D'Iorio said he believes that developing better interpersonal capabilities can improve the productivity and efficiency of an IT operation. He said that one thing his employer does to help sharpen such skills is hold what it calls "lunch and learns," where various IT workers give presentations about a particular aspect of their jobs or a project that they're involved in.

People who do well in their careers "tend to have pretty good soft skills," D'Iorio said. "A lot of the professional skills are really fundamental to be effective in an organization, especially if you're going to move into a management role."

Effective communication is something Donald Woodruff, an IT consultant at utility company National Grid USA in Westboro, Mass., tries to practice on the job. He said one technique he uses is establishing "checkpoints," which involves periodically making sure that the person he's explaining a technical concept to understands it before advancing the discussion.

"One of the most difficult issues for technical people is communication," said Woodruff, who added that IT workers need to be able to discuss what they're working on at a level that is clear to anyone.

"In business, you need to be able to talk at all different levels," he said. "You aren't just talking in a peer relationship, engineer to engineer. You have to be able to able to explain yourself."