Best Soft Skills to Develop Today – Basics Of Soft Skills

If you are just starting out in your career, you will realize that the recruiters are maybe looking for the kind of people who have the potential of becoming leaders. They will never automatically expect you to have all the needed qualifications and experience from that early moment in your career.

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What you will learn in this series

In this article series on Soft Skills, we will cover such discussions as:

• How To Develop Your Soft Skills,
• Best Soft Skills To Develop Today,
• Soft Skills Vs Hard Skill,
• The Importance Of Soft Skills Today.

That should be fair enough. Don’t you agree? But a good manager or recruiter will certainly need to know that you have the potential to learn and grow into that leadership role. That should be very important for you to keep at the back of your mind – having the potential to learn and grow.

In our last discussion episode, we mentioned the different types of soft skills. And like I said then, there are just as many soft skills as you can possibly imagine. So, in this episode, I’m not even going to try and list out all of them because it’s not possible, I will simply pick some of the most vital ones that will work for you irrespective of your industry.

Bear in mind that this episode will not go too much in detail in each of these different types of soft skills. Time will simply not permit it because each one of them is a full study that requires hours and hours to evaluate. We are going to reconsider some of them during this year, and maybe dedicate an entire month to each topic so we can better understand them. Ok then let’s go. Learn about the basics of Soft Skills.

Top soft skill to succeed today

Here are most of the required soft skills to master today. They are not the only ones out there but they sure are some of the most requested from employees and freelancers. So, make sure you have a good grasp of some of them:

• Time management skills,
• Persuasion ability,
• Communication skills,
• Customer service,

• Selling skills,
• Networking skills,
• Self-awareness,
• Analytical thinking skills,

• Social skills,
• Flexibility,
• Team building skills,
• Ability to work independently,
• Project management.

For the sake of time, we can only consider some of these skills and how they can be helpful to you. So, let’s look into it.

Master your communication skill

In the complex world, we live in today, good communication is one of the most important soft skills to learn. Are you teachable; are you willing to learn? Being able to communicate your ideas to other people, whether it is a small group, an individual prospect, a co-worker or a large audience is the most powerful tool you can ever have. Communication is everything.

Now imagine yourself as a manager of a company or say you are in business for yourself and you have some collaborators working with you. Let’s say you need something to be done in a certain way and very urgently, maybe on that same day. You walk to meet your collaborators and tell them what you want to be done and how it should be done. And then you turn your back and walk away. What do you think will happen?

Most probably, your collaborators will reflect on how to execute your task in the most efficient way possible and then shift it aside to concentrate on the tasks of the day. Sure, they will take action on your request, but maybe tomorrow or the day after. I leave you to imagine the rest.

Learning this one soft skill or how to better communicate your message, your ability to adjust your tone and style according to your audience is so important that it can literarily break or make you.

Learn more about communication skills in the following article: Basic Communication Skills: Beginner guides.

Good communication not only end with the delivery of your message, but it includes also the “how”. I mean you should help your audience to comprehend what you truly mean so that like in the above example your message can prompt them to take immediate and efficient action based on your instructions.

Sometimes, you really need to be there to repeat yourself so that complex issues can be fully explained to colleagues and clients alike. I think it is better to repeat yourself than leave your listeners not fully comprehending your true intention.

Of course, anyone can walk in, make some noise, and throw some jargon in the air. But the question is, does your audience really understand you? Because if they did not, then your communication has been inefficient and that can be very costly, depending on the situation.

In September of 1999, we got the news that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has just lost a $125 million satellite. What happened? Well, this was what happened. When calculating the coordinates of a communication station, Engineers at Lockheed Martin used the imperial system, while NASA used the metric system. It was a simple communication error, yet it caused the Mars orbiter to miss its mark, and its engine burned up and vanished in space.

Learning to master good communication skills should never be underestimated. And this should hold true whether you are dealing with a client or working with your co-workers. Good listening and therefore communication skills will help you to avoid some otherwise simple but costly mistakes. It helps you to come out efficiently, and obtain your desired results. We will learn more about communication in another series of articles that fulling dedicated to everything communication. It’s important that we need to treat it separately, so get ready for that. 

Increase your adaptability skill

Another soft skill you might consider developing today is adaptability. What does that mean? Let’s take it on. The simplest way to describe it will be to adapt, meaning your ability to quickly respond to a situation – the changing trends, innovation, and disruption in your industry.

If you really think about it, being able to adapt to changing environments and work situations can be really rewarding to you, whether you are an employee or working for yourself.

One thing I have noticed over the years, working with a lot of immigrants, or African immigrants in Italy to be specific is that even though we have traveled thousands of kilometers away from our home countries to Europe, we are still sometimes afraid of change.

Many are overly suspicious of anything that is new, not willing to adapt easily and some even peddle irrational conspiracy theories and feed on rumors and fake news that have now dominated everywhere.

Some people fear change so much that the only image they have created in their heads about change is that it will make them lose. But really, change is the one thing that is constant. So, learn to face it.

You see, the reasons that we, collectively as human beings, have been able to survive and dominate the planet earth even though we are not the most intelligent or smartest of all life forms is partly because of our ability to adapt to changes. Adaptability is one of the inherent characteristics of human beings.

Society will always change, and the system will shake up from time to time and in some instances throw us off our balance. When it happens because it happens every now and then, we should take the courage to adapt and move on.

Say, for instance, you want to start a business or any kind of new sport or something you do not know before.

Now, from the very moment you step out of your comfort zone, what you already know, your ability to adapt is going to be very important because everything is new to you. And if you want to remain on your trajectory, you are going to keep adjusting yourself to the situation and growing your wings along the way.

It also means that you are open and willing to learn new things, face new challenges and keep a positive and “I can do it” attitude – a new tenant has just entered the building from another country, don’t run away, deal with it.

Your employer has just introduced new working conditions. Do not only complain and appear hopeless before the new conditions. Instead, make your plan to adapt to it and you will survive the turbulence.

Tap into your other soft skills like patience, determination, and focus and you will find the right way or make one to suit the current situation. That leads us to the next important soft skill to develop, creativity. 

Learn about Creativity as a soft skill

Now, creative thinking is the ability to consider something in a new way. A creative person never remains fixed in one solution to a problem. You must allow your mind to tap into your reserves, your subconscious, or what I want to call “your super-hybrid database”.

Creative thinking allows your mind to operate from the standpoint of open-minded analysis in problem-solving, as against a static and orthodox mindset where everything must be according to the book.

If you are interested, I have an online training class where I thoroughly explained this argument. It’s called Growth Mindset For Business & Self-improvement.

You need an open mindset for your creative juice to flow and many employers highly value creative thinkers for what they can add to the organization. Are you a creative person? Start thinking creatively, today and it is not too difficult. It’s a question of opening up your mind and seeing opportunities everywhere.

I don’t want to sound like I am preaching by saying that we all have huge potential inside of us. “We already know what”, you might say. We equally know that some people seem to be more able to constantly generate new ideas and think creatively while others struggle to do the same. What do you think is the situation? Well, that is the situation because the answer actually lies in our ability to use our creative minds.

Born brand new into this world, we are equipped with the most powerful instrument in the world, called the “brain”. Look at children who play in their environment and you will understand what I mean here.

We soon go to school and get used to the idea of conformity. That is followed by our indoctrinations into religious stupidity, of few men who tell us that they know exactly where we will go when we die and therefore must live our lives in preparation for that.

By the time we grow into so-called mature adults, our brains have been well-cooked and loaded with all forms of superstitions and stupidity at best and we so find it difficult to use the brain for any creative thinking. 

I understand, as the saying goes that thinking is the hardest work there is, which is why only a few people engage in it. But, sorry. I don’t think we really have an option here because the nature of our current economy demands that we use our minds for thinking our way through and most importantly, creatively.

Want to know why you should learn about soft skills? Check out the following article on the series: The Importance Of Soft Skills Today

Before I talk about the last skill for our consideration in this article, I want to state that we don’t necessarily need to equate Creative thinking to only the people who are commonly known to be creative individuals like musicians, painters, and other artists.

Creative thinking is for everyone and the earlier you learn how to think creatively, the better for you. 

Develop your empathic skill

Empathy is equally highly important as a skill to be developed for your business, in your workplaces and at home. There is no place, where dealing with the human being is important that you will not need empathy.

By definition, empathy is considered as the ability to place oneself in the position of another person. Have you ever talked to somebody who during the conversation told you something like, “Try to see it also from my point of view?” That is what we are talking about here.

It means the capacity to sense the feelings of another person, and their points of view. Like, what if you were the other person? Generally, there are two types of empathy:

• “Affective empathy” refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to other peoples’ emotions. This type of empathy can be engaged through such techniques as mirroring what the other person is feeling, like fear, anxiety, or any other form of emotional manifestation.
• The second type of empathy is “Cognitive empathy,” also commonly called “perspective taking,” and it refers to our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions.

Why are these soft skills important for you to know today? Well, if you are in the business of dealing with people, you need to know the basic psychology of human behavior.

Otherwise, how are you supposed to talk to them, run an effective advert for your business and be able to respond to a client who wants to lay a complaint to you, maybe you can sense across the telephone or email message that the person is not in the best of mood?

Your key takeaways best soft skills to develop today

The world is changing rapidly, and the way we work is changing too. It’s more important than ever to have a set of skills that will not only guarantee your job security but also make you more valuable to employers.

Soft skills are important for all employees. They are the “people skills” that help you work with others. These skills include communication, leadership, management, and interpersonal skills. If you have strong soft skills, you will be seen as a strong employee who is flexible and willing to take on new challenges. So, make sure you seriously consider the soft skills we discussed today in this article.

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