In fact, the researchers found that these soft skills, when measured in the fourth grade, are 2.4 times more important than math and reading scores in predicting a student’s future income.

Schools are good at teaching and measuring intelligence, so that’s what people tend to value and aspire to. But in almost any field, smarts is what gets rewarded long term.

You cannot measure empathy like you can SAT scores, so it’s not surprising that one is given more weight on resumes. But who is more likely to succeed in life – a person whose... See more

There's some logic to this: the most profitable partner for a given firm might be someone who's 85th-percentile good at what the firm does and 99th-percentile good at strategy, schmoozing, taking risks, not losing one's mind when some of those risks inevitably turn out badly, etc.