Nov 17, 2025
Soft Skills vs Hard Skills: What Actually Gets You Promoted
Here's an uncomfortable truth: Your technical skills might be holding back your career.
If you're reading this, chances are you've watched less technically skilled colleagues move past you on the career ladder. You've perfected your craft, earned certifications, and can solve problems instantly. Yet somehow, you're still waiting for that promotion, that leadership role, that recognition you deserve.
The brutal reality? Being the best programmer, analyst, or engineer in the room often becomes a career trap rather than a career boost. Companies love having technical experts who can solve complex problems, but they rarely promote them into leadership roles because the skills that make you indispensable at the technical level are completely different from the skills that drive career advancement. According to research, 85% of career success comes from soft skills, while technical knowledge accounts for just 15%.
So what's the solution? You need to understand which soft skills actually drive promotions, why companies promote based on different criteria than they hire, and how to develop both skill sets without abandoning your technical edge.
The Two Pillars of Professional Success
Before moving forward, let’s be clear about what we're dealing with. When we talk about the skills gap that's hurting careers, we're really talking about two different types of abilities that companies value very differently.
Hard skills are what got you hired in the first place. These are the technical abilities specific to your job for example programming languages, data analysis, accounting, medical procedures, engineering calculations. You learn them through school, certifications, and training programs. You can test them, measure them, put them on a resume.
Soft skills are the people skills that determine whether you can actually work with others. Communication, leadership, emotional smarts, adaptability, strategic thinking. These skills can't be easily measured, but they're what separate workers from leaders.
Here's where most professionals get it wrong: they think hard skills matter most because you can see and measure them. But in reality emotional intelligence and soft skills predict success better than technical skills alone.
The pattern is the same everywhere. Developers need communication skills to work on teams. Doctors need empathy along with medical knowledge. Financial analysts need presentation skills to go with their number skills. Yet most people spend most of their time learning hard skills and wonder why they're not moving up.
Why Technical Experts Rarely Get Promoted
Here's what happens to most technical professionals: you become really good at your job, and then you get stuck there.
Many skilled professionals hit what career coaches call the "expertise trap", the point where being excellent at technical work actually hurts your career instead of helping it.
This trap manifests in several predictable ways:
You Get Stuck in Your Role:
Technical experts often get put into specialist jobs where their deep knowledge is valued, but there's nowhere to go up. Companies need these experts to stay hands-on with technical work, which creates an invisible ceiling that stops you from moving into leadership roles.
Technical Skills Don't Equal Management Skills:
Being the best at technical work doesn't automatically mean you can manage people, think strategically, or guide teams through complex projects.
You Can't Explain Your Work to Others:
Technical brilliance that can't be explained is wasted. Clients and stakeholders need to understand not just what you can do, but why it matters and how it solves their problems. Without communication skills, even the most creative solutions fail to get support.
You Create Team Problems:
Highly technical people who lack people skills can create workplace friction. Their focus on technical perfection might clash with how teams work together, leading to lower team productivity and morale.
Consider Ali, a senior data scientist who could build incredibly smart machine learning models. When presenting to executives, he struggled to explain his work's business impact in simple terms. Despite his technical skills, he was repeatedly passed over for senior roles that required talking with business stakeholders. His career only changed when he learned to communicate his technical work in business language.
The Soft Skills That Actually Get You Promoted
Now that you understand why technical skills can trap you, let's talk about what actually drives career growth. While technical skills are different across industries, the soft skills that get people promoted are surprisingly consistent.
Here are the game-changers that separate workers from leaders:
Communication: The ability to explain complex ideas in simple terms to different people, listen actively, and write clearly. This includes translating technical work for non-technical people and changing how you communicate based on who you're talking to.
Emotional Intelligence: Being aware of your own emotions, understanding others' feelings, and managing relationships well under pressure. According to research by TalentSmart, 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence.
Leadership & Influence: The ability to inspire others, make good decisions, and solve conflicts in a positive way. Leadership isn't about having authority, it's about getting good results even when you're not the boss.
Adaptability: Being comfortable with change, learning new things quickly, and bouncing back from setbacks. In today's fast-changing workplace, the ability to adjust and keep learning is crucial.
Collaboration: Working well with different teams and departments, getting people to agree on decisions, and maintaining good professional relationships. Modern work requires working with others.
Strategic Thinking: Seeing the big picture, solving problems beyond just your immediate tasks, and understanding how your work fits into the company's bigger goals. Strategic thinkers spot problems and opportunities before others do.
What Hiring Managers Really Look For
Understanding how employers actually judge candidates and employees for promotions shows why soft skills matter so much in the real world.
Here's what's really happening behind closed doors when promotion decisions are made:
The Hiring Reality
A study by LinkedIn found that 92% of talent professionals believe soft skills are equally important or more important than hard skills when hiring. Yet 89% say bad hires usually lack soft skills, not technical abilities.
Promotion Criteria:
When looking at internal candidates for advancement, managers look beyond just getting tasks done to leadership potential. Can this person inspire a team? Do they explain complex ideas clearly? How do they handle conflict and pressure? These questions matter more than technical test scores.
Leadership Pipeline:
Companies actively look for employees who can grow into leadership roles. They want people who not only do great work in their current jobs but also show the people skills needed to guide teams and achieve company goals.
Cultural Fit Factor:
Organizations care a lot about cultural fit because personality and working style affect entire teams. A technically brilliant but difficult colleague can hurt overall team productivity and morale. Companies increasingly choose candidates who help rather than hurt team dynamics.
ROI of Soft Skills:
Employees with strong soft skills create real business value. They reduce time spent solving conflicts, improve client satisfaction scores, make projects run smoother, and help teams stay together longer. This real impact makes them invaluable to companies.
How to Actually Build These Skills
Developing soft skills is different from learning technical skills. You can't just watch a YouTube tutorial or take a course. Here's how to actually build the skills that will get you promoted:
Start With an Honest Assessment:
Figure out where you currently stand. Ask trusted colleagues for feedback, look at past performance reviews, and think about situations where you struggled professionally. Tools like the EQ-i 2.0 assessment can give you structured insights into your emotional intelligence.
Development Strategies:
Ask colleagues and supervisors regularly for feedback, specifically about how you communicate, collaborate, and show leadership potential
Volunteer for projects that require working with different departments and groups of people
Take on presentation opportunities, starting with small internal team meetings and gradually building to larger audiences
Join professional associations or industry groups where you can practice networking and relationship-building skills
Find mentorship relationships both as a mentee (to learn from experienced professionals) and as a mentor (to develop coaching and leadership skills)
Practice in Safe Spaces:
Look for low-risk ways to develop soft skills in your current job. Offer to lead team meetings, run brainstorming sessions, or coordinate projects between teams. These give you safe spaces to practice leadership and communication skills without high stakes.
Track Your Progress:
Unlike technical skills, soft skill improvement is harder to measure. Look for feedback from colleagues, better collaboration results, successful presentations, or positive responses when you take leadership. Keep a simple journal to document your growth over time.
Combine Both Skill Types:
Don't stop learning technical skills, instead, find ways to combine both. If you're learning a new programming language, offer to teach it to junior team members. If you're developing analysis skills, present your findings to different groups. This approach helps you improve both skill types at the same time.
Building Your Path to Success
The most successful professionals understand that career advancement requires mastering both technical excellence and human connection. Technical skills get you hired and establish credibility, but soft skills determine how far you'll climb and how much impact you'll have. As artificial intelligence continues to automate routine technical tasks, uniquely human capabilities become even more valuable.
Your next steps: Start by honestly assessing your current skill balance. Identify 2-3 soft skills that would have the biggest impact on your career goals. Then look for opportunities within your current role to practice and develop these capabilities. Remember, small consistent improvements in how you communicate, collaborate, and lead will compound into significant career advantages over time.
Ready to accelerate your career growth? Create your profile on Taraki to connect with employers who value both your technical expertise and leadership potential.