What’s so hard about soft skills?

Abstract

As we prepare middle and high school students for the workplace, the traditional focus is on academic and technical/hard skills. But there’s another set of skills that’s also critical to students’ future workplace success-and increasingly so. We’re talking about “soft skills,” or employability skills. And, as speech-language pathologists with expertise in language, communication, and social pragmatics, our role in teaching these skills is growing.