Simon Sinek argues that organizations overemphasize teaching job-specific 'hard' skills while neglecting leadership and 'human' skills (formerly called 'soft' skills). He advocates training employees in listening, feedback, empathy, patience, and effective confrontation so people can care for others, improve workplace interactions, and foster loyalty to the company.
Chapters
The easiest thing to do for any company is to help people be their best versions of themselves, to help them be human. You know, I hate this concept of soft skills. You know, we call hard and soft skills. Like, soft actually sounds soft. You know, it's hard skills and human skills. And everybody knows that if you want someone to do a job, you have to teach them how to do their job. Like, if you're in sales, we'll teach you how to use the computer, and we'll teach you how to use the phone system, and we'll teach you how to, like what our process is. If you're in. If you're an accountant, you go get a degree in accounting and you learn how to do the job. And when we're junior, we have to be really good at our jobs. That is our job. And if we're good, we get promoted, and we eventually get promoted to a position where we're now responsible for the people who do the job we used to do. And nobody teaches us how to do that. And so we don't teach leadership. We don't teach the skills that are required to take care of people, which is all leadership is. And the amazing thing is, regardless of our rank and regardless of our position, these are skills that we all need. Organizations can do a much better job of teaching us listening and effective confrontation and how to give and receive feedback and empathy and patience and all of these things that if you're going to be a parent, you better start learning them. But if you're going to be a human being, you should probably learn those, too. It helps us interact with each other better, with customers better, with vendors better. And at the end of the day, we're more confident in ourselves because we're bringing all those skills back home to our families and our friends. And the best part about it is when an organization gives that kind of education and teaching and training to their people.
The net benefit is people feel like the company cares about them as individuals, not as simply somebody who fills a job function. And that's what breeds loyalty and love for our companies.
