Soft Skills Matter
When I talk to someone about what Westlark Advisors does, the conversation typically starts, and focuses on, factual items, like our experience in the commodity industry. Our education, technical knowledge, and experience are considered hard skills.
What are hard skills?
Investopedia defines hard skills as follows:
- Learned abilities acquired and enhanced through education and experience,
- The technical skills required for a job,
- Skills that are easily quantified.
Hard skills are important!
Hard skills are vital to our energy advisory business. They demonstrate that we are educated about the industry and have experience dealing with the types of issues that typically occur. These types of skills often get the most attention, from both our clients and ourselves. But are these skills enough to be successful in our industry (or others)?
What are soft skills?
Indeed.com defines soft skills as follows:
Personal attributes; things that directly relate to how well you can work with and interact with others.
The site goes on to state that soft skills are applicable across industries and are prized because they can be difficult to teach. That same site provides specific examples of soft skills, such as:
- communication,
- problem solving,
- creativity,
- flexibility,
- and work ethic.
Soft Skills Matter!
Because they are easier to quantify, hard skills are often viewed as more valuable within the commodity sector. Additionally, there is a history of placing a high value on technical knowledge and expertise within the industry. However, our view at Westlark Advisors is that interpersonal skills can be just as important in the long run. When combined with hard skills, soft skills have the ability to really highlight the true value of that technical knowledge and expertise.
Over the coming months, the Westlark Advisors blog will continue our ongoing series, Hedging 101 and South American Market Analysis, and will also be adding a series on the value of soft skills in the energy sector.
Through this series we will show how soft skills like communication, problem solving, creativity, flexibility, and work ethic are vital to the success of our business, how they can be developed internally, and why they are necessary for the long-term success of our clients.
Soft Skills Matter
By JD Buss
