Cast your eye over any batch of job listings for senior management, and you’ll notice the requirements for people to be human. In a world getting busier with artificial intelligence, it’s comforting to know that businesses still value human traits – feelings – that computers can’t have. There are demands for ‘stakeholder management’ alongside ‘expert guidance and communication’, ‘outstanding interpersonal skills’ and for someone to ‘motivate a team’, alongside a track record of delivering measurable success in whichever field the job lies.

But when it comes down to the person who gets the job or promotion, why do the numbers often beat out the nuance?

We’ve all had those nightmare managers who are entirely process-driven. Those whose one-to-ones we dread and we’re scared to ask about taking holiday, let alone help or guidance with part of our job.

Today’s working world is complex. It’s flexible, it’s post-pandemic and it’s competitive. This means that both managers and employees need to be able to tune into their empathy, practise thoughtful communication and demonstrate emotional intelligence more than ever before – so why are these skills still being called ‘soft’?

It’s time to reassess our assumptions about soft skills. Just as we’ve all had nightmare bosses, we’ve (hopefully) all had dream bosses, whose feedback we looked forward to – even craved – and whose one-to-ones left us feeling motivated and energised rather than deflated and on edge. These bosses excellently demonstrated the so-called soft skills that are so essential in every role that’s put in charge of another person’s development. 

We don’t always need studies to tell us things, but they’re useful to back up our already-formulated thoughts. A study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that 62% of employees believe that poor management is a major cause of work-related stress, anxiety and depression, while another by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that 56% of employees who reported work-related stress, anxiety or depression also reported experiencing poor management.

“The number of people suffering from poor mental health because of bad managers is astounding,” says Vic Bolton, a head of talent acquisition with a decade of experience. “The phrase ‘people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers’ really is true to a certain extent. Your manager has such a massive influence on your entire life – they really can make or break you.” 

We’ve all seen people who are really great at their jobs get promoted – but into a management role, where they actually do less of what they’re good at, and suddenly have to line manage a bunch of people and help them develop their careers. Unless these people are receiving management training, it’s usually a recipe for disaster.

“The landscape is shifting now,” says Claire Ramshaw, a head of HR with almost 20 years of HR experience under her belt, “but I have seen people get promoted just because it was the next logical step to keep them in the business. They’ve moved from a ‘results’ role, where they’ve never had to use soft skills, into a leadership role, where suddenly they do.”

“Exactly,” agrees Bolton. “You have people who are great at bringing money or results into a business, but whose teams are miserable because they’re not so great at being managers.”

So what if you’re in the middle of recruiting and are struggling to figure out how a candidate would fit in with a team and manage people? It’s tricky to determine this from a CV, but “there are subtle things that people talk about in interviews that help you to see whether people care about others and their teams,” says Ramshaw.

“I love to hear when people talk about how results were achieved – motivation and engagement, as well as what they achieved.”

“I once worked somewhere where everyone was appraised based on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’,” says Bolton, “which was brilliant. If someone received maximum credit for ‘what’ but a very low score for the ‘how’, they wouldn’t be in line for a promotion. Both were equally as important.”

“Some of the better people I have hired that have displayed good leadership qualities speak about their team achievements in their CV, like increasing staff engagement or building a high-performing team, adds Ramshaw. “Those that have tended to be weaker on the softer skills, talk predominantly about ‘tasks’.”

Bolton recalls an interview situation where she was really rooting for a candidate to demonstrate their empathy, but they ultimately fell short: “A few months ago I was interviewing someone for a management role and asked them how they would deal with a situation where someone in their team had started to be off sick a lot, working from home more and generally engaging a lot less.

“I was hoping that they would answer in a way that would show me they understood these to be clear signs of someone being unhappy in their role and that their approach would be to talk to that individual and try to understand what was happening and how they could support them.

“Instead they answered that they would tell them it wasn’t good enough and put them on some sort of performance-improvement programme. Red flag.

“Simply asking ‘How do you lead and motivate your team?’ will tell you a lot. Someone with a deep level of empathy will give an answer that talks about understanding individual needs and learning styles, whereas someone who perhaps lacks these skills will likely answer with something far more straightforward and ‘by the book’, failing to recognise or appreciate that everyone is driven by different things and that you need to find a common denominator but also flex according to each individual.”

Alas, there are plenty of managers already leading teams who lack emotional intelligence, and who might be ‘moving the needle’ for the company but who are also moving their team members out the door and into another business. Short of telling someone to stop being a dickhead, how can you help someone tune into their human-centric skills, if they’re not already?

Bolton and Ramshaw agree that honest, diplomatic feedback truly is the best approach. Letting a manager know how their team scored in a feedback survey or relaying anonymous team sentiments will often come as a complete surprise to a manager who may have been so focused on numbers and progress that they might not have realised they were dropping the ball in the team-leadership side of their job.

“It can be eye-opening to receive 360-degree feedback, and I would really encourage people to be brave enough to do it,” advises Ramshaw. “It encourages you to explore your blind spots.”

“I can think of one manager I gave this kind of feedback to who was really taken aback,” says Bolton. “They had no idea the impact their words and actions were having on their team. When people have never had to use these skills before, they won’t even be aware that they have this kind of blind spot because they’ve always performed brilliantly at their other tasks.”

Look, the fact that you’re even reading this article about soft skills suggests you’re not a monster, so it won’t be too hard for you to adopt new practices if you’re concerned that you’re not as empathetic a leader as you should or could be.

“Advice that served me well in my earlier career has been simply to treat others how you would like to be treated yourself,” says Ramshaw. “While this sounds simple, when I’m having a difficult conversation or actioning a disciplinary process, I always think about how I would feel if I was on the receiving end of those words and actions. We all have to make difficult decisions but it’s how they are delivered that counts.”

Consider who makes you feel comfortable and welcome both in and out of the workplace, and ask yourself why that is. It’s likely because you feel heard, acknowledged and considered, and treated as an equal. While this approach comes easily to us with people we love and cherish in our personal lives, it’s often more difficult to demonstrate at work for fear of being seen as ‘too soft’ or as a ‘bit of a pushover’ – all phrases typically associated with women yet typically spouted by men.

But hey, these ‘soft’ skills are what keep people coming back to work every day, and there’s really no need to sharpen their edges. They keep you human, and keep your fellow humans from burning out.

Stay soft.

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