The word “soft” sometimes carries connotations of fragility, but when paired with “skills,” the result is anything but weak. In fact, the U.S. military coined the phrase “soft skills” more than 50 years ago as a way to identify qualities that are inherent to improved workflow and learning efficiency. Decades of research have proven the most effective leaders have highly developed soft skills — qualities like self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility — and therefore should not be overlooked.
What Are “Soft Skills” and Why Are They Important for Leaders?
“Soft skills” is a term often used to describe the essential leadership qualities needed to form strong connections with others — like empathy, compassion, and authenticity.
With the continued rise of hybrid workforce models, as well as widespread political and economic uncertainty, soft skill development is more critical now than ever for leaders. Interpersonal relationship-building and effective virtual communication are both required to build high-performing, geographically dispersed teams.
At CCL, we’ve found that organizations and leaders who prioritize soft skill development foster cultures that are adaptive, inclusive, and impactful. By cultivating their own soft skills, modeling them for others, and creating development opportunities for team members, leaders are not only able to build more effective teams, they’re also better able to retain, engage, and motivate employees.
Soft skills are essential for people managers, and leaders at all levels benefit from specific, targeted soft skill development to maximize success. Read on for the essential skills needed to drive engagement and performance across the organization.
Essential Leadership Soft Skills for Every Leader Level
Regardless of a leader’s role in the organizational chart, the soft skills required for holding coaching conversations are essential. Why? Because they lay the foundation for your organization to build a common leadership language. This shared language fosters and implements a coaching culture, where employees across the organization feel comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback, and encouraging each other’s growth.
When all of your employees master the following 4 skills, your organization is well-equipped for more tailored development opportunities:
- Listening to understand
- Asking powerful questions
- Challenging and supporting
- Establishing accountability
The good news is, you already have the resources within your organization to instill these soft skills and create a coaching culture. Learn more about what it takes to coach people effectively.
Leading Yourself: Soft Skills for Individuals
Even without direct reports, individual contributors — and by extension, their organizations — benefit greatly from soft skill development. It might seem slightly surprising, but individual contributors need leadership development, too. Many are in customer-facing roles or bring their expertise to cross-functional projects. They’re also often responsible for implementing new technologies and business processes, which drive innovation. For all these reasons, they must be able to communicate simply and clearly, collaborate with others, and foster connections with other team members so that shared goals and objectives can be met.
Our research has found that the following 4 core leadership skills are always needed. These are the most essential soft skills for everyone, regardless of leader level or industry:
- Self-awareness
- Communication
- Influence
- Learning agility
Leading Others: Soft Skills for Frontline Managers
In many organizations, frontline managers represent almost 40% of the population of leaders — yet unfortunately, they’re not always prepared to lead. After transitioning from an individual contributor role into a leader of others, many first-time managers find they struggle with leading projects and people effectively, and don’t realize how influential they are, or could become, with targeted soft skill development.
When employees are leading others, especially for the first time, developing these soft skills can enhance their leadership effectiveness:
- Political savvy
- Motivating others
Provide your first-time leaders with frontline leadership skills training and you’ll develop leaders — not just bosses.
Leading Teams: Soft Skills for Mid-Level Managers
Often, employees step into middle management roles at a time in their lives when demands from work, family, and community are higher than ever. And most haven’t yet developed the leadership resilience needed to successfully handle multiple stressors. Mid-level leaders must also navigate organizational politics, and often feel pressure coming from both above and below them in the hierarchy.
Learning the following soft skills will help managers who are leading from the middle:
- Thinking and acting systemically
- Resilience
Learn more about the leadership skills that managers in the middle need to advance.
Leading the Function: Soft Skills for Senior Leaders
Like frontline managers who were promoted into higher leadership roles after succeeding as individual contributors, senior leaders are often promoted to head entire business functions after effectively leading a specific area or team. However, in their new senior roles, they often find the challenges are not just greater in number, but also different and more complex.
Soft skill development for senior leaders is often overlooked because busy executives have limited time for personal goal-setting and self-reflection. But investing in developing the following skills will not only enhance a senior leader’s capacity for strategic thinking and planning, but also have a positive impact on the bottom line of the business:
- Being visionary
- Driving results
- Creating engagement
- Identifying innovation opportunities
- Leading globally
When senior leaders develop the soft leadership skills they need to succeed at this level, they are better able to collaborate across boundaries, form important alliances, drive business results, and meet organization-wide goals. Learn more about the senior leadership skills needed to excel.
Leading the Enterprise: Soft Skills for Executives
At CCL, our research team has identified 4 keys for reaching the C-Suite: experience, personal readiness, network readiness, and relationship readiness. Success in these high-pressure, big-picture roles leading the enterprise requires several critical soft skills — which aren’t always evident on a resume:
- Creating and articulating a vision
- Creating strategic alignment
- Developing a leadership and talent strategy aligned with business strategy
- Leading the culture
- Establishing a strong executive image
- Creating a culture of innovation
- Catalyzing change
Methods for Soft Skill Development
Perhaps you’re a team manager or an HR or talent leader looking to upskill team members, or you work at an educational institution seeking to include soft skills training and a leadership development curriculum alongside other certifications. The approach to developing leadership soft skills that will best suit your organization can take many shapes, such as the following 6 options.
5 Ways to Develop Soft Skills for Leaders
1. Personalized, in-person leader development
Consider in-person leadership programs that specifically tailor soft skill development according to the challenges faced and competencies needed at that individual’s leader level.
2. Online leadership development courses
Look for courses that are engaging, dynamic, and collaborative. The benefits of online training are expansive, and courses are typically available in a variety of virtual delivery formats, ranging from live online programs to self-paced learning.
3. Leadership development workshop kits
All-inclusive, pre-packaged workshop kits can be used to upskill employees with a scalable, modular leadership development plan, and facilitate targeted training for small groups.
4. Licensing leadership programs and solutions
As needed, you can supplement and maximize your internal leadership development by licensing specific programs or tools from a trusted provider, or even use a comprehensive solution like CCL Passport™ to enjoy access to a full library of research-based leadership content, curated into learning journeys, with access to programs, tools, and support to help you customize and scale soft skill development for leaders at every level.
5. Coaching for leaders at all levels
Support soft skill development and expand the potential of your people managers with leadership coaching.
Best Practices for Soft Skill Development
Regardless of the approach you take, start by defining the soft skills needed to foster your desired organizational culture.
If your gap areas are unclear, 360-degree assessments can help HR teams plan development and prioritize the soft skills employees need. These assessments are highly personalized, ensuring that strengths and opportunities for growth are addressed with targeted development.
Alongside soft skill development, take steps to strengthen your organization’s learning culture. While some skills come naturally to certain leaders, soft skills can be developed by anyone over time — especially when you have a coaching culture that reinforces candor and trust.
Finally, don’t overlook the importance of fostering empathy and an inclusive environment where all employees can experience psychological safety at work. Having the freedom to practice new soft skills, make mistakes, share concerns, and be vulnerable with one another is especially important for leaders working in today’s hybrid work environment.
Use Soft Skill Development to Strengthen Your Workforce & Attract New Talent
Providing equitable access to development opportunities is no longer a “nice-to-have” perk. In today’s competitive talent economy, employees expect organizations to offer ample opportunities for them to learn and grow.
Soft skill development helps your organization stay competitive on 2 fronts. By upskilling your workforce with the tools they need to collaborate with one another, you can better prepare employees to navigate the increasingly complex challenges they face together. And by investing in the development of your leaders at every level, you are signaling that your company values the growth of its employees, enabling you to attract and retain more talent.
Building a workforce of confident, capable, collaborative, and empathetic employees through soft skill development will help grow your organization’s mission and its future.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
We have a number of leadership solutions to help you upskill your talent with soft skill development, in the format that’s best for your unique situation.
Frequently Asked Questions About Soft Skills in Leadership
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What are soft skills in leadership?Soft skills are personal leadership characteristics that enhance leadership effectiveness, such as communication, self-awareness, collaboration, and integrity. Leaders who develop soft skills in themselves and their employees facilitate a more adaptive, inclusive, and collaborative workplace.
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What are leadership soft skills versus hard skills?While leadership soft skills include interpersonal traits like communication, self-awareness, and political savvy, hard skills are job-related competencies like financial acumen or technological proficiency. Soft skills can be useful to leaders regardless of function or position. Since hard skills are typically cultivated through job experience, education, and training, they are more measurable and specific to a task or job.
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What are 10 key soft skills?While there are many soft skills that are important for leaders, 10 critical soft skills for leaders include self-awareness, communication, influence, learning agility, resiliency, political savvy, driving results, forward thinking, inspiring, and integrity.
More questions? Our experts are here to help. Let’s have a conversation!
