[0xcde4c3db]

While I broadly agree with the author's characterization and summary of the importance of "real" soft skills, that seems to be a tiny slice of how the term is used. I've seen discussions of soft skills cover a ridiculously broad assortment of actual skills, cultural sensitivities, in-group identity behaviors, personality traits, and neurological aptitudes. Without being a lot clearer about the scope, I think there's a real risk of a "soft skills are real and important" position mutating into "if I don't like somebody it's just because they didn't work hard enough, not because there's anything strange about my expectations".

[jschwartzi]

Mostly soft skills represent your ability to react rationally and appropriately to your own emotions and to the emotions of others--even emotions that you're anticipating and not just experiencing. The most basic soft skill in my mind is empathy, which is your ability to anticipate how others will feel in a given situation. If you're not capable of empathy I do not want you as my manager.

[newman8r]

I choose intuition over empathy, but clearly they're both important.

[gt_]

Be careful with the term ‘empathy’. The contemporary use of this word (reflected in your definition) conflates a few different concepts in a potentially confusing manner. An ability to predict how others feel can be used, to put it simply, for both good and evil. A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager?

A better set of characteristics to look for might be: sympathy, compassion, consideration, honesty.

‘Empathy’ as a term actually has a shaky and very recent etymology which reflects some of the contradictions it plays into. A loose translation of it’s origins is to express sympathy, which has a slight technical from what it means now, because it has been widely adopted as dignified form of sympathy. The difference from the classical term sympathy is that empathy is more correlated with communication than intention. Why has it gained in popularity? A socio-cultural argument might center on the fact that empathy carries less vulnerability than sympathy. There are some serious implications here.

The general problem with the focus on empathy is the loss of a bigger picture concern with being sincere. It’s analogous to short-term concerns vs. long-term concerns, where short-term concern is to provide immediate comfort and long-term concern is to provide sustainment and survival. A highly social workplace will value immediate social relations like expression of compassion while overlooking important long term values like honesty and less-empathetic forms of sympathy.

Ideally, we would maintain both, but these simplifications of the issue are unlikely to support that outcome.

[jschwartzi]

Look, if I'm managing someone I need to understand why asking them to work weekends upsets them. Being able to do this doesn't automatically make me a sociopath. What would make me a sociopath is asking them to do it anyway and then leaving early to go play golf. In other words not caring about them makes me a sociopath.

Sympathy requires you to feel the emotions of others which is often done to an unhealthy degree. Understanding how someone feels and feeling how they feel are different and should be treated with different words. It's good to work to understand others, but that doesn't mean you have to become them. And just because I don't share your feelings it doesn't mean I don't think they're valid. It just means I'm not you and I'm free to make my own choices.

I will often still choose to help you, but I'm not taking ownership of your problem.

[gt_]

feeling sympathy for another != feeling first-person experience

feeling sympathy != taking responsibility

The difference between the terms’ meanings is beyond mere emphasis, but it still falls short of occupying the subject’s bodily consciousness.

Look at the spectrum of bonds between family members for reference. Caring for one another to varying degrees is not so strange for most people. It is just becoming less common in public and business relationships.

[emmelaich]

Yes, it's unfortunate that sympathy has gone out of favour and empathy has changed in meaning.

Perhaps 'simpatico' is closer in meaning to the desired emotion.

[tome]

> A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager?

You appear to be falling into some logical fallacy here.

[mpweiher]

What logical fallacy would that be?

https://www.google.de/search?q=ceo+sociopath+study

[tome]

jschwartzi said "If you're not capable of empathy I do not want you as my manager" and gt_ responded as though jschwartzi had said "If you're capable of empathy I want you as my manager". It's the fallacy called "Denying the antecedent".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

[alexandercrohde]

As it stands I think "soft skills" is one of those buzzwords like "critical thinking." Everybody thinks its good, but it hasn't been established as a scientifically-valid / measurable concept.

Thus the phrase "Soft skills" gives a veneer of objectivity to something to personal dynamics that are incredibly subjective and unscientific. The term is potentially a weapon for the politically-savvy to punish those who oppose them with an unfalsifiable attack.