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How to define soft skills in 2026? Complete scientific definition, difference with hard skills, list of 18 key soft skills, business examples and how to develop them objectively.
"We need to develop soft skills." You have heard this sentence a thousand times. In executive committees, in annual reviews, in a McKinsey report or in a personal development book. But if someone asked you to precisely define what a soft skill actually is, would you know how to answer?
At Rising Up, our scientific team in cognitive sciences (CNRS, ENS-PSL, EHESS) has been working for more than 10 years to give a rigorous definition to this widely used and often blurry term. This article offers a complete guide to:
The term soft skills first appeared in the 1970s within the US Army, to describe the behavioural competencies of officers that did not fall under the technical mastery of an equipment (the "hard skills"). The term then spread into the corporate world, and later into education.
In English, people also refer to behavioural skills, human skills, transversal skills or people skills. At Rising Up, we also use the term core skills, which better captures their central role in professional performance.
In our scientific framework, a soft skill is defined by three precise criteria:
These three criteria clearly distinguish soft skills from the "personality traits" measured by classical psychometric tests (PAPI, 16PF, MBTI, DISC, Hogan). Traits are assumed to be stable. Soft skills can be trained.
According to the OECD (2024), 85% of professional success factors depend on soft skills. Not on the hard skills visible on a CV. Not on the name of the school. Not on the previous employer brand.
This figure explains why 68% of French employers today identify the development of relational competencies as a strategic priority (Ministry of Labour, 2025), and why 38% of professional development investments now focus on soft skills, compared to only 18% in 2018.
Three concepts are often confused in HR literature. Here are the precise distinctions.
Hard skills are the technical competencies tied to a specific profession or tool: mastering Python, speaking English, using Excel, driving a heavy vehicle, operating an industrial machine. They are:
Soft skills are the behavioural competencies that determine how a person interacts with their professional environment: emotional regulation, initiative-taking, active listening, mental flexibility, reasoning under uncertainty. They are:
Personality traits are stable characteristics presumed to be innate or acquired very early in life: extraversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness (the 5 Big Five traits). They are:
| Criterion | Hard skills | Soft skills | Personality traits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nature | Technical | Behavioural | Descriptive |
| Learning | Formal (school, training) | Implicit + training | Little or none |
| Measurement | Objective test | Contextualised simulation | Self-assessment |
| Contextualisation | Independent | Contextual | Generic |
| Stability over time | Varies (tech obsolescence) | Modulable (trainable) | Assumed stable |
| Predictivity of performance | Moderate | Strong | Weak |
In 2026, our scientific team consolidated its framework from 25 to 18 core skills (see our article on the evolution of the framework). These 18 competencies are organised into 3 families.
The competencies that enable a person to collaborate effectively, make decisions under pressure and carry a vision within a collective.
The competencies that enable a person to produce new ideas, reason within complexity and communicate clearly.
The competencies that enable a person to deliver on time, adjust their strategies and honour their commitments.
To help anchor the definition, here is how these competencies manifest in real professional situations.
Situation: your client tells you in a meeting that they are changing the project specs 3 days before the deadline.
Without emotional regulation: you react in the heat of the moment, openly express your frustration, the relationship deteriorates, you start on a tense footing.
With emotional regulation: you acknowledge the message, take 30 seconds to reformulate the impact, and propose a mitigation plan. The conversation remains constructive.
Situation: your manager asks you to take over a project that you know is poorly scoped and carries high risks.
Without assertive influence: you accept to avoid conflict, knowing that things will go badly.
With assertive influence: you accept the principle, but set 3 conditions to make the project feasible. You defend your point without aggression, bringing facts to the table.
Situation: your team needs to decide between 2 technical options for an architecture, with very few external experience returns available.
Without reasoning under uncertainty: you postpone the decision waiting for more information that will not come. The project slows down.
With reasoning under uncertainty: you list what you know, what you assume, and what remains uncertain. You decide based on facts plus explicit hypotheses, with a fallback plan if the hypothesis proves wrong.
Situation: your product roadmap was oriented B2C. A strong market signal suggests you should pivot to B2B.
Without mental flexibility: you stick with the initial plan because "we have already prepared everything for B2C".
With mental flexibility: you accept to challenge the initial hypothesis, seek to understand the new signal, and reassess the roadmap without triggering a full-scale rethink.
Unlike hard skills, soft skills are not learned through a formal curriculum. They are developed through three main levers.
This is the most powerful lever. A person who has never managed a conflict cannot develop their conflict management capability from books. They must be exposed to conflicts, manage several of them, and learn from their successes and failures.
A good soft skills development programme therefore exposes employees to contextualised training situations: case studies, simulations, role-plays, real-situation coaching.
Without feedback, experience does not translate into learning. Structured qualitative feedback allows you to:
The best soft skills programmes include 360° feedback sessions, individual coaching, and post-project team debriefings.
You can only develop what you measure. Regular soft skills mapping allows you to:
This is exactly what Rising Up deploys at Google Performance Agency, at Adobe and at Orange Cloud for Business: initial measurement, contextualised development plan, measurement at 6-12 months, adjustment.
Classical psychometric tests (see our dedicated article on the psychometric test) rely on declarative self-assessment. The candidate ticks what they think they are. The result: up to 40% of variance linked to social desirability bias.
Rising Up's Soft Skill Scan changes the paradigm. Recognised as a breakthrough innovation by the European Innovation Council, it combines two dimensions:
Duration: 20 minutes. Result: a profile across the 18 core skills, in strengths and points of vigilance, with a role compatibility score.
There is no universal figure. Lists vary depending on the framework: 10 in some HR consultancies, 25 in older versions of the Rising Up framework, 18 today at Rising Up, and more than 50 in some academic models. Scientific consolidation tends to converge on 15-20 distinct dimensions.
"Key competencies" generally refer to competencies deemed crucial for a given role or organisation. They can include both hard skills and soft skills. A soft skill can therefore be a key competency if it is identified as such for the role. See our article on the list of professional competencies.
No, strictly speaking. Soft skills are built throughout life through experiences, interactions and role models. What people call "natural soft skills" is in fact the result of an early construction (family, school, first social experiences). It is not innate, it is acquired very early.
The competencies themselves are universal (all humans can develop empathy or emotional regulation), but their expression is cultural. The way of expressing assertiveness in Japan or in the United States differs strongly, without the underlying competency being different.
If you are looking to objectively assess the soft skills of your candidates or employees, or to map the behavioural competencies expected for a role, discover the Rising Up recruitment pilot programme:
🎯 150 behavioural assessments over 8 weeks, on the candidates of your 5 targeted roles
🎯 The CoreSkills AI analysis of your 5 job descriptions (acquired for life, even if the programme is stopped mid-way)
🎯 €3,000 excl. tax paid in full at signature, valid until September 30, 2026 (then €4,500 excl. tax)
🎯 Limited to 5 companies per month
Send us a message 📩 at hello@risinguparis.com and we will organise a 15-minute demonstration for you within the week.
From recruitment At development skills, Rising Up provides reliable behavioral data to guide your HR and educational choices.
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