The Patagonian Toothfish
In 1977, an American fish merchant named Lee Lantz was wandering the docks in Chile, searching local fishing boats for a new seafood product to export.
When he spotted a menacing-looking, five-foot-long fish with a protruding lower jaw of needle-sharp teeth, and huge bulging eyes, he stopped dead.
“That is one amazing-looking fish,” Lantz remarked to a local fisherman. “What the hell is it?”
It was a Patagonian Toothfish, a ‘trash fish’ that no one wanted and was regularly thrown back into the sea by fishermen.
Curious, Lantz tried cooking it. He discovered that while the fish had very little taste, it was easy to cook, had a buttery flakey texture and it held other flavours that would allow chefs to add their own distinct flourish.
He had found a great product, but he knew he had no chance of selling something called the Patagonian Toothfish.
So he searched for a more appetising name, eventually deciding on Chilean Sea Bass.
The fish and its new name were a massive success, eventually landing on the menus of high-end institutions like at Nobu and New York's Four Seasons.
The name change was so successful that by the turn of the century almost 40,000 tonnes of Patagonian Toothfish were caught annually.
Names matter, because perceptions matter.
Settling For a Name
Roughly a decade before Lee Lantz rebranded a fish, the US Army was searching ways to categorise the different elements of their training programs.
Organically they landed on the terminology of “Hard Skills” for anything that involved training on machinery, and “Soft Skills” for everything else.
People immediately recognised that these were terrible names.
In 1972 at the CONARC Soft Skills Conference, the consensus of the attendees was “that the use of the terms “Soft Skill” and “Hard Skill” be deemphasized or discontinued.”
Narrator: They were not.
Hard Skills Are Tangible
Hard Skills are specific, measurable and testable.
Hard Skills, don't just refer to skills with mechanisms any more, it now covers any specific technical and job-specific skills.
The name makes intuative sense, so there’s only one commonly used alternative name: ‘technical skills’.
Most importantly the name carries positive perceptions - we all aspire to work hard to accomplish difficult things through great effort and persistence.
Soft Skills Are Intangible
Soft Skills are a lot harder to measure and test.
Soft Skills are psychosocial skills that can be used in all professions, across all roles.
The scope of things that fall in the Soft Skills bucket now includes critical thinking, problem solving, communication, teamwork, emotional intelligence, decision-making, leadership, creativity, initiative and continuous learning.
Unlike it's counterpart the name does not make it immediately obvious what Soft Skills are.
It's why there have been so many attempts to rename them including: Power, Common, Essential, Core, People, Durable, Character, Professional, Leadership, Non-technical, Human, Interpersonal, Employability, Transferrable, Universal, Strategic and 21st Century Skills.
The name also has negative perceptions, as soft can mean weak, mild, lenient, delicate or easy.
No one aspires to become weaker or milder.
Soft Skills is a terrible name.
As Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, puts it:
“The soft skills are the hard skills… People who master the critical leadership skills today are anything but touchy-feely — they’re direct, they’re clear, they’re compassionate, they’re no-nonsense. But they’re not soft.”
Unfortunately, unlike the Patagonian Toothfish, we're stuck with the Soft Skills name.
Hard Skills Open Doors, Soft Skills Elevate
Peggy Klaus, the author of The Hard Truth About Soft Skills describes the benefits of the two types of skills:
“While hard skills refer to the technical ability and the factual knowledge needed to do the job, soft skills allow you to more effectively use your technical abilities and knowledge.”
Hard Skills get you in the door, Soft Skills move you up the ladder.
And a lack of Soft Skills will knock you off the ladder.
In LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 89% of recruiters said that when a hire doesn't work out, it usually comes down to a lack of soft skills.
“What strikes me most about their stories of missed opportunities and derailed careers is this: The source of their anxiety and frustration is rarely a shortfall in technical or professional expertise. Instead, it invariably stems from a shortcoming in their soft skills repertoire..." says Peggy Klaus, “You can have all the technical expertise in the world, but if you can’t sell your ideas, get along with others, or turn your work in on time, you’ll be going nowhere fast.”
The Need For Soft Skills is Growing
David Deming, an economist at Harvard, has been studying how work is changing to place greater emphasis on Soft Skills.
Between 1980 and 2012 he found that jobs requiring high levels of social interaction (Soft Skills) grew by more than 10% as a share of the U.S employment market.
Soft Skills jobs are growing in demand, and they are also paying more.
In another study, Deming analyzed decades of newspaper and internet job advertisements.
He found that jobs requiring one core Soft Skill - decision-making - had grown from 5% to 35% of all jobs in just under sixty years.
And this trend continues.
As our economy has developed from manufacturing, to services and now to creativity, the more soft skills have been needed.
With the increasing use of AI to automate jobs that focused on Hard Skills, the uniquely human elements of work are becoming even more essential.
A recent report by Deloitte Access Economics projects that soft-skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030.
Hard Skills are Taught, Soft Skills Are Learned
Almost everything we’re taught in school and university are designed to build Hard Skills.
If you use the Bloom’s ‘Taxonomy of Educational Objectives’ pyramid, Hard Skills are the largely the bottom two levels: remembering facts and understanding concepts.
But developing Soft Skills is something we mostly have to pursue on our own through experience, mentoring and continuous learning.
As executive coach Binod Shankar observes:
"Soft skills are taken for granted — they are mostly intangible and not tangible technical stuff that you can pick up from a specific course or qualification. Paradoxically it’s also soft skills that are the most valuable and transferable."
In volatile, complex environments like startups, growth businesses and changing situations, Soft Skills are essential.
The further in your career you want to advance, the more important Soft Skills become and the greater the proportion of your role is spent using them.
Give a man a fish, and he feeds for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he feeds for a lifetime.
And if no one is teaching you to fish, you have pick up a rod and teach yourself.
Bruce Knecht, "Hooked: A True Story of Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish”
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
CONARC Soft Skills Training Conference (1972)
“Has Executive Education Gone Soft?” Chief Learning Officer (2012)
Deming, D., “The Growing Importance Of Social Skills In The Labor Market”, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2017)
Deming, D., “The Growing Importance of Decision-Making on the Job”’ National Bureau of Economic Research (2021)
Deloitte Access Economics: Soft Skills For Business Success (2017)
Bloom B., “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals” (1956), & Anderson L., Krathwohl D., el al, “A Taxonomy for Learning Teaching and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives” (2001)
