Predicting Personality

Chapter ElevenWHY THE SOFT SKILLS ARE THE HARDEST

Communication, relationship-building, and leadership are typically referred to as “soft skills,” but they are often the most difficult to master. And in our hyper-connected modern economy, they are often the prerequisites to authority, influence, and wealth.

Professionals in sales, marketing, recruiting, management, and other people-focused roles know how important communication is to their personal success. When your money comes from your ability to build trust, negotiate effectively, resolve conflicts, and influence others, you pay attention to the way you speak and write. While outreach-oriented jobs can be grinding, they can also be immensely rewarding, with unlimited upside, if you can figure out how to drive others to take action with some degree of predictability. Sometimes, the rewards for a single successful conversation can often wipe away the losses from hundreds (or thousands) of rejections.

So, in the global, hyper-connected knowledge economy, millions of professional communicators are chasing after the same thing—successful conversations. With so many people seeking those conversations, however, we have created some real challenges.

Over the past two decades, the Internet has made it easier than ever to reach new people. Social networks have made the world smaller and more transparent, and if we're plugged in, we are more accessible.

In the sales world, social selling—the strategy of connecting with prospects and ...