I’m not surprised but apparently Sydney’s Daily Telegraph thinks it’s news: “the days of the geek are numbered”. They suggest that with more and more automation in the accounting world, that it’s important that the “geeks” be able to manage relationships.
I’ve been working with bright technical people for a few years now (data analysts, astrophysicists, researchers: let’s just say “brains the size of a planet”). Internal clients and customers have been thinking it for years. What I think is really news is that it’s not just the far sighted who are seeing its importance. If you read Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future a few years ago, of course, you’d have seen it coming. .
We know that the soft skills are the hard skills for a large proportion of the clevers who provide advice in your organisation.
Here’s research that shows that those with soft skills are more likely to be better paid and more likely to be managers (which doesn’t always correlate, but kinda does).
