Too Soft on the Soft Skills?

Business schools and other professional schools are getting the message that employers want graduates with not just technical skills, but the soft skills as well. The term "soft" is unfortunate since it seems to imply that they are not as valuable as knowing how to read a balance sheet, build things, or sell products on the Internet. To the contrary, they seem to be replacing technical competence as the keys to success.

Physicians, to be successful in the future, will need to evolve from technicians to managers to entrepreneurs to leaderpreneurs.

Soft skills are about building your emotional IQ. Have you ever taken a course in negotiation and persuasion, conflict resolution, team building, leading chaos or high performance teams, or managing with incomplete information?

Releasing the innerpreneur, in part, depends on hardening your soft skills. Futurists argue that the new world of work will depend on workers with creativity, imagination, innovativeness, and the ability to manage themselves and teams demanding complex interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination and leadership.

Consequently, some think that the MFA is the new MBA and that liberal arts majors will be more in demand in the 21st century economy. For entrepreneurs, technical skills might buy you a ladder but you will need the soft skills to climb it.