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There is nothing 'soft' about soft skills

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June 30, 2025 by Felicia White — President, CHART

The skills frontline managers require are categorized as "hard" and "soft" skills. The "hard skills" (which I noted in my initial blog post) are those focused on the daily management of the restaurant operation, such as inventory, marketing, and financial management.

A quick Google search of the key skills areas a restaurant manager should have lists leadership, communication, customer service, problem-solving, and organization. These skills are also those which commonly fall into the "soft skills" category.
The question becomes, if these skills are considered key, then why are they also called soft? Soft skills was a term introduced by the military in the 1960s to categorize the skills that did not involve operating machinery, such as interpersonal abilities, leadership, and communication. By categorizing the required skills as hard and soft, they have often been placed opposite each other and as a result, prioritized as those skills which are required to have and those that are nice to have.

Therefore, when it comes to prioritizing what to focus on in training, soft skills could end up being given less focus in restaurant manager training programs.
It is important that when developing restaurant managers, leadership skills (this term is more fitting than soft skills) should be given equal (if not more) importance in training to experience improvement in operations performance. Of course, time and resources are limited when it comes to the development of restaurant managers, and there is a need to balance the immediate opportunity of ensuring the manager has the required operations knowledge with the individual knowing how to lead and develop the team.

A quick Google search of "leadership skills" will give you articles and other writings listing more than 20 different skills. To conduct a viable research study, it was necessary to first identify which leadership skills are most important and effective for a restaurant manager to display.

A detailed review of related literature highlighting the leadership skills required for front-line managers in the restaurant industry noted four skills: emotional intelligence, delegation, communication, and conflict management. These four leadership skills served as the basis for my research and would prove to make connections to improvements in operations performance.

I will unpack all four in future blog posts. Stay tuned.

Staffing

About Felicia White

Felicia White is an experienced leader in the hospitality industry, supporting individuals and businesses with achieving operations excellence, exceeding goals, and managing change. Felicia serves as a volunteer and board member with CHART (Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers), and President for the 2024-2025 service term. She also serves on the advisory board for Women in Restaurant Leadership (WiRL), and is a member of the Women’s Foodservice Forum. Felicia is also a sought after subject matter expert in Front Line Leadership Development.

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