In this blog Dr Ann Villiers discusses her near decade-long advocacy for dropping the use of the term ‘soft’ skills[i], offering career practitioners lessons and appealing for more critical discussion of language use. Ann is an Australian career development practitioner who specialises in sense making. She is a Fellow member of the Career Development Association of Australia (CDAA) and was awarded Life Membership in 2019. Ann’s careers span tertiary education, the Australian public service, professional speaking, and private career coaching.
I have devoted much of my professional life to studying how English language frames our thinking and talking. A rich literature investigates how words are used to define, categorise and explain. Repeated repetition of ideas results in taken-for-granted views that affect how we think, what we believe, and how we act. We regularly see this process play out in discussions about climate change, military conflicts, and violence against women. We saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw it in Australia during the 2023 Voice to Parliament debates. This process is part of how the world works. But, this process has consequences.
My advocacy centres on skills language, a topic embedded in labour market information. As part of discussions about skill shortages, employability skills, and technological changes, distinctions are unquestioningly drawn that are problematic in multiple ways. My main focus is on simplistic, uninformed binary distinctions, particularly the ‘soft’/’hard’ skills distinction, with its links to technical/non-technical skills.
The importance of definitions
Much of life is governed by definitions. Law and policy are based on them. As new subjects evolve, new words are created, and existing words shift in meaning. Whose meaning prevails is about power and privilege.
Social justice and skills are both contested concepts open to multiple interpretations. Career development practitioners need conscious awareness of the language they and others use, and to consider problematic elements, question whose version of reality is being served, change their own practice, and encourage others to do likewise.
‘Soft’ skills usage is pervasive across professions, including career development. Search the internet, including Google Scholar, and you will be rewarded with millions of entries. Researchers’ articles may list their work’s limitations, but I’m yet to find one where the author interrogates their use of ‘soft’ skills.
Instead of feeding off and repeating dominant discourses, we need to critically assess their validity, and change our behaviour.
A note on linguistic imperialism
While not the focus of my advocacy, we should keep in mind the privileged status of English as the unquestioned international lingua franca, including as the ‘world language’ in academic literature.
The use of ‘soft’ skills is particularly prevalent in the United States, and the academic literature on skills in most countries and disciplines has adopted this term. Career development journals could reduce this usage by requiring contributors to choose more accurate terminology.
What’s wrong with the term ‘soft’ skills?
There are multiple problems with the term ‘soft’ skills. It is:
- Imprecise: There is no agreed definition of what ‘soft’ skills are.
- Inaccurate: Typically, ‘soft’ is used to refer to social/emotional skills, implying these skills are light-weight. Describing them as ‘non-technical’ or ‘intangible’ further implies, inaccurately, that they require little effort and no special knowledge.
- Gender-biased: Research confirms that children form gender-based ideas about careers early in life. So-called ‘soft’ skills are not the preserve of girls and women, nor are they less demanding than other skills. Everyone needs a diverse range of skills, regardless of career choice.
- Based on a false binary: Labelling skills as either ‘soft’ or technical/’hard’ perpetuates a false binary that ignores the complexities and interrelatedness of skills.
Plus, employers don’t actually ask for ‘soft’ skills. Any scan of job advertisements confirms this reality.
‘Soft’ skills may seem like a handy conceptual shorthand, but it reduces complexity and stifles more nuanced, well-informed analysis of how skills are interrelated and equally valuable.
Whole sectors are tarnished and distorted. The ‘care economy’, a major growth sector, is disparagingly referred to as ‘soft skill intensive’. If we adopt Riane Eisler’s concept of a caring economics to inform government policies and business practices, we would see caregiving as embracing four levels: individual, organisational, social, and environmental. So, are there any jobs that do not involve a caring element? Some jobs may spring to mind. But if caring encompasses the scope Eisler suggests, then we’d be hard-pressed to identify a caring-absent occupation.
Social skills are repeatedly hidden, diminished or ignored by dominant discourses. Two of these discourses are:
- The ‘tech is tops’ narrative: Despite being constantly told that our future lies in new, revolutionary technology, the ‘tech is tops’ narrative fails to acknowledge the extraordinary number of failed tech projects, and that to perform any tech job well you need social skills of various kinds and levels of sophistication.[ii]
- The information narrative: Information is a rubbery term with multiple meanings relating to both technology (e.g. information technology) and to communicating (e.g. the act of informing). Discussions about information cover many issues, including mis and disinformation, incivility, free speech, defamation, and truth telling. By focusing on information, we can be dismayed at opinions expressed, but still ignore the rich diversity of communication skills and the subtle and sophisticated social skills needed to live well with each other.
The five pillars of social justice
The five pillars of social justice are relevant to my experience of advocating for dropping the use of ‘soft’ skills.
In 2015 I started to take a more active interest in skills language and skill inter-relationships.
I examined four Canberra-based projects to explore the significance of interpersonal skills in technical occupations. These projects included the National Arboretum, home to over 90 forests of rare, endangered and symbolic trees from Australia and around the world; and the five-year project to enlarge the Cotter Dam, one of the most significant infrastructure projects in the national capital’s history.
My research confirmed the importance of interpersonal skills and demands for teamwork, cooperation and collaboration during these projects. This work raised implications for skill terminology, career practitioner advice, occupational information, and gendered career choices.
I fostered career practitioner critical consciousness by raising the ‘soft’ skills issue in my keynote presentation at CDAA’s 2017 national conference. Following the conference, I wrote to CDAA’s National President, inviting the association to consider adopting a motion recognising that the terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ are not precise, agreed, technical terms when applied to skills, and encouraging career development professionals and people contributing to the careers/employment/work field, to adopt alternatives to the use of ‘soft’ skills. Demonstrating its leadership, CDAA adopted the motion, and the association has subsequently referred to it when language issues arise.
Since then, I have written to many career and other professional associations, consultancies, think tanks, researchers, government departments and Ministers. I have written articles explaining why ‘soft’ skills needs to be dropped for multiple career development magazines, including the Career Convergence Web Magazine (2020) and the Asia Pacific Career Development Association (2021). Plus, I have written submissions to various government inquiries. Once aware of the issues, people do change their behaviour.
This advocacy effort is aimed at building critical consciousness among selected target audiences, across a range of levels: career practitioners; influencers like think tanks, researchers and consultants; and relevant government organisations. My documents named the oppression and questioned what is normal by setting out why ‘soft’ skills language is problematic and offering alternatives. For government agencies, I encourage leaders to ensure that staff and stakeholders adopt the change.
Advocacy results
Impact makes advocacy efforts worthwhile. Encouraging a more nuanced and accurate discussion of skills has resulted in:
- CDAA’s support and complementary advocacy on multiple occasions.
- Multiple articles to influence career practitioners.
- Favourable responses with agreement to change language use.
- Changes in government reports and language practice.
- Articles on the independent journalism website Pearls and Irritations.
- Dedicated resources on Rethinking skills discourse.
Lessons for advocates
My advocacy experience delivers some practical lessons for career practitioners. They include:
- Civility is important: Politely invite people to reconsider their behaviour and provide sound reasons. Advocacy is a way of demonstrating quality communication and interpersonal skills.
- Understand how government works: This includes rules departments may have about responding to correspondence, how to write submissions, and keeping track of administrative changes. Keep in mind people change jobs with an accompanying loss of corporate memory. What someone agreed to last year may now be forgotten. Consider your boundaries, such as whether you are willing to donate your time to attend meetings.
- Research your case: Stay current with relevant research and developments so you can clearly articulate your reasoning and substantiate your case.
- Know that advocacy is time consuming: I could devote myself 24/7 to this work. Focus on where you are most likely to achieve results that make a difference.
- Manage your expectations: My starting position is that people are unlikely to respond, and am pleased when they do so. Organisations that you might expect a positive response from can disappoint by being unwilling to engage with your issue.
- Make change easy: As well as explaining why the term ‘soft’ skills should be dropped I also offer alternatives. They are:
- When discussing specific skills, use specific skill words, like communication skills, problem-solving skills, interpersonal skills.
- When grouping skills that relate to working with people, use social or interpersonal skills and use this term consistently.
- When discussing or referencing other reports and research on skills, avoid adopting or repeating any use of ‘soft’ skills (with or without inverted commas). Even saying “so-called ‘soft’ skills” keeps the term in circulation.
We need more voices challenging dominant discourses
There is little critical discussion of language use within our profession, making us complicit contributors to the broader economic skills discourse that shapes career information.
Careers work is not neutral practice. More voices disputing the dominant skills discourse will speed the death knell of ‘soft’ skills. Career development professional associations, particularly peak bodies, can play their part by:
- Actively supporting changes to skills language, including formally agreeing that they will stop using false binary distinctions such as ‘hard’/’soft’ skills.
- Ensuring professional development presenters, blog and journal authors and official glossaries and policies do not use these false binaries.
- Encouraging governments, consultants, think tanks and international organisations to drop the use of ‘soft’ skills and false binaries.
- Providing members with resources on advocacy.
- Fostering inter-disciplinary collaboration, particularly with economists, to help reduce silos in scholarly disciplines.
- Raising members’ critical consciousness by inviting reflection on dominant narratives about skills and work.
Career practitioners can play their part by reviewing their own skills language and encouraging others, including clients, colleagues, parents and community members, and educators across all levels, to consider their social skills language and its impact.
This language issue is personal for career practitioners. Our codes of ethics and sets of competencies combine many cognitive, social and emotional behaviours and skills, nearly 100 per cent of which could be described as ‘soft’. Does this disparagement serve our profession well? Even if skill binaries were once useful, they are no longer fit-for-purpose.
It’s time to regain control of our skills discourse. Effecting change takes patience and persistence. But restoring social skills to their rightful status is essential for both our profession and our survival.
[i] I use inverted commas to signal this is someone else’s term and is not valid or appropriate.
[ii] To be clear: I’m not disputing the impact of technology and automation on society and work, the need to be digitally literate and to develop technical expertise, nor the need for re or upskilling. What I’m raising are analytical flaws flowing from giving primacy to digital skills.
