Why Soft Skills Can (and Should) be Taught

From awkward smiles to cult-avoidance strategies, Faye Litherland’s journey proves that mastering soft skills is no different to learning pump calculations – practice makes perfect

WHEN I start talking to people about the importance of soft skills in engineering it generally isn’t long before I get comments such as “it’s easy for you because you are naturally good with people” and “people are either good at soft skills or they aren’t”.

Let’s take a moment to think about how ridiculous this is. If I was to say to you that you can either do pump calculations or you can’t, you would tell me that I was being unfair. How could I possibly expect someone to just be able to do pump calculations? They need to be taught how to do them.

I feel the same way about soft skills. If I wanted to teach you how to calculate the NPSH of a pump then I would explain the principles behind the calculation, the factors associated with the calculation, and how to use the formula to get the answer. You would practice, probably get it wrong a few times, and I would help you until you got it right and were confident to carry out the calculations on your own. I firmly believe the same approach holds true for soft skills.

This attitude that you have got it or you haven’t is particularly damaging when you look at how soft skills are handled in educational and workplace settings. Let’s take a scenario I am sure we are all familiar with: participants are asked to work in groups and then present their findings to the rest of the participants at the end. This is a standard exercise which is often used as an evaluation exercise in educational settings or as part of team-building events.

If you take the time to really watch what happens next it is both fascinating and horrifying from a sociological perspective. Leaders will emerge, some participants will be picked first, some will be picked last, there will be those who end up not in a group and need to be placed in one by the facilitator. The confident ones will dominate the groups, the shy ones will hang back and feel intimidated by the confident ones, and those who had to be placed into a group will feel like they have no place there and their confidence will sink further. No one is learning anything about effective communication because no one has been taught anything. It is like watching a low budget remake of Lord of the Flies.

We are expecting that the participants already know how to work in a team. There is an assumption that children learn how to work in teams by playing with others and cooperative games as they grow up, but what happens when this learning doesn’t happen? Some will pick it up later in life, but if they are naturally a bit shy and maybe don’t make friends easily it is not hard to see how these children will prefer playing alone and miss the social experience that their peers are getting. Some children, especially those who are neurodiverse, may not pick up the social rules naturally and will need them explaining even later in life. These people will make mistakes and then unfairly be classified as not having good soft skills.

So, what right do I have to be talking about soft skills? I said in the opening paragraph that most people consider me to be good with people. It will shock many who have met me to know that I was not always confident with people, and I am not naturally a good presenter. I was the shy toddler hiding behind their mother’s skirt who wouldn’t talk to people. I was the child at school with no friends. I was the adult who had learned to present confidently, but after 15 minutes at a networking event would be in the toilet being sick from anxiety and have to leave. I was also the adult who nearly ended up in a cult because I didn’t know how to end a conversation with someone without appearing rude. Trust me when I say that soft skills can be learned. It isn’t easy, but then nothing of value ever is.

Smile with confidence

Let’s take smiling as our first skill. Why is smiling important? Apart from being an excellent way to make your body release endorphins and make yourself feel better, your smile also directly influences those around you. When you smile at someone, you trigger a part of their brain called the cingulate cortex which is an unconscious automatic response area. This means that when you smile at someone, they automatically smile back. This releases endorphins in their body and makes them feel good about themselves and their interaction with you. They are more likely to seek you out to work with because quite simply you make them feel better. Research has also shown that smiling makes people more likely to trust you and consider you likeable and approachable when interacting with you.

Smiling may seem simple, but if you are not a natural smiler it is more complicated than it first appears. Even if you are a natural smiler, it is worth checking that your smile is sending the message you think it is.

The interesting thing about a smile is that you can hear in someone’s voice if they are smiling, even if you can’t see them. Ask someone to close their eyes while you say the same phrase smiling and not smiling. I bet they can tell the difference. Amazingly this works even if the smile is fake. So even on a bad day, when you join a Teams or Zoom call, you can slap on a fake smile and your voice will automatically sound more cheerful and engaging. Even a fake smile will start to release endorphins to make you feel happy even if you are not. This is a classic example of “fake it ‘till you make it!”.

So how can smiling get us into trouble? Surely everyone can smile. Well, that is what I thought too. It turns out I was wrong. If you smile too much it can make people feel uncomfortable and they may start to wonder if you are ok. I learned this the hard way. I was so focused on getting my smile right that I momentarily lost track of a conversation and continued smiling while someone was talking about their cat being missing for two days. These changing facial expressions can make it look like you are having a psychotic break if you get it badly wrong or change between expressions too quickly, so it is also worth practicing the transitions in front of a mirror.

Another thing to watch out for is that a smile doesn’t just indicate a happy state. It can also convey dominance, condescension, embarrassment, flirtation, reassurance or even confusion and appeasement. Getting even a fake smile right takes time and if you are not used to smiling it is easy to get it wrong and send the wrong message. It is important to monitor the effect that you are having on others so that you can fine-tune your smiles to convey the correct message and get the response you are looking for. Practice, practice, practice, and don’t be afraid of failure.

Ensure you interpret the other person’s smile accurately – are they smiling with you or in a dominant or condescending way? Recognising smiles helps you adjust your approach and ensure a positive interaction. Learning to read other people’s smiles is just as important as getting your own correct.

When I first started working in industry it was considered perfectly acceptable to be technically excellent, but not have very good people skills. Today’s world is different. Companies now place almost as much, if not more, weight on soft skills as they do on technical skills, especially when you reach more senior positions. If you want that top job where you will be more client facing and dealing with more senior people within your own organisation, then you absolutely have to have the necessary soft skills. Your technical skills will only get you so far. Research has shown it takes less than a tenth of a second to form a first impression1 and spending more time with that person will not change their impression of you. So when you meet someone, make sure that you have honed your soft skills so the impression you make is the one you want.