Anyone can have a manager's resume, but as most workers know, not everyone is actually a good manager. And soft skills are often what stand in between.
Two years into the pandemic and burnout remains the primary stressor for most employees, 95% of whom claim that bad managers are making everything worse, according to a recent report from HR software platform Humu.
"Building a psychologically safe environment where people feel safe to speak up or to take risks is really important, but might be considered a 'soft skill,'" says Jessie Wisdom, co-founder and head of people science at Humu. "Recognition is another. We see in our data just how important it is for managers in particular to recognize the people on their team for the work they've done, and that's something that doesn't come naturally to everyone."
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"Soft skills" refers to the less technical and more social and emotional skill sets such as critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, professional attitude and work ethic, and have historically been less important to organizations than harder skills that are easier to measure. But since the pandemic, the demand for soft skills has nearly doubled, according to a recent report conducted by McKinsey.
In fact, between 2019 and 2020, leadership and management became a much bigger priority for most companies, jumping 10 percentage points in importance year over year, from 40% to 50%, the McKinsey report showed. The same trend appeared for adaptability and empathy, which went from 30% to 40% and 20% to 40%, respectively.
"Things like creating structure and setting clear priorities, creating a sense of trust and recognizing people on your team are much more powerful predictors of whether people stay around and perform well," Wisdom says. "Which makes managers' jobs harder than ever right now."
As easy as it would be for employees to blame their managers for their lack of soft skills, it's not an issue that is necessarily black and white. Managers, much like their direct reports, likely weren't trained or educated on soft skills. There is no how-to on building meaningful and open relationships with your employees; it's all a process of trial and error.
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"There's just so much more on their plates," Wisdom says of managers. "They need to focus on building these types of relationships with their team members, while at the same time they're being pressed under the weight of all of the technical things that need to be done."
Not to mention, people are often promoted into management positions because they're really good at their technical skills, but they've never had to prove their people management skills or refine their social skills. That lack of awareness could create a skills gap that could threaten a company's retention for years to come.
The first step toward making soft skills a more integral part of the workforce doesn't fall exclusively on managers. It's employers' jobs to make soft skills a permanent part of qualifications, which can be achieved by using employee feedback collected from employees to create rubrics and standards for managers and future managers to abide by, and making those qualifications part of the interview process.
"Make it really clear that when you're hiring for a role as a manager, that part of the job is creating a psychologically safe team environment and building connections with people both on your team and across the organization," Wisdom says. "Making them explicit requirements of the role is something that can hold people accountable."
