Comments on: Soft skills are foundational competencies

By: tiffany fareed

tiffany fareed — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 03:25:52 +0000

I personally feels that everyone has a unique skill. Everyone has skills that can be categorized into small or large groups. The soft skills which are seemed to be the important ones are mastered by plenty of humans. Essential skills are the ones that help people think outside of the box and try to differentiated one human from another. But i truly believe that the soft skills we learn everyday are the ones that are important and help us keep our heads about water.

By: ashley asigbey

ashley asigbey — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:11:12 +0000

I think that everyone knows “soft skills” are important, perhaps more important than technical skills, but because they are difficult to cultivate, measure, etc. we tend to avoid discussing them.
Establishing a new term to describe these skills could be helpful as well. “Soft skills” sounds like an intangible, marginalized set of concepts. However, naming the actual skills (trust, confidence, etc.) tend to resonate much better and are perceived as valuable traits. Perhaps interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence are better “umbrella” terms…

By: Joshua Naterman

Joshua Naterman — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:24:27 +0000

That’s a well written article, but I find myself agreeing with your last sentence. When has there ever been a time when people skills weren’t the most important tool in your toolkit?

People tend to get hired, and certainly often get promoted, based on who they know and how well they are able to identify and play the game that the people making those promotion decisions want them to play.

I’ve seen this process at work in the military, in school and in the working world and it amazes me that we haven’t gotten to the point where we demand that our educational system teach our children the skills that we all realize they are going to need. What good is all this knowledge when we aren’t teaching our future generations how to actually function in the working world? The soft skills, as they say, have been and most certainly will continue to be the most important skills for as long as people make emotional decisions. Shouldn’t we be expecting our educational system to help provide these essential skills?

By: KaTrina Harrison

KaTrina Harrison — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:32:34 +0000

I love this post because it speaks accurately about the future. I believe that the world is moving into a different direction as far as jobs are concerned. The competition is crazy. Too many college students live in a world where they believe that all they have to do is get a degree and money will fall into their laps from there. It’s amazing how naive my generation is. People are losing their jobs left and right. I personally believe that developing those soft skills will get you ahead of the competition.

By: Nisha Patel

Nisha Patel — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:59:28 +0000

Customer service is so important! Many companies who have not shown good customer service skills, were hurting financially because the people want to be taken care of and want their needs to be a priority. I personally don’t shop at certain stores just because the staff isn’t very friendly vs. a store whose staff is very welcoming.

By: Taylor Matthews

Taylor Matthews — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:22:52 +0000

Harold you make excellent points in this blog. Soft skills have become essential for most workplace situations. If you can’t interact with others in a smooth manner because of your personality, then you will have several problems with your coworkers as well as the customers.

By: Lilah Weaver

Lilah Weaver — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:00:09 +0000

I’m glad to see that customer service skills are being viewed as important again. Customer service is indeed a skill, and if done well, could mean the difference between a thriving business and a slow one.

By: Barbara Gant

Barbara Gant — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:46:55 +0000

In ten years of customer service and even starting a business. I can truly say that from the most powerful of companies to the mom and pop, soft skills are essential. As a matter of fact, a company experiences death by asphyxiation (maybe not as fast when powered by influential stockholders and the like) on its own “great product” and mission statement. Maybe we think the “Wal-Mart” experience and the McDonald experience is not the best these days, but places like Chik-fil-A are knockin’ ‘em down with “My pleasure”- forcing other major companies to give a little more thought to the slowly dying ideal of customer service.

By: Nataya Cowart

Nataya Cowart — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:26:14 +0000

I want to piggy back off Obsa. Soft skills are very vital and becoming mandatory to start and keep any profession. You can develop new skills but you can develop a new personality.

By: Obsa Aba-waji

Obsa Aba-waji — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:24:46 +0000

I agree with Harold on this one. Soft skills are very important . I believe that is the way our business is going now. They need people who are able to do multiple skills, instead of being an expert one just one.