MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Challenge of Scaling Soft Skills

It is becoming increasingly clear that for most working people, a proportion of the working tasks they currently perform will be either completely replaced by machines (AI if the tasks are cognitive, robots if they are manual) or augmented by a human-machine interface.

While there is less clarity about the types of tasks that will remain within the human domain, we can make some predictions. We know that, right now and in the foreseeable future, machines are generally poor at understanding a person’s mood, at sensing the situation around them, and at developing trusting relationships. So as the World Economic Forum report on future skills argued, it is human “soft skills” that will become increasingly valuable — skills such as empathy, context sensing, collaboration, and creative thinking.

That means that millions of people across the world will have to make the transition toward becoming a great deal better versed in these soft skills.

But that’s far from easy. The paradox is that while we understand a lot about how to develop the “hard skills” of analysis, decision-making, and analytical judgment, we know a great deal less about the genesis of soft skills. Perhaps more important, much of the context of how people learn and perform is currently skewed toward hard skills. Understanding the obstacles to developing soft skills and then addressing them is crucial for our schools, our homes, and our workplaces.

About the Author

Lynda Gratton is a professor of management practice at London Business School and director of the school’s Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies program. She is coauthor of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity (Bloomsbury, 2016). She tweets @Lyndagratton.

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