TO LAND A JOB in a secure, lucrative leadership position, business school
graduates once had to check off all the
technical skill boxes. But these competencies
are no longer enough to dazzle
recruiters—and MBA students know it.
Today, it’s the soft skills that are
much in demand. Harvard, Yale, Columbia,
Wharton, the London Business
School, HEC Montreal, and many other
business schools are offering courses
that focus on the soft skills. For instance,
at the Stanford Graduate School of
Business in California, I teach ‘‘Leading
with Mindfulness and Compassion,”
which covers how students can leverage
teamwork, cooperation, mindfulness,
and compassion to achieve personal
fulfillment and success in their careers.
The course is consistently waitlisted as
100 students hope to secure one of 30
spots in the class.
It's been at least since 1972 that some organizations began identifying and
prizing soft skills. That’s the year that
the U.S. Continental Army Command
used the phrase in a training manual,
which defined soft skills as “job-related
skills involving actions affecting primarily
people and paper, e.g., inspecting
troops, supervising office personnel,
conducting studies, preparing maintenance
reports, preparing efficiency
reports, designing bridge structures.”
Other organizations have labeled
this set of competencies as “people
skills,” “essential skills,” and “emotional
intelligence.” No matter what
the term, it encompasses skills that
are nontechnical in nature, such as
teamwork, creativity, problem solving,
and adaptability. In fact, the Graduate
Management Admission Council has
created an infographic called “10 Soft Skills Needed for Career Success,” in
which it cites innovation, operational
thinking, decision making, collaboration,
interpersonal intuition, resilience,
drive, strategic self-awareness, valuing
others, and strategic vision as the skills
that will ultimately shape the success
of MBA graduates.
But why is soft-skills training so
popular right now? One reason might
be, as I’ve observed at Stanford, that
today’s students are rallying against the
traditional fiercely competitive corporate
culture. Another reason is that more
employers than ever are demanding
these skills. A 2016 survey in The Wall
Street Journal found that 92 percent
of executives consider soft skills and
technical skills equally important. In its
Job Outlook 2018 survey, which polled
more than 200 employers, the National
Association of Colleges and Employers
found the skills employers most desire
are problem solving, communication,
and the ability to work in a team.
LinkedIn confirmed the importance of
these abilities in a 2016 survey of 291
hiring managers, where 58 percent of
the respondents stated that the lack of
soft skills in leadership greatly limits
company productivity levels.
COMPOUNDED RETURNS
Why do firms care about soft skills? Because
employees who possess them can
directly impact a company’s bottom line.
The Indian Department of International
Development recently evaluated the impact
of soft-skill training on factory garment
workers in Bengaluru. Researchers
Achyuta Adhvaryu, Namrata Kala, and
Anant Nyshadham followed nine months
of such training and found that the net
return was approximately 250 percent.
Individuals who develop soft skills
also tend to reap personal rewards and
be happier. A 1992 article from Massey
University, “On the relation between
meaning in life and psychological
well-being,” shows that when an organization
is built around a sense of purpose,
employees experience more satisfaction, greater psychological well-being, and
deeper emotional ties with others; at
the same time, they feel less psychological
distress, negativity, anxiety, and
depression. And organizations that
promote increased communication and
teamwork among their employees go a
long way toward fostering cultures of
creativity and purpose.
In some contexts, soft skills are
emerging as being not just on par with
technical skills, but even more important.
Education writer Valerie Strauss at
The Washington Post recently reported
on insights from Google’s Project Oxygen,
which tracked trends in the company’s
hiring and firing practices. The
seven top characteristics of success at
Google, Strauss writes, are all soft skills:
“being a good coach; communicating and
listening well; possessing insights into
others (including others’ different values
and points of view); having empathy
toward and being supportive of one’s
colleagues; being a good critical thinker
and problem solver; and being able
to make connections across complex
ideas.” According to Project Oxygen’s
findings, science, technology, education,
and mathematics surprisingly ranked
last in terms of importance.
And that demand for soft skills is only
likely to grow. According to the 2017
Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends
report, a study of more than 10,000 HR
participants, companies are actively
seeking to assemble adaptable and
“team-centric” workplace teams in order
to meet future needs. The report states,
“New organizational models also require
a new approach to leadership. Leaders of
networked teams in agile organizations
require such skills as negotiation, resilience,
and systems thinking.”
SOFT SKILLS IN CLASS
Business schools have taken note of the
demand for soft skills, and many are
responding with their own courses. For
instance, the Yale School of Management
in New Haven, Connecticut, recently
introduced “Global Virtual Teams,” which focuses on teamwork, particularly
in asynchronous environments where
people use technology to connect across
time zones and cultures. “One of the big
problems global teams face is in how
they hand off and coordinate information—
when you’re not always working
together in real time,” notes professor
Amy Wrzesniewski in an article on Yale’s
website. “You need to be sure the team
has what it needs to execute without
interruptions, questions, or delays.”
Columbia Business School in New
York City offers the Leadership Lab, in
which “activities are grounded in a proven
blend of empirical assessment, experiential
learning, and executive coaching,”
according to the school’s website.
The combination helps students sharpen
their self-awareness, judgment, and
decision-making skills, while expanding
their abilities to solve problems.
Soft skills also are highlighted at
Hult International Business School,
which has locations in the U.S., the U.K.,
the UAE, and China. A few years ago, the Hult School redesigned its MBA
program to focus more on traits such as
self-awareness, cross-cultural competency,
teamwork, critical thinking, and
communication. The school identified
these competencies after conducting
interviews with 90 C-suite executives,
managers, and academics. Through its
think tank Hult Labs, the school also
released a white paper on its findings,
called “The Future of Business Education
& the Needs of Employers.” One
observation: “The needs of employers
are changing constantly, and business
schools have no choice but to respond if
they want to stay relevant.”
At Stanford, the Graduate School of
Business offers a course called Interpersonal
Dynamics, which students
affectionately call the “touchy-feely”
course. This is in addition to my own
course on mindfulness and compassion.
Both of these courses offer lessons
that are far more substantial than their
names might imply. (See “A Softer Experience”
below.)
MORE WORK AHEAD
The case for investment in soft skills
is hard to dispute: Employers express
a strong demand for them, and both
companies and individuals see positive
returns when those skills are developed.
Yet many MBA programs don’t do enough
to teach these competencies to their students.
(See “Still a Gap” below.)
It seems clear that technical skill sets
alone will not fulfill the talent needs of
top employers. To stay relevant, business
schools will need to offer more
courses that provide students with a
deep understanding of how to apply soft
skills to their future careers.
This article originally appeared in BizEd's January/February 2019 issue. Please send questions, comments, or letters to the editor to bized.editors@aacsb.edu.