Roundtable on Consulting Professions: Soft Skills in Question

Soft Skills: innate or acquired – how can they be developed?
François Humblot, Managing Partner at Grant Alexander, took part on November 8, 2017 in a roundtable organized by Consult’in France, the professional association of Strategy and Management Consulting firms, as part of the release of the Consulting Procurement Barometer. His topic: soft skills.
Soft skills encompass all of an individual’s behavioral and interpersonal abilities, as opposed to hard skills, which refer to technical or academic competencies.
François Humblot participated as an expert in recruiting for the consulting professions, sharing his perspective on the importance of soft skills in general, and for consultants in particular.

How can they be assessed? What are they? And can they be improved?
Unlike hard skills, which are measurable technical abilities, soft skills are more complex to define given their wide scope. It is important to distinguish between personal qualities that are innate and behavioral competencies that are acquired over time.
Identifying this broad set of human qualities is essential in order to value and leverage them—individually and collectively—in the service of organizational performance. Listening, empathy, stress management, creativity, adaptability, emotional intelligence, courage, and more are all facets of behavioral skills that must be recognized and developed.

We all have the capacity to strengthen our soft skills at any stage of life, even if this process comes more naturally to certain personalities than to others.
Personal qualities are shaped and enriched over time: through early childhood education, collective experiences, exposure to effort and creativity as students or as members of sports or cultural associations, etc. They provide the foundation for growth in soft skills. Today, the need to engage in lifelong professional learning is self-evident. Training tools are also becoming more accessible, with e-learning now enabling a broader audience to develop skills that were previously only targeted at managers.

Public speaking, enhancing persuasiveness, building assertiveness, developing critical thinking, empathy, or confidence cannot be learned in the same way as technical knowledge—but they can be worked on. And that is excellent news!
*“Soft skills encompass all of an individual’s behavioral qualities:
– Personal (creativity, leadership, influence, …),
– Interpersonal (listening skills, relationship-building, empathy, communication ease, …),
– Situational (analytical speed and accuracy, adaptability across contexts, …),
– And a mindset rooted in engagement and rigor at work.
They represent a common and necessary foundation across all professions, beyond technical expertise. Soft skills are increasingly indispensable in a working world where no one can afford to remain only a technical expert.”* – François Humblot

November 2017