and Music

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under a general heading (“soft skills”) implies that these qualities have acquired a new focus, a
new importance. Secondly, there is also a significant change in perspective, because normally
people would not consider many of these “skills” as skills at all, but instead as character traits,
aptitudes, strengths, aspects of one’s personality or typical behaviours. Thirdly, there are often
distinct differences in meaning between the colloquial expressions and the respective modern
terminology. Saying someone has “good communication skills” is not the same as saying she/he
is “friendly” and “good at talking to people”. It is more complex than that. Nor is being a “good
teamworker” the same as being “helpful”, “constructive” and “easy to work with”. Again,
teamworking implies a lot more. But we shall return to these questions later in this chapter.
However, perhaps the most important implication of this shift in terminology and perspective
is that you can actually do something about these skills. You can discuss and analyse soft skills.
Indeed, you can even learn them (so later in the chapter we shall talk about “developing” soft
skills). And finally, given their importance in the job market, you can also value them (so we
shall also talk about “promoting” soft skills).
Hard and soft
In the following section we shall discuss the ways of classifying and describing soft skills in
greater detail, but for the present it could be useful to clarify the general idea. As will also be
stressed in the following section, the writers often disagree on many aspects of the subject. They
have different opinions on how to name and describe the individual skills. And they also argue
about how to classify them into broad categories (also known as “skillsets”, a term used to
indicate a related series of different skills). They even disagree on whether to call them “soft
skills” at all. The alternative terminologies are numerous: “conceptual skills”, “human or
personal skills”, “transferable or transversal skills”, “interdisciplinary”, “cross-disciplinary” or
“cross-curricular skills”, “applied skills” or “technical skills”, “non-cognitive skills”, and even
(significantly) “21st-century skills”. Each of the above naturally carries slightly different
connotations.
Nonetheless all writers agree on what these skills are not: i.e. the “hard skills”, the professional
or technical competences needed to perform a specific task or job. To put it simply, they are
“everything else”. For a performing musician, for example, the “hard skills” are the professional
skills learned at the conservatoire: these would naturally include an ability to play in public at
a very high standard, a good theoretical knowledge of music and the repertoire, the necessary
technological know-how and perhaps also the ability to teach those same skills to others. The
“soft skills”, on the other hand, are all the other abilities, aptitudes, experiences or qualities that
will play an important, or even vital, role in the course of one’s future career.
The key point is that whereas the so-called “hard skills” (those typically acquired at the
conservatoire, arts or dance academy or drama school) were traditionally considered to be the
essential qualifications and the “soft skills” merely desirable, today the balance has shifted
considerably. Naturally, however, it greatly depends on context. The potential concert-artist,
ballet-dancer or actor will of course continue to be assessed for her/his “hard skills” (i.e. the
ability to perform at the highest level), but most jobs in the arts sector will be requiring both the
hard and the soft. In other words, many employers are asking themselves the following
questions: “Are we looking for someone who has mastered just a particular, specialist (i.e. hard)
skill? Or someone who also possesses other, general qualities (i.e. soft skills)?” Obviously the
answer will vary greatly according to the situation. But two things are certain: first, when it
comes to selecting from a large number of candidates, all with excellent hard skills, the person