does this employee contribute to a positive team dynamic and foster collaboration?

• How effectively do they manage conflicts or disagreements within the team?

• In what ways do they demonstrate leadership qualities, regardless of their formal position?

• How well does this employee manage their time and prioritize tasks in high-pressure situations?

• To what degree does this individual show initiative and proactively seek out opportunities for improvement?

• How effectively do they provide constructive feedback to others?

• In what ways does this employee demonstrate active listening skills during meetings or one-on-one interactions?

Such questions elicit specific examples and observations from various perspectives, providing a well-rounded view of the individual's soft skills in action. By aggregating responses to those types of questions from multiple sources, organizations can identify an employee's strengths and areas for development in crucial interpersonal and leadership competencies.

While 360-degree assessments can be incredibly insightful, they require a lot of trust and transparency, because the comprehensive nature of collecting feedback from multiple sources means that individuals need to feel confident that the feedback process is fair, anonymous (where appropriate), and used for constructive development rather than punitive measures. Unfortunately, trust and transparency are not always values ingrained in organizations' cultures, which can lead to superficial or misleading feedback, erosion of trust, low engagement, fear of retaliation, and missed opportunities for growth. Poorly implementing 360-degree assessments can yield more tension and decreased morale.

Coaching

Professional coaching has emerged as an in-demand resource, both as a development tool and an effective means of assessing soft skills. Through one-on-one interactions, coaches can uncover strengths and areas for improvement that may not be apparent in day-to-day work situations.

On a micro scale, partnering with a coach can give managers, leaders, HR, and TD an understanding of the themes that arise in individual employee coaching engagements or cohort-based coaching programs. (Of course, confidentiality plays a role here, which is why I refer to themes, not details.)

On a macro scale, a coach working with multiple individuals and teams can collect data and themes about what skills are most relevant for employees on a rolling basis. The coach can share the aggregated data to guide training and development focus areas as well as identify potential gaps and trends across teams and business units.

Developing soft skills

Recognizing the need for personalized development, many organizations infuse training with individualized coaching programs. Such initiatives offer tailored guidance and support, enabling staff to work on specific areas of improvement within the context of their roles and responsibilities.

Coaches can create spaces for employees to reflect, learn new skills for advancement, and navigate situations and challenges that arise naturally that require skill development. They also can review and hold the employee accountable to practicing their new skills in the workplace.

Implement a blended learning approach that combines traditional training methods with one-on-one coaching and real-world application opportunities.

Mentorship programs are another avenue for development. They provide invaluable opportunities for soft skill development through guidance and role modeling. By pairing less-experienced employees with seasoned professionals, organizations can facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge and foster the growth of critical interpersonal skills. Unlike a coach (who helps someone come up with their own solutions) and a manager (who is directly responsible for a direct report's work product), a mentor offers guidance from a place of experience, expertise, and perspective.

Mentors can provide a lot of insight and advice as well as role-, company-, or industry-specific knowledge that a coach may not have. For example, while a coach can work with an employee on writing effective emails, a mentor within the company may be able to provide more hands-on knowledge of how to write effective emails within that organization. Do the leaders prefer more bulleted lists and brevity? Is more context helpful, or do leaders find extra context superfluous? Does the company or industry work more in documentation or operate within the body of the email? An industry- or company-specific mentor may have the expertise to provide such perspective to clarify and hone those skills.

Assessing soft skills during talent acquisition

Historically, the hiring process has been reliant on resumes and perhaps affinity or how an employee presents themselves in interviews. In many ways, traditional interviews reveal only what candidates want to showcase, which could lead to surprises or expectation gaps after their start date.

Incorporating soft skills assessments into the hiring process is vital for building a well-rounded workforce. Recruiters can use various strategies—such as personality and strengths assessments, structured interviews, and assessment techniques—to evaluate those competencies in potential hires.

Personality and strengths assessments. Tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DiSC assessment, or CliftonStrengths can reveal details about a candidate's personality traits and natural inclinations. Although employers shouldn't use such assessments as standalone decision-making tools, they can inform interview questions and identify potential areas of strength or concern.

For instance, if a candidate is an introvert (per MBTI results), hiring managers can explore how the individual collaborates in team settings or recharges after intense social interactions. Interviewers can prompt candidates to share more information about how they leverage their strengths (per CliftonStrengths) with "Tell me about a time when …" prompts. For example, regarding the strategic strength, ask about a circumstance where the interviewee developed a long-term plan or solved a complex problem. If there is a particular skill that falls low on a candidate's strengths assessment that may be critical for the role, inquire about how they would compensate for that skill requirement.

A word of caution: Such assessments should not provide any definitive judgments but rather serve as starting places for conversation as well as provide a framework for exploration during the interview process.

Structured interviews. Behavioral and situational interview techniques are effective for assessing soft skills. Asking candidates to describe past experiences or presenting hypothetical scenarios enables interviewers to learn about candidates' problem-solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and communication skills. The hypotheticals should be specific, tangible, and realistic, based on the needs and expectations of the role. Using them is beneficial for both the candidate in understanding the challenges that may arise in the role as well as the interviewer to ascertain how the candidate may cope with workplace challenges.

Develop a standardized set of behavioral questions that align with your organization's core competencies, ensuring consistency across interviews and reducing unconscious bias.

Innovative assessment techniques. Some organizations are exploring more creative methods for evaluating soft skills during the hiring process, such as:

• Group interviews or collaborative exercises to assess teamwork and leadership potential

• Role-playing scenarios to evaluate communication and conflict resolution skills

• Virtual reality simulations to test decision making and adaptability in various workplace situations

Soft skills' growing importance

TD and HR professionals are well positioned to identify, develop, and leverage employees' soft skills to drive organizational success. By implementing robust assessment tools, personalized development programs, and innovative hiring practices, we can create a workforce that excels not only in technical expertise but also in the critical interpersonal skills that define great leadership.

As we look to the future, the organizations that prioritize soft skills development will be best able to adapt to change, foster innovation, and maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

Use Hypothetical Scenarios During Interviews

Presenting a realistic situation during the interview process enables interviewers to elicit details about candidates' soft skills and how they may perform in the role. Consider the following scenario.

Imagine you're leading a cross-functional team on a high-priority project to launch a new product. The project is behind schedule, and tensions are rising. Members of the marketing team are frustrated because they feel the product features don't align with customer needs, while the engineers insist they're building according to the original specifications. You've just learned that a key team member from the engineering department has been withholding important information about potential delays, fearing negative repercussions.

Questions an interviewer could pose to a candidate about that situation include:

• How would you approach the conflict between the marketing and engineering teams?

• What steps would you take to address the issue with the team member who's been withholding information?

• How would you communicate with senior management about the project status and challenges?

• What strategies would you use to get the project back on track while maintaining team morale?

The scenario enables the interviewer to assess several key soft skills.

• Leadership: How does the candidate approach leading a diverse team through a challenging situation?

• Conflict resolution: What strategies does the candidate use to mediate between conflicting perspectives?

• Communication: How effectively can the candidate communicate with different stakeholders, including team members and senior management?

• Problem solving: What approach does the candidate take to address the project delays and team issues?

• Emotional intelligence: How does the candidate handle the sensitive situation with the team member withholding information?

• Adaptability: How flexible is the candidate in adjusting plans and strategies when facing unexpected challenges?

• Team management: What techniques does the candidate use to maintain team morale and productivity in a stressful situation?

The interviewer can follow up with probing questions based on the candidate's responses, such as:

• Can you give me an example of a similar situation you've faced in the past? How did you handle it, and what was the outcome?

• What do you think are the most critical factors to consider in this scenario?

• How would you measure the success of your approach in resolving this situation?