You’ve been getting sick a lot lately so you go to the doctor. They’re not sure exactly what’s going on so you’re prescribed a regimen of tests. 

You dutifully go through all the hassles. You are stripped, robed, put into machines, poked, prodded, and had tubes put where no tubes should go. Then, you’re told you’ll get a call with the results.

You wait, patiently… ish. Then the day arrives. An email appears with your results. “YOU HAVE CANCER,” says the email. 

How do you feel now? Was getting an email good or would you have rather received that message from a human being who offered some solace and support? 

We often give human skills—also known by the misleading term soft skills—short shrift. We train all the technical, easy-to-measure skills and give them prominence, yet the human stuff is marginalized as a sort of weakness …until… something like the above example comes into our world. 

While work can get done by machines, feeling cannot. While measuring things feels like our only way to definitively see progress, it is the unmeasurable stuff that makes us feel good when progress is made. Ironic? Yes. We humans are an odd blend of ironies, but the blend matters. 

We need measurement. The patient needs those objective tests. However, we need the unmeasurables, too. 

When you were a kid in school, did you like math class or did you like art class? I know I liked art because I could let myself go and get my hands covered in paint and create whatever my brain could think up. Does that mean math isn’t important? Of course not. It just means our lives would be colorless without the unmeasurables that make being human, well, human. 

As you go about your work today and get caught up in measuring everything twice and counting the numbers, don’t forget to do some finger painting and deliver messages in human ways rather than an email. Those human skills matter more than you know. 

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