What are ‘Soft Skills’?
According to Wikipedia, soft skills are also called power skills, common skills, essential skills, or core skills, are generally applicable to all professions. Soft skills are non-technical but are personal attributes that facilitate effective and harmonious interactions with others.
Employers today prioritise applicants with the following key soft skills:
- Time Management and Organization: Better time management and tidy organizational abilities tend to reduce stress, keep mind clean, and improve one’s overall performance. Managing time precisely allows one to lead a healthy work-life balance by meeting deadlines on time.
- Communication skills: Good communication is the foundation step for success in all areas of life. It builds trust, ensures clarity, creates a supportive environment, allows one to express their opinions clearly, and leads to the sharing of information efficiently.
- Emotional Intelligence: The ability of a person to manage their emotions efficiently is termed as ‘Emotional Intelligence (HI)’. EI within the workplace is important as it describes a person’s character, personality, and competence. High EI enables one to build strong connections with colleagues, and superiors, and efficient management of work.
- Adaptability: Adaptability is when you respond actively and positively to new circumstances like quickly adapting to recent technologies or work environments and are willing to actively face challenges with the motive of improving yourself steadily. This makes the employers find you as an asset.
- Problem-Solving Skills: Problem-solving empowers individuals to handle difficulties without constant supervision and builds one’s ability to manage future challenges. Problem solving enhances critical thinking thereby encouraging one to think out of the box to bring out innovative ideas or solutions. One’s problem-solving skills define their ability to think logically, rationally, and systematically.
- Leadership Skills: An effective leader demonstrates persuasive communication, problem-solving and decision-making skills. Leadership skills are not only about actively taking up managerial roles but also about inspiring, influencing, and motivating others to achieve organizational goals.
- Teamwork and Collaboration: Actively engaging with team members and considering team members’ perspectives leads to harmonious working relationships. Ability to work well with others is vital.
How soft skills affect career growth and organizational culture?
While technical skills might land us a job, soft skills are the ones that ensure career progression and sustainability. Soft skills are the connecting bridge between technical competence and personal effectiveness during an individual’s career progression. Soft skills influence career growth. It enhances employability as employers value candidates with strong interpersonal skills, it creates leadership opportunities and skills like time management, improve performance and productivity.
Soft skills not only affect one’s career growth but also affect organizational culture as it fosters collaboration and teamwork, builds a positive work environment, drives towards innovation and creativity and strengthens employment retention.
Authors like Daniel Goleman have mentioned the importance of soft skills. In his book “Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman talks about the importance of soft skills in the real world. He has not used the word “soft skill” but has discussed about the abilities such as self-awareness, critical thinking, social skills, self-regulating, etc. In Chapter 3, titled “When Smart Is Dumb,” Goleman emphasizes that academic intelligence alone does not prepare individuals for life’s challenges. He argues that technical skills, while important, are insufficient without emotional intelligence by referring to research which indicated that students with high IQs did not achieve significantly more success in their adult lives compared to their peers with lower IQs, highlighting the importance of emotional competencies and soft skills.
Tips for integrating soft skill development into training programs
Soft skill training refers to training that focuses on the development of abilities such as emotional intelligence, critical thinking, teamwork, etc. The development of soft skills in the workplace is as important as developing hard skills. Integrating soft skill development into training programs ensures employees are equipped with essential interpersonal and emotional competencies. Here are tips for designing and implementing such programs effectively:
- Identify soft skills to be focused on:
To identify the soft skills which need to be worked upon by conducting surveys or interviews. Identifying the organization’s required skills with SWOT analysis. - Blend soft skills with technical training:
Combine soft skills training with technical skills workshops to show the importance and application in the real world. - Incorporate emotional intelligence training:
Include activities like journaling or personality assessments to help employees understand their strengths and weaknesses. - Interactive Modules:
Create online courses with quizzes, videos and interactive activities focusing on soft skills. - On-the-job learning:
Provide opportunities to practice soft skills during daily tasks. - Mentoring Programs:
Pair employs with mentors to observe and develop soft skills. - Provide constructive feedback:
Giving feedback that allows employees to identify and improve in soft skills they are lacking.
Metrics to measure the success of soft skills training
Now, how does one measure the success of soft skills training?
The following could be the ways an individual could check their success in soft skills training:
Peer-Based Evaluation:
Peer evaluation refers to providing feedback from colleagues to each other about their improvement in respective soft skills. This creates a supportive learning community leading to great teamwork and collaboration.
Self-assessment:
Encouraging self-assessment to help learners identify their growth and their lacking.
Incorporating Feedback Loops:
Creating an environment where constructive feedback is valued and acted upon, learners and develop soft skills overtime.
Surveys or Tests:
Filling out multiple choice question tests or filling out surveys can provide valuable insights on participants’ improvement.
Therefore, soft skills are the cornerstone of personal and professional success. Soft skills are as important as hard skills in the workplace, shaping how we connect, think, collaborate, and grow. Improving soft skills can unlock potential, foster opportunities and thrive in an ever-evolving world.
