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.
You might be tempted to think that soft skills are only needed at the leadership level, but that’s not the case. What varies between roles is simply the balance between hard and soft skills, as we will discuss later.
Difference Between Hard and Soft Skills
Many believe the main difference is that soft skills are related to personality and can’t always be learned, while hard skills are often acquired through formal education or specific training.
This is simply a misconception.
Soft skills, like hard skills, can be learned, studied, and taught. What is probably true is that soft skills are usually more intangible, making acquiring them more challenging.
Just to give you an example:
If you want to learn Python (a hard skill), you take a course or read a book. With some commitment, you can easily learn it and put it into practice by creating a simple app that could work.
If you want to learn communication (a soft skill), courses, books, and teachers are still available, but having direct feedback to perceive your progress will be much harder.
But this shouldn’t stop you from learning and trying.
🥎 Main Soft Skills for Engineers and Managers
The realm of soft skills is immense, and it would be impossible to list and discuss all of them. For this reason, I’m only going to consider the ones that are fundamental to the engineering world.
The importance of these can vary based on you, your company, their culture, and many other aspects, but I believe the following list covers the most important ones, which I also look for during my interviews.
For your convenience, I divided them into five categories:
🧠 Personal Skills
🤝 Interpersonal Skills
🗣️ Communication Skills
🗂️ Organizational Skills
👑 Leadership Skills
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