Developing Essential Soft Skills for Engineers and Leaders
What are the essential soft skills in engineering, and how can they be developed?
When I look at my LinkedIn feed, I notice many posts discussing the importance of soft skills versus hard skills for engineers, especially for Engineering Managers.
I have probably written some myself.
However, these posts often tend to be very generic and usually overlook one crucial aspect: how to develop these skills. In fact, many people believe that soft skills are somehow innate and cannot be learned, but based on my experience, I can easily say that this is not the case.
That's why in today's article, we will delve deeper into soft skills and, in particular, we will cover these points:
🥊 Hard Skills vs Soft Skills: their definitions and the differences between the two.
🥎 Main Soft Skills: we’ll explore the top soft skills and how to develop them.
⚖️ How to Balance Soft Skills: we’ll discuss which soft skills to prioritize based on your career path.
As you can see, we have much to cover, so let’s get started!
🥊 Hard Skills vs Soft Skills
Let's begin by defining what hard skills and soft skills are:
🪚 Hard Skills: the specific knowledge and abilities required to perform a job. This category could include skills like proficiency in a certain programming language, understanding system architectures, or a degree or certification in a specific field.
🛏️ Soft Skills: personal traits and behaviors that help you work well with others and adapt to changes. They include how well you communicate, work in a team, solve problems, and manage your time.
In this newsletter, I have already mentioned that in recent years, we’ve transitioned from a “low-level era”, where those who understood technology were seen as untouchable gurus, to a “high-level era”, where technology has become mainstream and what truly makes a difference are people.
If we examine this in terms of skills:
⬇ low-level era → hard skills were privileged
⬆ high-level era → soft skills are privileged
This is to say that soft skills are no longer a nice-to-have for engineers; they are a requirement for every engineer, especially now with the advent of AI.
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