Soft skills
Introduction
soft skills, soft competencies or soft skills,[2] sometimes called in Spanish directly with the anglicism soft skills, are a combination of social skills, communication skills, personality traits, attitudes, professional attributes,[3] social intelligence and emotional intelligence, which empower people to move around their environment, work well with others, perform well and, complemented by hard skills, achieve their goals. objectives.[4].
The Collins English Dictionary defines soft skills as "the qualities, desirable for certain jobs and independent of acquired knowledge, such as common sense, people management and a flexible positive attitude." [5] However, if a person does not possess any of these soft skills, in most cases it is possible to train specifically to end up acquiring it.[6] They can also learn it naturally by interacting with other people.[7].
Although a person has an excellent academic preparation, not possessing or developing soft skills can bring many communication complications with the social aspects of the environment, by not recognizing emotional language, or by not adequately managing and resolving conflicts with people in the professional or personal sphere.[8].
History
Since 1959 the US military has invested considerable resources in the development of technology-based training procedures. In 1968 this army officially introduced (document CON Reg 350-100-1.)[9] a training method called "Training Systems Engineering"[10] (not to be confused with simple systems engineering or information systems engineering).
P.G. Whitmore cited the definition of that document: "...work-related skills that directly affect people and paperwork, e.g., inspecting troops, supervising office staff, conducting studies, writing maintenance or efficiency reports..."[11].
At the 1972 conference on hard skills of the Continental Command (CONARC by its North American acronym) Dr. Whitmore presented a report[12][13][14] that showed how the term "soft skills" (applied to the areas of command, supervision, counseling and leadership) was understood in different CONARC schools. After designing and processing a questionnaire, the following tentative definition was formulated: "Soft skills are important work-related skills that involve little or no contact with machines and whose application is quite widespread."[12][14].