Why “soft skills” are biological change agents

One of the questions we explore in our work at MIT is:

 

How do we help wisdom travel?

 

How do we help it move across disciplines, people and institutions that may be skeptical of its importance?

 

How do we help people understand that contemplative practices, nervous system regulation and emotional skills are not just one more thing to add to the list?

 

Because (unfortunately), these practices and ideas are often treated that way:

 

The idea of a calming technique, mindfulness approach, nervous system tool

 

… those are all things that often get pushed to the side - things that don’t actually move the needle.

 

The focus often gets pushed toward ‘performance’ and outcomes.

 

What so many people don’t realize is that  “soft skills” are the neuro-foundational pillar of performance and outcomes..…

 

The term soft skills was introduced through the U.S. military around the late 1960s and early 1970s.

(U.S. Continental Army Command. (1973). CONARC soft skills training conference: Final proceedings (Report No. ADA099612)

 

• “Hard skills” generally involved working with machinery and technical systems.
• “Soft skills” involved working with people: communication, leadership, perception and behavior.

 

There has been debate since then about the word ‘soft skills’ and whether we should call them that at all…

 

They are ‘soft’ in the way we could look at software.. Something that we can update, something that is not embedded physically into dna.

 

But in terms of what they  enable for us, they are not something to be treated lightly or as an option.

 

Knowledge, technical ability, skills and strategy matter.

 

But our ability to access and use those things changes with the state of the system using them.

 

“Soft skills” affect what becomes available to us in order to improve and access the results, performance and outcomes we want.

 

This is part of what we’ve been working to bridge at MIT*:

 

How do we help someone understand that a mindful practice is so much more than just a quiet moment or saying ‘om’?

 

• It is a brain-architecture-building-practice for an attentional system.

 

That self-reflection is so much more than just ‘thinking about our lives’?

 

• It neurologically builds connectivity between brain systems that help us notice and interrupt patterns of interpretation and response.

 

That regulation is not really about ‘staying calm’?

 

• It’s about brain-body networks that help us regain access to learning, agency, connection and choice.

 

That playfulness is so much more than jokes or games?

•  it's 'neural training for the unexpected?*

 

 

*Just ask one of my super-regulators, program graduate, colleague and friend, Kelsey Kates (former Google Director, now the CEO of Playfully Works)

 

Neuroscience is like a ‘super-structure’ that can help people recognize the value that was there all along.

 

This is what I want for the coaches, educators, leaders and practitioners I work with.

 

• You might have already experienced how a mindful pause can change the direction of a conversation.

 

• You may have already seen a person update their belief about themselves through a tool or moment of presence you offered them. .. and then watched how this improved their life in some way.

 

 

Those skills often don’t get enough attention or budget, or email replies that say ‘yes’ to the workshop or training… 

 

and this is often because people don’t understand that they are in fact biological mechanisms of change.

 

Some of this is cultural.  And sometimes people need a more concrete way to understand what those ‘soft ideas’ are really about - and the ‘hard outcomes’ they make possible.

 

 

In my experience, science can give us a common ground for helping others understand that...

 

.. those 'optional-sounding-soft-skills'...

 

... underpin everything we actually want to be, do and have...

 

 

 

*Check out MIT Global Humanities Initiative, and the Human Agency Platform for more details (look me up under People!)