Difference Makers Discuss - Best of Season 4

When you think about it, I mentioned at the beginning, like schools and colleges don't teach soft skills, they teach hard skills.

And you have to have these hard skills.

Hard skills get you on the ladder, soft skills get you up the ladder.

But progress in school or college is a function of a grade, a score, a mark, a metric.

And it's got nothing to do with the person sitting beside you.

And then you get into the real world of work.

And there's a whole series of things that count, but can't be counted.

So resilience and determination and grit and attitude and humour, and as we say here, crack, they all count a lot.

They all matter a lot, but they can't be counted.

So they tend to be discounted.

And that's a gap.

That's a shame, you know.

So I think that that's the first point to be that.

I think there's a series of things Skills, if you like, that go to make up this kind of mosaic of soft skills.

I think being a really great listener is one, which again, listening is not taught.

Most people listen, I say they listen for the gap.

Most people listen purely to wait to jump in with what they want to say.

Most people are narcissistic listeners.

In other words, you know, if you said to me, I'm thinking of buying a car, you know, I bought one last weekend, the guy wanted $20,000.

I'd jump in and say, I got one the week before for $30,000.

It's a fantastic car.

I mean, we tend to hijack conversations.

We want to jump in.

We want to give advice, advice, advice, but...

It doesn't work because it's not their advice, it's your advice, you know.