Soft skills are a class of capabilities — communication, social judgment, empathy, adaptability, character traits, attitudes — that govern how a person navigates work and relationships, in contrast to "hard skills" which are typically technical, measurable, and tied to specific tools or knowledge domains.
The term gained common usage through corporate training and human-resources contexts in the late 20th century, though the underlying traits are documented across older traditions of leadership, etiquette, and social psychology. Common groupings include people skills, communication skills, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence; the Collins English Dictionary defines soft skills as "desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude."
The phrase has received criticism for understating skills that are genuinely difficult and consequential — running a meeting, defusing conflict, articulating a contested decision — and for implicit gendering. A growing strand of writing prefers "power skills" or "professional skills" to push back on the connotation that they are gentle, optional, or innate. Whatever the label, the underlying capabilities are increasingly treated as the differentiating layer between competent and exceptional performance in knowledge work.