Why soft skills will unlock your career aspirations
World-class soft skills trump world-class hard skills.
Today I'll show you exactly why that is.
If you have lofty career ambitions, you should read on.
Most of your peers will fail to recognise what you're about to see.
This is your chance to leapfrog them in the next 3 minutes.
Hard skills are a ceiling on your career
Focusing on your technical capability sounds like wisdom.
But making that your sole focus builds a ceiling on your career.
Here comes the case for the prosecution...
Exhibit 1 - Tris Burns' Donuts
Tris was Global Head of Analytics at Pizza Hut from 2018-2022.
So he knows a few things about progressing through the ranks.
This is what he shared recently about the skills needed to succeed in his industry:
On the left donut, he's showing hard skills - you can switch those out for the hard skills of your industry and Tris' model still holds true.
Most people think that 100% of success is built on them.
On the right, he's showing the reality from his experience - hard skills actually makes up 40% of overall capability at most.
Communication (30%) and Business Understanding (30%) are far more important, and have absolutely nothing to do with the industry whatsoever.
Which leads us neatly into...
Exhibit 2 - Anthony Soltero's Transferability
Anthony has 10+ years of analytics experience and writes extensively on social intelligence - in his words:
The ability to successfully navigate social situations to accomplish an objective.
Here's what he had to say recently about the value of hard skills in a traditionally technical industry:
Gone are the days where you find an industry and stay with it for your entire career.
Personally I've switched career 3 times in 13 years.
Even if you worked 40+ years in the same industry the hard skills required would change.
But the soft skills you need, like the ones Anthony picks out in his post, are ubiquitous - they are as old as time and as vital as oxygen.
In any role, in any industry - they are 100% transferable.
Now I love both Tris & Anthony's insights here, but careers are not static.
They are a progression over time and I wanted to find a way to visualise that for you.
Exhibit 3 - Matt's Law of Diminishing Returns
Don't get me wrong - you do need the hard skills of your job.
What you don't need is to prioritise them ahead of everything else.
As you look to advance through your career, you will find that the required ratio of hard skills to soft skills reverses.
In your entry-level job it was 90:10 in favour of hard skills.
By the time you're hitting middle-management, it'll be closer to 50:50.
If you make your way into the C-suite, it's more likely 10:90.
Soft skills have much greater longevity.
But more than that, they break the career ceiling that many people reach all too soon.
Which bring us to our final piece of evidence...
Exhibit 4 - Matt's Stagnation Matrix
This is our clincher - the moment where it all finally comes together and makes total sense.
I've taken the area graph above and flipped it to a line graph so that I can show you why you need to focus on soft skills more.
(even before you think you need them)
Early in your career, Technical Stagnation is your biggest threat. Hard skills make up such a large % of your role.
This is where your soft skills are above the necessary threshold but your hard skills are sub-par.
But in my 13 years of work, I have seen very few people stuck in that zone - maybe 1 in 25 at most.
Building the technical skills required in those early years just isn't that hard for most people.
So almost anyone can reach middle-management (the cross-over point) if they want to be there.
Later in your career, Behavioural Stagnation is the biggest threat as soft skills begin to dominate the needs of your roles.
This is where your hard skills are greater than what is required but your soft skills are below the necessary level.
And this is where I have seen countless hundreds (if not thousands) of people languishing.
Their early career experience of relying on hard skills left them completely unprepared for the soft-skill dominance of any role beyond middle-management.
They waited until they reached the cross-over point before they realised they could go no further.
And most of them reach that point 7-10 years into their careers.
So please, don't wait.
Don't sleep on the soft skills this year.
They will unlock the senior roles you are driving for.
Until next time,
- M
