Soft Skills, provided that they are soft

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When you take up studies and training courses linked to the creative and cultural industries (CCI), you first and foremost develop limitless creativity and vast technical expertise. Yet, today, 99% of this ecosystem consists of SMEs or micro-enterprises. And to have your cultural entrepreneurship business flourish, it is essential to go beyond technical skills and develop your soft skills.
Cultural and creative entrepreneurship, as a concept, almost seems contradictory. On the one hand, you have the business sector, that of capital and economic value. On the other, you have culture, creativity, aesthetics and contemplation. One almost has the impression that it is antinomic, even vulgar, to recognise an economic dimension to the beauty of art. However, talking about the CCIs, means promoting a mass of activities, encouraging projects to flourish and innovative businesses to grow.
Far from [being] mutually exclusive [these two dimensions] can complement and enrich each other, encouraging projects to flourish and innovative businesses to grow. This synergy is evident in the creation of companies dedicated to the production or distribution of cultural goods and services, such as art galleries, publishing houses, design and fashion studios, sound creation studios, music labels, video game studios, photography agencies, theatre companies and digital libraries […] These businesses contribute to cultural vitality, job creation and sustainable economic prosperity (source: here)
Within all of these sectors, a multitude of professions are being born: ranging from the most well-known (photographer, web designer, IT support technician) to the most emergent (UX/UI designer, digital marketing manager, virtual reality specialist, cybersecurity manager, or a game-level design developer). So, it goes without saying, this explosion of digital and tech professions has engendered an increased demand for technical skills, often designated by the term ‘hard skills’. These skills include mastery of software, programming, database management, the specific tools and abilities required to succeed in your creative domain.
But another finding leads us to note that today this CCI ecosystem consists of 99% SMEs or micro-enterprises. And to develop your company, it is essential to go beyond these technical skills. The ‘soft skills’ are crucial in the development of a professional activity.
Soft skills, or interpersonal skills, encompass a variety of capabilities such as communication, team work, problem solving, time management and emotional intelligence. If you wish your project to expand, you must be able to write a business plan, to pitch it, challenge it, put together financial record dossiers and fill in applications for grants. You must be able to coordinate a project, a team, demonstrate agility and resilience. Be a visionary and into creation. Anyhow, you get the gist. Unlike hard skills, which can often be taught and measured in an objective way in educational institutions (schools, competence centres, etc.), the soft skills are often overlooked.
A grid to explain
Soft skills are behavioural, people-centred, interpersonal and emotional abilities which allow you to adapt to a given situation (environment, project, team, etc.). These skills are transversal, in other words, they may be displayed in several work and personal contexts; they are not partitioned off to specific professions or organisations.
There are masses of classifications which enable soft skills to be categorised: the 4 Cs (Creativity, Critical mind, Cooperation and Communication), or the soft skills wheel (communication, interpersonal skills, intra-personal skills, leadership, learning skills, skills in thinking and imagination skills).
The authors of the work ‘The Soft Skills Challenge’ (in other words Jérémy Lamri, Michel Barabel, Olivier Meier and Todd Lubart) have developed a skills grid subdivided into meta-capabilities and then core capabilities. This taxonomy, called Hester H10, is presented in the following way:

What is quite striking is that once you start to consider people-centred skills, linked to self-awareness and interpersonal relations, there is often a confusion which comes down to this: on the one hand, there are personality traits which are innate. On the other, there are skills which can be developed, worked on. Both will have an impact on our performance in the workplace but the skills are not ‘intrinsic to the individual and are not stable over time. They pertain to the tenor of the relationship between the individual and their work’ and the ways in which they can be utilised and deployed (source: here).
We are who we are
To clear the ground, we met up with Leïla Maidane. In 2018, this strategy and innovation enthusiast launched Interskillar.
Whilst Interskillar’s core mission is primarily focused on providing support for young people transitioning to the job market, the concept which aims to enhance the natural talents of each individual could be adapted to any jobseeker, anyone in vocational retraining or a person having doubts. Rather than choosing a career path on the basis of a projection one might have of a profession, let’s start from our strengths and our intrinsic qualities.
So let’s go to the first product offered by Interskillar: its application! Having created an account, we get started on a test consisting of some thirty or so questions. ‘Interskillar’s psychometric tests reveal the unique qualities by which you stand out. Discover your strengths, your professional skills and explore the personalised career suggestions which correspond to your actual potential.’ Message received!
Some twenty minutes later the app generates a career manual for us (one might say an online skills appraisal) consisting of 3 components:
1) The character traits: we discover a graph which offers us a complete overview of our personality according to 20 characteristics. The higher the score, the more pronounced this characteristic is. As Leïla points out, ‘that for a start lets you position yourself. If you score 9/10 for looking for stability, you know that entrepreneurship might not be ideal.’ The objective here is to understand what defines us the most accurately to help us (the young and the not so young, in the end) opt for careers and activity domains which bring out our qualities and our strengths.

2) The talents passport: according to our capabilities (and our personality traits – are you still following, that’s very good), the platform draws up a personalised list of the professions which match our profile (and summarises for us the job, the training centres, the qualifications, our earning potential, etc. The whole package, or what!)


3) The toolbox: still in the area of personalisation, it consists of recommendations concerning training, networking avenues, ideas concerning the type of organisation we might consider checking out, etc. – We are happy to be able to put on our CV that we are ‘enthusiastic’, ‘imaginative’, ‘dynamic’, ‘creative’ and ‘friendly’.
This product (which is offered in the form of services to some twenty or so young people within the context of the SKUP, Skill Up to Skill Up project to help them become autonomous in their job seeking and to gain control over their careers) is a guidance base. ‘We have observed a rise in the numbers of young people who want to become entrepreneurs because they have been disgusted by the idea of business companies. They worry that they might not feel comfortable there, that they might not fit in, that they might experience burnout, etc. With this psychometric test, we have just really opened up your mind a little to the professions you may like but also to the companies and the working environments which have projects which may add value to your natural talents. Young people are turning to entrepreneurship, but it is not the only option,’ affirms Leïla.
Upgrade your skills
This talents passport is a basis for getting to know ourselves better and learn our personality traits. But what about these soft skills to be developed? What are the essential skills which in 2024 it is necessary to acquire? For Alice Benoit, commercial manager at Amplo, the essential people-centred skills in 2024 are emotional intelligence, the ability to communicate, work in a team, find solutions, solve problems, accept criticism, manage projects (priorities, organisation, etc.) and adaptability. Leïla endorses this list, in adding that it encompasses core soft skills, necessary for every individual on the job market, whether they are focused on the CCIs or no matter what other domain. But she tags on that there are obviously skills to be developed which are linked to the outcomes of the psychometric tests and thus the careers which the young and not so young wish to embark on. ‘It’s 100% certain that leadership and team management are soft skills to polish up when you opt for CCI entrepreneurship.’

Pay your accounts department
Another skill to be acquired for future cultural entrepreneurs is basic administrative and financial management. Virginie Civrais, the director of ST’ART, regularly notes this: ‘most of the time, what is missing, are basic management skills, in other words, in accounting, management, even margin calculating, it’s something which seems abstract.’
To keep it short, ST’ART is an investment fund. And as its name would suggest, it offers funding solutions to the actors in the cultural and creative industries in Wallonia and Brussels. The fund acts both as lender to and as an equity investor in society. It will be noted that it uses the term ‘company in the European sense, which is to say that the non-profit organisations, the cooperatives, the private limited companies, the ASAs, etc. may tap into this aid. This innovative vision of entrepreneurship corroborates our outlook in the introduction: the CCI sector has a real economic plus-value. ‘Back in the day, when we were starting to work, the concept of cultural and creative industries was only just emerging. Europe said to itself, “hang on a minute, we will have to designate all these activities within a group to give them economic weight.” Me, I think it was a smart move. It allows you to measure employment, GDP, etc.’
Be that as it may, to benefit from interventions from ST’ART, you will have to provide a carefully thought through (logical) project and, it goes without saying, fill in a substantial dossier. And that is where it gets interesting: to complete this aforementioned loan dossier intelligently, you will, of course, need technical skills, but you will also require… (drum roll) soft skills, needless to say. Whilst ST’ART primarily focuses on people-centred issues, it remains the case that this fund is taking a risk by investing thousands of Euros in a company. It is thus vital that the financial management is a given to demonstrate that the repayment of the loan (or the selling of shares) is ensured.
My school system hurts
what role for the school in the learning of these soft skills? Virginie explains: ‘In art schools, you are in a bubble of creativity and artistic practice. And it’s wonderful! But you cannot let the young people leave with illusions. We are not necessarily asking for a revolution in the courses given, but that there are introduced modules linked to management, for example. If you take the fashion sector, you might want to create your company. How do you achieve a margin? How do you go about selling? From a legal perspective, how do you protect your creations? It’s like in architecture! The students who go through architecture studies are no better equipped than someone graduating from fashion, even though it’s pretty much 100% certain that they will become self-employed! From time to time, I (Virginie) have represented ST’ART in university interventions in cultural management. But it is automatically in itself geared towards “management”.’
That explains why we are now seeing flourish masses of initiatives to make up for these shortcomings. From a very practical perspective, Alice recommended https://travi.be/fr/outils/testyourselfie to test yourself on 9 soft skills. For funding issues, Virginie insisted on Hub Info, on “So You Need Money”, but also on the support provided by the business innovation centres.
The good news is that in Wallonia, there is now being put into place an ecosystem to pool all these issues which actors in digital creativity are faced with. On the wake! by Digital Wallonia label are found business companies, training centres (such as Technocité, a specialist in CCI professions), universities, creative third places, events, funding and support-provision bodies (such as ST’ART and AMPLO, incidentally), because this question of skills is transversal and is a real competitiveness issue for a whole industry.
We met Delphine Jenart, who is piloting this project for KIKK non-profit organisation. ‘For the World Creativity Day initiated by the UNESCO last April, wake! issued a collective shout-out in a press release: “The digital is everywhere. It is therefore necessary to, on the one hand, engage with the digital technologies in every domain (in culture but also in retail, education, industry, mobility, etc.) in driving the skills which are termed hard. But it is also necessary to develop these soft skills which today are a transversal issue in every economic segment and which, in the end, go way beyond them because they are essential to our life in society.”’
wake! has therefore been mandated, as a movement representing the digital CCIs in Wallonia, to highlight the various training pathways available to future and actual entrepreneurs in digital creativity. ‘Wallonia is teeming with options. They therefore have to be mapped so that the resources can be identified but also as a means of defining the non-covered spaces which it will be necessary to complete, because the digital creativity companies are no exception, they are also looking for those profiles it is said there is a “shortage” of. And for that to happen it is vital that these skills are worked on at the very youngest age with the STEAM (Sciences, Technologies, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics).’
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