That's a well written article, but I find myself agreeing with your last sentence. When has there ever been a time when people skills weren't the most important tool in your toolkit?

People tend to get hired, and certainly often get promoted, based on who they know and how well they are able to identify and play the game that the people making those promotion decisions want them to play.

I've seen this process at work in the military, in school and in the working world and it amazes me that we haven't gotten to the point where we demand that our educational system teach our children the skills that we all realize they are going to need. What good is all this knowledge when we aren't teaching our future generations how to actually function in the working world? The soft skills, as they say, have been and most certainly will continue to be the most important skills for as long as people make emotional decisions. Shouldn't we be expecting our educational system to help provide these essential skills?