In an increasingly agile and interconnected world dominated by technology, soft skills — or interpersonal and behavioral competencies — have become a central focus in implementing strategic performance levers.
Why are they important, and how can they make a difference?
Technical professions have long been associated with “hard” skills: mastery of tools, scientific rigor, and specialized knowledge. Although this view remains widespread, it is increasingly being challenged. Being an excellent technician is no longer enough. One must also know how to work in a team, communicate clearly, manage stress, and demonstrate adaptability.
Engineering schools, universities, and companies have recognized the importance of these “soft” skills. Communication workshops, stress management training, role-playing, and mentoring programs are multiplying to help technical profiles develop their emotional and interpersonal intelligence.
Technical environments now face complex challenges:
Cross-functional and international projects
Agile methods and collaborative work
Strengthened customer relations
Rapid technological change
In this context, certain soft skills have become essential:
Communication: to clearly explain technical concepts to non-specialists.
Critical thinking and problem-solving: to innovate under new constraints.
Empathy and listening: to better understand user or client needs.
Leadership and teamwork: to lead projects and motivate multidisciplinary teams.
Soft skills are no longer just a complement to technical skills — they are now their strategic extension. In a world where collaboration, innovation, and agility are key, they represent a sustainable competitive advantage. Far from opposing this shift, technical professions have become the primary grounds for its development.
A Lever for internal mobility
As recruiters, we all know how difficult it is to find rare talents who tick all the boxes in terms of technical, relational, and behavioral competencies. Hence the importance of cultivating existing skills within the company and encouraging internal mobility.
Take, for example, supporting employees toward team management roles. Engineers, developers, technicians — these technical profiles are at the heart of operational performance. But when they move into management positions, a new challenge arises: transitioning from individual expertise to collective leadership. How can they be supported in this transition?
Training technical experts in management means:
Valuing internal talent
Strengthening company culture through technical leadership
Preventing talent loss to competitors
Creating managers who understand on-the-ground challenges and operational teams
It is also a key factor in employee engagement and sustainable performance.
To explore the subject further, here is an interview with Jean Istasse by our Practice Director and Director of the Northern Region, Victoire Duhem.
Jean Istasse, former General Manager of the Pluxee entity at the Sodexo Group, joins us on the topic.
He has spent 27 years with the group and has lived in Eastern Europe for several years.
Victoire: How have you seen the role of soft skills evolve in technical professions over the course of your career?
Jean: I’ve seen the technological environment become more complex, which has led to a more fragmented and specialized structure within tech teams, requiring more communication and coordination within those teams. I’ve also seen the emergence of roles like product owner and product manager in tech and digital businesses, establishing a new relationship with tech teams, one that is very fact- and data-driven. Work methods for developing tech have evolved significantly, particularly with the widespread adoption of agile/scrum methods across most companies, and the roles that come with them.
Development cycles have become shorter and more intense, requiring ongoing, daily transparency about project progress and encountered issues, etc. The feedback culture is much more present than before. This entire evolution has demanded more proactivity, communication, and coordination skills from the soft skill side. In my view, this has made tech teams much more involved in discussions with the business side than they were before.
Victoire: To what extent have soft skills become strategic for collective performance in companies?
Jean: Tech businesses rely on very significant investments, which impact company balance sheets and results. These investments must be as effective as possible; otherwise, the company will quickly lose competitiveness in increasingly competitive markets.
This weight of technological investment is, in my opinion, what should trigger a specific focus on soft skills, to achieve that efficiency and productivity at every level.
Victoire: Have you identified any specific soft skills that make a difference for managers from technical backgrounds?
Jean: In environments that are becoming more complex both externally and internally, it’s crucial to avoid the creation of silos where employees lose their sense of purpose, their understanding of overall goals, and the impact of their work — which will ultimately lead to underperformance across the organization.
To prevent that, management must focus on several key aspects:
Ensuring cross-team collaboration and communication
Supporting problem-solving by actively engaging with employees, making sure the right conversations happen with the right people to overcome difficulties or friction that may arise.
This requires a degree of managerial courage and a good amount of empathy.
Victoire: What cultural or organizational obstacles still hinder the recognition of soft skills?
Jean: As environments become more complex, management sometimes tends to increase control at all levels of the company to ensure proper tracking of plans, projects, and performance.
Of course, monitoring is fully justified, but it can also lead to excessive reporting and follow-up meetings, which risk being seen as overly controlling and unproductive. Employees may feel they’re operating within a too-restrictive framework that stifles their potential for expression and initiative.
Management needs to find the right balance, starting by setting an example (walking the talk), giving teams and employees real autonomy in executing tasks and achieving goals, and promoting a spirit of progress and continuous improvement. This will help generate initiatives and innovations that create value for the company.
Victoire: How have these issues been incorporated into your HR practices or talent development plans?
Jean: I’ve been fortunate to work in a company where one of the core values was the spirit of progress. This helped foster a culture of initiative and continuous improvement, which supported both performance and professional development.
It’s within this framework that the HR practices I’ve seen have evolved. In recent years, I’ve particularly noticed the development of more detailed competency grids for each position, with a special emphasis on soft skills, especially for tech profiles.
Soft skills have taken on a much larger role than in the past — not just in regular conversations between managers and employees, but also in performance reviews and professional development plans, with numerous training opportunities.
I believe that in many companies today, there are probably more training programs available for soft skills than for hard skills — and that makes perfect sense in today’s ever-changing world.