In his recent article on Managing the Soft Skills Gap in Younger Workers, Bruce Tulgan of www.RainmakerThinking.com contends that when employees have significant gaps in their soft skills, there are significant negative consequences.  Potentially good hires are overlooked.  Good hires go bad.  Bad hires go worse.  Misunderstandings abound.  People are distracted.  Productivity decreases.  Mistakes are made.  Customer service suffers.  Workplace conflicts occur more frequently.  Soft skills range from self-awareness to people skills to problem solving to teamwork, and are absolutely critical to the success of anyone in the workplace.