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An Announcement, and What are Soft Skills? · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Paul, how's it going today?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's alright, actually.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Getting autumnal around here.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm liking it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, nice.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, listen, before we get going here, I wanted to make an announcement for our regular listeners.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you may have noticed that we're releasing shorter episodes on Tuesdays and every so often a longer interview episode.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's going to continue, but we're going to get much more focused on the shorter episodes.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're calling this the quick fix series.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We've done a couple of them already, which you'll see in your feed, mentoring fixed, networking fixed.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: But now this is what we'll be doing every Tuesday.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: In every case, um, we'll be looking at a specific soft skill uh that people need to master in this new world of work, why it's needed today, what to do to master it, and get pretty practical.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if there is a particular soft skill that you want us to go after, then just let us know.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can email us at podcast at humanityworking.net.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's podcast at humanityworking.net.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or you can just go to humanityworking.net and ping me there.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's start with something I want to go after right away.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh don't you hate the term soft skills?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just nebulous, you know?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like why it's it's hard.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to nail it down.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we know what it means, but it's hard to keep using it when we can't define it, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the funny thing was, Matt, I was at a conference about this stuff the other day, and um it had the old classic networking thing that happens at the um at the end.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as people got like a couple of glasses of wine deep, there were there were I can't at least two separate discussions that I was in where we're like, somebody is saying, why do we have to call these things soft skills?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It sucks.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not soft skills, they're not soft, they're important.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that actually, funnily enough, is the thing that most most people get most head up uh head up with about this is the fact that soft in some way indicates that they're that they're lesser than the other skills you need.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a category of soft skills, and then maybe the other category you think of as hard skills or technical skills, and by definition, those skills sound or seem more important just because of the name that is chosen for them.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so that's really the heart of why a lot of people that are directly in the field have a problem with the term.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then of course, um it's it's a a question of what are you gonna what are you gonna use instead?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so what do you what do you you know, why use it?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: How can you define it more?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are what do you think will go after?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What are what are we using?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, what yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we like in our organization, Billy and Minds, we like the term durable skills.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's used quite a lot in academia these days.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's designed to convey kind of that impression that they're um that they apply and are lasting in some way.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I gotta tell you, even that has problems.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's got problems because uh you might think, at least the the question here is always what's the image it conjures up, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does soft skills conjure up this image that is less important than other things?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: What does durable skills conjure up?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, durable skills kind of conjures up the idea that that once you've got them, they last.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, what we found in our research is that that the development of these skills is kind of like developing a muscle, namely, yeah, if you repeatedly practice, you can build them up.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't, you can lose them.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about that before on the podcast.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, everybody can see this in their own lives, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Things that they haven't done for a while, they get less good at.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that can be communication, it can be socializing, you you know, situations where, for example, you go to an event and you haven't been to an event in two years, it feels unfamiliar, it feels difficult.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so durable skills is a problem too.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I threw something on LinkedIn actually a while, uh, just maybe last week or something along those lines where I gave people six different uh alternative titles to the term soft skills.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked people on the LinkedIn post which ones they liked.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I included things like um, for example, professional skills, which is a lot what a lot of people talk about these days, um, essential skills some people use.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and anyway, so I gave them six alternatives and I said, which of these would you use?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh what have we missed?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing was is that we got quite a few comments on the post, and everyone was recommending yet another different term.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So nobody was coalescing around one specific alternative, and so in the absence of coalescing around one specific alternative, we're probably gonna be stuck with soft skills.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you put a gun to my head and said, What is the one that you if you could if you could if you had to use one term and you could persuade everybody else to use it, I think I would either go after core skills with the sort of like idea that it's a it's a core set of skills that you need around which everything else builds, even though that's kind of sounds like it might you might be exercising your abs.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um or um I kind of like transferable skills as well.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that these these are transferable from uh from role to roll once once you build them up.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: But oh man, it's difficult.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: What would you what would if you had to pick one right now, what would you do?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean I was just thinking as you were talking that it's it's really difficult because it's everything except your targeted idiosyncratic training or your specialty.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Everything else is what we're talking about.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Dan Rust, who is an upcoming uh guest.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've already we we did the recording with him a uh week or two ago.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're actually doing two episodes with Dan coming up that we'll be releasing back to back as bonus episodes.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh do you do you know what Dan picked?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Skills.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because because basically you're right.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like everything but this tiny, tiny little thing.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it captures the idea that that this is the most important thing.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got this tiny little thing, which is the thing you happen to be focusing in on right now, your job in right now in this moment.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: They used to call it for doctors, bedside manner, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that that was everything else.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're a really good surgeon, but I can't talk to you.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: You make me you make me sad, you know, whatever it is.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've all had those kind of doctors.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: With we have a uh we have a podiatrist in the family whose name is Dr.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Payne.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he is like no sense of humor.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's just straightforward, just like feet, like let's go, hang nail, whatever.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's just you can't joke with him.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's it's it's wild, Dr.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Payne.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean I swear to God, I had a uh a friend who was a uh urologist.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh his name was I'm not I don't even this is just so bizarre to me because I've never met anybody with the same last name.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Dr.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ereta.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Which for people that are not that familiar with it, it is that's pretty close.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, there isn't.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's not only is there a urethra, there is a urethra.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: It connects the it's the tube that connects the kidney and the bladder.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's literally named after a part of the body that he deals with.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh I said to him one time, I said, Did were you ever gonna be a doctor of anything else?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, No, obviously not.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's ridiculous.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what skills are we talking about in the skills category going forward?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Gives let's give some examples of uh what we'll be going after in the next couple episodes.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're not we're not gonna be naming obscure parts of the body.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the um Although that's a skill.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is a skill, yeah.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a kind of categorization skill in a way, which we will, which we may well get into.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll be looking at initially at things like you know, readiness, adaptability, organization, communication.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You'll there'll be a whole bunch of them.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh that's just where we're gonna start.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: We may we'll we'll be going after basically the most relevant um durable skills or transferable skills um that we see.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the audience has a say?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which is nice.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So just just ping us.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mentioned it before, but podcast at humanityworking.net or just go to humanityworking.net and ping me there and um and let us know.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a specific soft skill that you want us to look into?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: In each case, we'll be looking at the skill, defining it, um, going after the most sort of important practical initial things that that you can do with it, and obviously give people an opportunity to share with us what's working and what's not for them.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're not actually going to be able to solve and fix this in 10 to 15 minutes, though, are we?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll admit the sort of quick fix thing was a bit is a bit of a branding exercise as much as anything else, Matt.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the uh of course not, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are things that do take regular practice uh to build.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what we will do is give you at least one simple thing you can work on each week to get a little bit better at it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as we've discussed, right, these are muscles that you need to build.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if you come out of each episode, um listen to us for you know, prattle on about it for for 10 or 15 minutes and then try the thing we're talking about at the end of it, you will start to get better at these skills.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so that's it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look out for uh new soft skill, durable skill, transferable skill, skill, whatever you want to call it, uh, every Tuesday.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we'll see you on this next Tuesday.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks, Paul.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Meal.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend this to others.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.