Do You Have Soft Skills? Part 1

If you or someone you know ever prepared for an interview, you may have heard the buzz phrase, Soft Skills. It’s humorous that this new label was basic training when I grew up. Soft Skills have been around the block a few times. Interviewers were not the only ones looking for these social characteristics. My parents, grandparents, teachers, and even strangers expected me to demonstrate these traits. They gave me plenty of opportunities to learn, practice, and exhibit Soft Skills. Soft Skills were part of my life growing up. I wasn’t aware of this at the time.

Looking back, I realize I gained many skills working on a tobacco farm in the summer with my cousins and other family members. Putting tobacco up in the barn was not a glamorous job of choice. The pay was not enough to mention, and I wasn’t old enough to work anywhere else.

However, teamwork‒Soft Skill–became invaluable to my daddy, who had a timeline for getting that tobacco barn filled, cooked, and ready for market. Listen up, and I’ll give you a glimpse of this farm girl’s mundane job.

The pickers unloaded a tobacco-filled trailer onto the barn’s shelves. The younger helpers stood on each side of an older stringer, grabbed a handful of leaves in a certain way, and handed them to the stringer, who rapidly grabbed and strung them on a four-foot stick that I now know was a rectangular prism. Once the stick was full of leaves, the stringer passed it to a hanger who climbed into the tobacco barn to hang it on the rafters. It took a long time to fill up the barn. Daddy lit the burners at the bottom of the barn to cook the leaves.

Within a day or so, the next task was to gather the cooked tobacco sticks from the barn and place them on another trailer.

Occasionally, my brother would throw a tobacco worm at me. It would stick to my shirt, which caused me to scream for help. I was terrified. Brotherly love? My aunt would usually help with conflict resolution–Soft Skill. There was no time for dilly-dallying around. We had a task to complete‒time management–Soft Skill.

On another day, my cousins and I would take the tobacco off the stick at a smaller barn with no windows. We got paid three cents a stick. One hundred sticks earned you $3.00. At the end of the day, we took those empty sticks and created forts, pretended they were horses we could ride, and many other things. Creativity‒Soft Skill–was part of life on a farm.

There are many technical skills needed for various jobs. Those specific skills, along with soft skills, can complement each other to get a job done more proficiently.

I’ve only touched on a few soft skills. See you next month for more.

How have soft skills affected your life? Please leave a comment below.

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