Time to stop squeezing ourselves into size 2 business models and start re-shaping our economy.
Soft skills.
What concepts, images, thoughts, and feelings come up for you while reading this phrase?
In general "soft skills" are attributes given to skills that rely on social intelligence. On awareness and connection to the others around you. Inter-personal skills. Communication skills. Team development. Creative problem solving. Creativity in general.
Hard skills are attributed to what is traditionally considered technical, measurable and teachable. Programming skills. Codes. Ability to operate a machine. Usually something with a certification or degree.
Most likely your instinct connotation is that "soft skills" are skills ranking lower on the scale of intellect and leadership skills.
Investopedia states that such skills are "less tangible and harder to quantify" -- suggesting that they are too vague to be counted as intelligence and too ineffective to assign much value to.
In fact, that is pretty much the definition of the phrase "soft skills".
Collins English Dictionary even says so...
Soft skills are generally associated with the feminine - and often with women.
...Which means that these skills are more likely to be undervalued and above all go unrewarded - and in many cases, even considered a weakness.
When in actuality, it is the absence of these skills that is contributing to a great imbalance and self-destruction in our businesses, markets and economies.
The truth is, the traditional economic model and the MBA model that many businesses run on are no longer serving us -- their devaluation means we give way to unsustainable business practices. Burnout. Monopolies that take advantage of their hold on the market. Burned-out workforces. Environmental destruction. Gender wage gap. Unstable economies on the verge of recession and depression.
The failure of our business models and our economies are the result of this deficiency of feminine minds in leadership.
Now let me be clear: When I say "the feminine mind", I refer not only to the lack of balance of females in the economic and political sphere when it comes to positions of thought leadership with impact.
I also am referring to a deficiency in feminine energy as a force of growth in these institutions.
Feminine energy - for example as described in the Chinese Tao philosophy of Yin and Yang - is pretty much what we call "soft skills" yet are powerful forces meant to co-exist in balance with the masculine Yang where "hard skills" live.
When there is a lack of balance in these energies, we experience malaise.
The power of the feminine brain.
There has been much discourse and study about the differences between the male and female brain.
It has been shown that women tend to be better at long-term visioning and long-term results.
For example, a woman's lack of testosterone makes her a better long-term investor because the risks she takes are less impulsive and more aligned with a higher, bigger, more sustainable achievement.
At the same time, a woman's literal physical sensitivity felt in her body means often she is more capable of acting intuition - using both her intellect and her physical senses to making a split-second assessment, conclusion and action. (No, the "women's intuition" is no joke.)
Circuitry in the brain.
When it comes to the circuity of our "male" and "female" brains, a combination of "nurture", hormonal influence and biology may influence how our brain communicates.
"MRIs showed the biggest gaps between the sexes were the larger amount of gray matter women had in their hippocampus, a structure that plays a role in memory, and the left caudate, which is thought to control our communication skills. Verma found that in female brains, there's more wiring in regions linked to memory and social cognition."
-- Ragini Verma, PhD, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
It has been noted that women in general have more connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which may give them an advantage in pulling together information from different sources and drawing conclusions. Men's brains in general seem to have more connections from front to back, heightening their abilities of perception.
However, there is something even more important at play here.
Our brains are mosaics.
Scientifically speaking, we know that the left half of the brain handles logical thinking, reason, science and mathematics, while the right is more associated with intuition, imagination, creativity, interpretation of language, and visualisation.
The left side is often attributed to the masculine while the right has been attributed to the feminine. The generalisation is that men are better at logic, reason, science and mathematics and women at intuition, imagination, creativity, etc.
But here is the interesting part: we all have the opportunity to powerfully activate both sides of our brains to work in balance with each other.
It was recently confirmed that we all have the capability to tap into those "feminine" capabilities in our brains as well as the "masculine" aspects of our brains.
A 2015 study at the University of Tel Aviv revealed that our brains, while sometimes showing typical physical differences for male and females, each are actually in structure a mosaic of the two.
"...although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique "mosaics" of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain."
-- Daphna Joel, et al, Tel Aviv University: Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic
When it comes to the world of business, economics and politics, we are currently sabotaging ourselves because we are not fully making use of - nor valuing - our collective "feminine" mind.
This means that both men as well as women are selling themselves and each other short. We are devaluing those who have the gifts of the "right brain" / feminine intellect, labelling them weak and leaving them out of the discussion.
This means we do are not operating with a full brain - with values and vision, with compassion as well as cleverness and with purpose as well as profit.
It is time that we embrace the voluptuousness of our brains - the soft, supple mosaic of possibility we create when balancing and equally valuing both hemispheres of the mind.
Our world is counting on on your powerful, strong, gorgeous, elastic skills that transform our business and economic design into the World's Next Top Models.
Are you a blossoming feminine leader looking to create impact? Ready to start embracing your voluptuous brain?