While specific job-related skills and knowledge help you do a job, soft skills help you succeed. There are technical skills required for carrying out specific tasks, IT skills and formal communication skills but most of our working life involves contact and close work with people. Therefore success requires soft skills. Here are 5 examples of important soft skills that we think are important.
1. Emotional intelligence Quotient – EQ
People with a high EQ are often intelligent anyway, but high intelligence does not guarantee a high EQ. This determines how well you do the following:
- Relating to other people.
- Your ability to put yourself in other’s shoes.
- Your ability to build rapport.
It’s important when you’re managing or working with a team. It’s also important in networking with business contacts and in understanding workplace politics. This comes into play any time you need to interact with a co-worker, client or other stakeholder.
See some of our programmes in Personal Development to learn these skills.
2. Communication skills
Being able to communicate clearly is vital to working with managers, teams, and clients. You might be brilliant at your job but you need to be able to explain concepts, discuss problems and also understand people’s needs from what they say to you.
Paying close attention to the words you use and who you happen to talking or writing to at the time is a good start to acquiring these skills, but there is a lot to learn.
See our open programmes for course on Presentation Skills and essential management skills.
3. Decision making
Life is full of decisions and acquiring the knack of being decisive will help you succeed. This does not imply being simply reckless and always going with gut instinct however endless procrastination and research delaying a decision can hold back progress.
Our graduate development courses include a specific module on problem solving and decision making. There a specific strategies and routines we teach to help you arrive at the right decision and break out of dead locks.
4. Drive and focus
Demonstrating that you have drive could mean consistently working hard and being focused while you’re at work. It does not necessarily mean always working long hours but making the hours you do work as productive as possible.
It could also mean having the initiative to keep learning or go the extra mile to help deliver a project. It demonstrates that you’re committed to your work, and that’s very attractive to employers and managers.
Maintaining focus is an extremely important skill, whether we’re talking about focusing on a single task at hand or on your long-term objectives.
5. Integrity
Integrity at work means owning and taking responsibility for your mistakes. It means doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it and maintaining the right ethical standards for the long term benefit of your business and customers.
It means acknowledging when new information means you’re wrong, and being willing to say, “I don’t know.” When the facts change, change your mind and be in a position to justify why.
People will respect and trust a person much more who has a reputation for integrity than someone who never admits they’re wrong or always puts the blame on others.
These are just some examples of soft skills that help you succeed. Get in touch with us to discuss current and future development programmes here: contact Keyturn leaning and development.
Further reading
7 key soft skills of successful people