Soft Skills in the Workplace

Soft skills and hard skills are both equally important aspects that a recruiter looks for while hiring. We keep working on our hard skills and often forget to pay attention to soft skills. And while reading this, some of you might even wonder ‘What actually are Soft Skills, is it communication, or is it just good presentation skills’?

So, to start telling you about the soft skills, no it doesn’t just mean giving a good presentation in front of your management or having a large peer group at your workplace. Soft Skills are the combination of many non-technical skills that include interpersonal skills, communication skills, and time management, to name a few. Unlike hard skills, soft skills are hard to learn and even harder to measure and evaluate.

Why soft skills are required in the workplace? If someone has great technical skills but can not manage time efficiently or can not collaborate well in a team, then it is highly probable that this person can’t achieve success in the workplace. Thus, soft skills play a prominent role in any success story.

11 Prominent Soft Skills Needed in the Workplace- Some key soft skills include:-

• Leadership Skills: Leadership qualities play an important role to make our lives disciplined and also positively influencing others. It helps in building employees’ morale. Leadership is not only about telling people what to do but also inspiring them to be ambitious and achieve their goals.
• Teamwork: Teamwork is one of the major soft skills that ensure a cooperative environment by bringing people together. It is a core skill that everyone must possess in a workplace as it results in efficient working. A good team makes the work culture productive and also enjoyable.
• Interpersonal Skills: To build a strong working relationship in the organization, it is important to have good interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills are necessary to form and maintain successful bonds with your coworkers.
• Time Management: If you can’t manage your time, then you can’t manage your life. Time Management is the utmost thing that is needed to achieve multiple deadlines during your work, which happens usually.
• Decision Making: Every now and then, you need to make some decisions, sometimes easy and sometimes difficult. But decision making is a crucial part of your job.
• Empathy: Always put yourself in another person’s shoes before lashing out on him/her. Show empathy towards your colleagues and never snap at them hastily.
• Communication Skills: Good communication is the key to everything. It’s true that actions speak louder than words but words let others understand your actions.
• Critical Thinking: Have a multi-layered approach towards problem-solving. Analyze, interpret, reflect, and evaluate all the probable alternatives before arriving at a solution.
• Work Ethic: For long-term success and sustainability in the workplace, work in an ethical manner. Ethics are never old-school and always pave way for you in times of dissonance.
• Problem Solving Skills: Work-life poses many problems at you every day. Never run from them, put on your problem-solving hat, and work through your life’s difficulties.
• Adaptability: Change is the only constant and resilience to changes will never lead you to a happy place. Be adaptable and let yourself adjust to the changes that happen around you at your workplace.

Soft skills are not at all more important than tech skills, but one should never ignore the need of good soft skills. It is soft skills that make a first impression on your boss, it is soft skills that help you get a client on-board initially, and it is soft-skills that let you mix up with the people around you.

Having appropriate soft skills give you an edge over those who don’t. Soft skills are a part of your personality, you can not learn them at a coaching center or personality development class. Work regularly to acquaint yourself with these skills so that they come naturally to you. Step out of your comfort zone today to work on these skills so that you don’t get uncomfortable tomorrow at your workplace when life throws daily challenges at you.

~ By Isha Garg for Young Engine