BE PART OF THE LEGACY
TAMPA BAY • FEBRUARY 23-24 2026
This FINAL encore experience will be unlike any other. Because like everything we do, it's been "reimagined" from beginning to end. It's not a virtual or hybrid event. It's not a conference. It's not a seminar, a workshop, a meeting, or a symposium. And it's not your typical run-of-the-mill everyday event crammed with stages, keynote speeches, team-building exercises, PowerPoint presentations, and all the other conventional humdrum. Because it's up close & personal by design. Where conversation trumps presentation. And where authentic connection runs deep.
An executives soft skill set is 25% soft? I always found soft skills hovering around 50% for senior management and 75% for executives. Then again this is for our Fortune clients. When the companies are smaller and the hierarchy flattened, I see 25% of skills being soft. Then again, maybe what I consider soft skills is not the same as those described in this article.
Thanks Chris for your comment. My experience may differ from yours, but here it is. For two three billion plus international companies, where I personally did the coaching for over 100 executives (cash comp between $300 and $800K/annum) in each company, hard skills prevailed. Such hard skills included functional acumen, financial acumen, strategic planning, stock market relations, etc. Hope this helps. Jack
Thanks Jack. Our experiences do over lap, though the majority of my background comes with doing strategic change and culture change for national and international companies. Our firm works with a wide range of executives. If we break down the hourly activities of executives at our clients in buckets, the ratios for the executives can be…
40% – politics (35% soft)
30% – working at same level or level above (25% soft)
20% – planning for subordinates, communications, removing impediments (10% soft)
10% – working with subordinates (5% soft)
= 75% of all hours require soft skills
Now if politics is subdued in the organization the ratios can look like
40% – working at same level and above (10% soft)
30% – planning for subordinates, communications, removing impediments (5% soft)
20% – working with subordinates (5% soft)
10% – politics (5% soft)
= 25% of all hours require soft skills
When citing my ratios before, I did not consider low political organizations, nor did I include context. My apologies on that. Also, to emphasize the ratios for soft to hard skills can be very subjective. We talk quite a bit about this to our clients, the dollar investment needed, and level of returns expected.
Hi Chris, Though our ratios may differ slightly, to me, the key point here is that leadership development programs should cover both hard and soft skills TOGETHER, within the practical context of the executive’s real world business objectives, strategies, challenges and plans. Until LD programs stop treating leadership as though it occurs in a vacuum, devoid of the hard skills and executive’s business objectives, etc., they will continue to fail in the eyes of the CEO because they offer little or no business value in relation to the amount of valuable time the executives will expend on the program itself.
Jack
Chris, though our ratios may differ somewhat, the important point here is LD programs should cover both hard and soft skills TOGETHER, within the practical context of the executive’s real world business objectives, strategies, challenges and plans. Such programs cannot treat leadership as though it exists in a vacumm, devoid of the executive’s real world realities.
All the best, Jack
The ratios I gave are real examples of what we see at our client sites.
I’m in total agreement about the strong cohesion with soft and hard skills. However, I must stress that without specific data points separating the soft skills from the hard is impossible. This all changes when the data is there and all tracked. What is an executive’s force multiplier? With specific data collected we can help answer that by tracking the impact executives have in meetings, processes, and communications.
That said, getting clients to do the warm and fuzzy soft skills is a very hard sell. No one wants to pay someone so they can get you to sit on a yoga mat and talk about your feelings. For us to sell a service, everything has to be from the systemic view point, even the soft skills need to be looked at from a systemic view point.