دانلود مجله مدیریت روتمن – پاییز 2024

IN SPITE OF EVIDENCE that human work is increasingly social and relational in nature — and ample evidence to suggest that social and relational ‘work’ is valuable to individuals and organizations alike — we have not, to date, built a language system and methods of measurement of the skills that allow us to assess whether people do such work competently or superlatively. And, as a result, we have not been able to develop ways to help humans demonstrably acquire these skills. From LinkedIn knowledge graph reports to white papers of the World Economic Forum, from McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group to the International Labour Organization reports, soft skills have been touted as critically important to the current and next generation of workers and leaders. Moreover, demand for soft skills continues to outstrip supply — a large and increasing gap that has been confirmed by studies that probe into the main sources of dissatisfaction of chief learning and human resources officers with the skill base and skill development outcomes of training and development programs. In my latest book [Soft Skills: How to See, Measure and Build the Skills That Make Us Uniquely Human,] I set out to ‘change the soft skills game’ by introducing language for identifying and describing these skills and ways of measuring the degree to which a person possesses them. In this excerpt from the book, I set the stage for why a ‘re-set’ is required for the way we think about soft skills.