Because soft skills is also dealing with politics, you can't separate the 2.

> See it this way: You have two people in your team who disagree on a technical issue. You need to help them come to a decision.

You lay out a very hopeful scenario. Sometimes there are some issues where there are no clear cut answers (ie. you cannot apply a objective value judgement) and it's a purely political play. If you are asked to solve the issue, you have to take a side either way, and whichever side you take you will piss off the other, possibly for good. If the side you judged in favor of fails, you might end up being on the chopping block, or be 'marked' by the organisation with a 'never-do-well' label. This is -the- landmine I'm talking about.

You had better hope there are support in the org that can still support you, because depending on the severity of the fallout, you might be starting from 0. You'd better hope hard skills are still valuable by then.