Great edition! It's interesting how we use so many vague terms like being "professional" or "a good person," where we could use deconstructing what that actually means at a more granular level and actually practice the specific behaviour rather that have a vague direction of what it could be.
Absolutely, another one that comes up often are "people skills". If it's left at that level, the chances of improving are nearly zero. If we unpack a specific interaction you've had with someone and examine play-by-play how it went, your thought process and eventual execution, there's plenty of tangible things to work on.
It's an interesting perspective. I don't agree there is a separation between the two. There is. skills like programming, logic and math can be developed and put into action separately from Soft skills. Especially when we talk about skills like Active listening, tactical empathy, Public Speaking and negotiation.
Those are very separate paths that may or may not intersect depending on the individual choices and career point.
Surely a Staff engineer will need more negotiation skills than a senior engineer.
But still I argue you can work and grow on them serately.
The importance of skills will always differ depending on the career stage and path taken in general. You hit on a key point though, which is the "soft" skills will always grow in importance as you become more senior.
The point is to not separate the skills this way, but rather look at things as level of importance and how well defined and measurable it is. If it's important and poorly defined and measureable (i.e. labelled soft), then the right response is to make it more tangible vs. only working on "hard" skills.
Great edition! It's interesting how we use so many vague terms like being "professional" or "a good person," where we could use deconstructing what that actually means at a more granular level and actually practice the specific behaviour rather that have a vague direction of what it could be.
Absolutely, another one that comes up often are "people skills". If it's left at that level, the chances of improving are nearly zero. If we unpack a specific interaction you've had with someone and examine play-by-play how it went, your thought process and eventual execution, there's plenty of tangible things to work on.
It also makes it way less overwhelming and more manageable!
It's an interesting perspective. I don't agree there is a separation between the two. There is. skills like programming, logic and math can be developed and put into action separately from Soft skills. Especially when we talk about skills like Active listening, tactical empathy, Public Speaking and negotiation.
Those are very separate paths that may or may not intersect depending on the individual choices and career point.
Surely a Staff engineer will need more negotiation skills than a senior engineer.
But still I argue you can work and grow on them serately.
The importance of skills will always differ depending on the career stage and path taken in general. You hit on a key point though, which is the "soft" skills will always grow in importance as you become more senior.
The point is to not separate the skills this way, but rather look at things as level of importance and how well defined and measurable it is. If it's important and poorly defined and measureable (i.e. labelled soft), then the right response is to make it more tangible vs. only working on "hard" skills.
we need to start calling then Emotional Intelligence skills. Or something more tangible. Agreed