Human Smarts and Book Smarts — Weekly Retail Tidbits #210

“There’s not one specific thing or skill people have to have to work for us. But I can tell you why we fire people: soft skills. We hire for hard skills. We fire for soft skills. The ability to interact and communicate with others or behave ethically and take responsibility for things tends to be where people tend to break down.”

— Rick Stephens, Senior Vice President of HR, The Boeing Corporation

My momma stayed home with the 5 of us. Daddy was the breadwinner. They still make a great team going on 62 years of marriage this year.

One of many lessons Momma drilled into us was how to look people (especially adults) in the eyes and speak.

You know how children sometimes hide behind a parent’s leg when they are meeting someone – and the parent says, “Oh, she is so shy. She always does this…”

We knew that was simply not allowed. It did not matter how we felt. We had to stand up, look the adult in the eyes and respond.

“Hi Mr. Smith. It’s nice to meet you, too.” or “I am fine, thank you. How are you today?”

We role played at home. As we got older we learned and practiced handling more complex interactions.

If the behavior was not one that my mother wanted to reinforce with us – she would not ever tell us or anyone else that “we were (i.e.) so ‘shy.'”

Many people describe those skills as soft.

Using the terms soft skills and hard skills is an easy way to differentiate between human smarts and book smarts.

It is not easy vs. difficult. They both have challenges.

Today it is more challenging for us humans. We have generations growing up interacting through technology sometimes more than face-to-face.
Soft skills are becoming harder to practice and “master.”

AI’s biggest challenge is soft skills. It can get the book smarts – but the human smarts? That is incredibly hard for a machine to understand and apply.

Need to hire someone to work on your sales floor?
Take time figuring out how good their soft skills are.

Need to onboard a new team member?
Take time making sure they understand your company’s culture. What is the expected behavior with different customer scenarios?

If they can use a phone, they can probably find the answers to basic product questions.

Those soft skill expectations are a bit more complex. But if you teach it and practice it, hopefully they’ll remember — just like I remember my mother’s.

xoxo,
❤️ AmyFay

“Likability is a soft skill that leads to hard results.”

— Mo Bunnell

I love working with you!
Thanks for the opportunity!
❤️ AmyFay