With today’s fast paced professional environment, technical expertise alone is not the guarantee of success. Over the years, I have seen again and again that it’s rarely the people with the best degrees or technical capabilities who lead; it’s the people who know soft skills inside out. No matter the industry or the role, it’s amazing (or aggravating!) to see how things that seem so intangible can make or break your career. The world of work has shifted in an amazing fashion — whether you thought everything went for a toss with the pandemic or otherwise — and all things considered, now more than ever, these skills required to make things work — however challenging it may be — are the primary requisites of every employee to succeed in these challenging times.
Understanding Soft Skills in the Modern Workplace
Let’s get real; soft skills are are not just fancy buzzwords that HR departments use to justify their existence. Nothing prevents them from transform an average employee into a valuable team member. Sure, hard skills can get you in, but it’s the soft skills that’ll get you to the top (er, maybe even let you build your own, who knows?). But with remote work as being such a big deal these days, these skills are especially important – how else could you manage a team you’ve never met in person!
The Core Components of Soft Skills
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
The truth is nobody wants to work with a robot, right? There are two parts to emotional intelligence. First: understanding and being able to manage your own emotions, and second: being aware of other people’s emotions. That’s it, that special sauce that lets you get through these tricky workplace situations without stepping all over everyone’s toes. I’ve been around brilliant people who struggle because they simply can’t read the room – don’t be that person.
Communication Prowess
Now, here’s the thing with communication: it’s not just about talking, even though that’s obvously important. It’s being able to listen, seriously listen, and figuring out how to get your point across and not make a typical drama thing. Whatever the elated aspect is, being able to communicate effectively can mean the difference between a great professional relationship and something much less, whether they’re a static email you shot off or a presentation to the big bosses.
Developing Your Soft Skills Arsenal
The good news? Soft skills are something that you can totally learn and improve; they’re not something mystical that you do or do not have. The bad news? It takes time, work, and being willing to leave your domain. Trust me, but it’s worth every awkward moment, every uncomfortable situation.
Self-Assessment and Awareness
In order to fix something you first have to know where you are at. Look at where you are at with your soft skills. Do you always appear to say the wrong thing in meetings? Maybe you’re good at individual work, but dislike team projects? There’s no judgement here. We all have our weak spots. The trick is identifying them in order to do something about them.
Practice Makes Progress (Not Perfect)
First of all, nobody’s perfect, and trying to be perfect is doing yourself a disservice, and setting yourself up for disappointment. Instead, progress is in focus. Every interaction is another opportunity to practice your soft skills. That chat by the coffee machine? It’s a chance to advance your small talk. Which of those challenging team meetings? Perfect for you to practice active listening.
The Impact of Soft Skills on Career Advancement
Here’s something that might blow your mind – various studies, and my own observations of years in the professional world indicate that 85 percent of career success comes from soft skills and about 15 percent from technical skills. Pretty wild, right? Yet SO many people still spend almost all time trying to build out their technical capabilities while completely ignoring these incredibly necessary interpersonal skills.
Building Professional Relationships
Perhaps one of the less highlighted soft skills out there is the ability to create and sustain professional relationships. It’s not about being everybody’s best friend (unless that comes to you naturally). The thing that makes this community special is that it’s about connecting with people on a meaningful level that may lead to opportunities or collaborations, or just help us all grow in our careers. Realistically though, your network could be just as worth as your actual skills these days.
Leadership and Influence
While securing yourself a role of a manager might not be on your priority list, being a good leader is not something everyone has an opportunity chance to be. Basically it’s to be able to impact others positively, take the lead when that’s what’s required and steer teams or projects to success. Here is a little secret: some of the best leaders I’ve ever known weren’t in formal leadership roles. It just came naturally, great soft skills attracted people to them.
Measuring the ROI of Soft Skills
It’s easy to mistake the translation of soft skills into ROI as something impossible to quantify, but it actually isn’t that difficult. Metric to think about: team productivity, project success rates, client satisfaction, or even employee retention rates. All of these are areas where good soft skills count.
Tangible Benefits
When you’ve got solid soft skills, you’ll likely see improvements in:
- Project completion rates
Team collaboration efficiency could be used.
They have a lengthy client relationship history.
Good soft skills can probably reduce your stress levels overall (seriously, working with people can make work life a lot less stressful!) - Opportunities for career advancement
The Future of Soft Skills
In this increasingly automated future we’re speeding towards, soft skills get more valuable, not less. But AI can crunch numbers faster than any human, and it will never be able to replace genuine human connection, emotional intelligence and creative problem solving (at least not yet!). In fact, with technology moving ahead, I would say we will need our soft skills more than ever, to help us stand out from robots.
Adapting to Change
At the rate with which the workplace is evolving, so should our soft skills. We need virtual communication skills, digital collaboration abilities, and cross cultural competence. Soft skill number one though, might be the ability to learn and adapt to new soft skills as one goes!
To conclude (I hate saying it, but it seems so academic and haughty), it’s not enough to know any longer: you have to know it beautifully and you have to show it convincingly, or you’re not a professional. As a new kid on the block or long in the tooth on the subject and ready to retire, whether on the dating scene, there’s more room to advance and elevate these vital skills. So why not start today? In other words, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now (and yes, I do know that’s a bit cliché, but hey sometimes cliché exists for a reason!).
LekFex 