Soft skills are personal qualities, which make people more productive and valuable in their professional and personal lives.
Soft skills are behaviors, feelings, and other characteristics that are not traditionally considered as a skill.
The term soft skills was created by the U.S. Army in the late 1960’s. It refers to any skill that does not employ the use of machinery.
The military realized that many important activities were included within this category, and in fact, the social skills necessary to lead groups, motivate soldiers, and win wars were encompassed by skills they had not yet catalogued or fully studied.
Soft skills are a cluster of productive personality traits that characterize one’s relationships in a social environment.
Incorporate soft skills
One way to make yourself a better, more productive, and valuable employee is to take the time to work on developing soft skills.
Soft skills are qualities that are often not recognized as skills, but they are nonetheless very important to our well-being.
Soft skills, also known as core skills or common skills, include problem-solving, professional writing, critical thinking, work ethics, intercultural fluency, Career management, digital literacy, leadership, and public speaking. These are in contrast to hard skills, which are specific to professions.
Concept :
Soft skills are a bunch of productive personality traits that characterize one’s relationship in a social environment.
Soft skills are important since they are not restricted to a specific field. Soft skills help people to be flexible in the changing world.
In recent times interest in soft skills has increased.
In 2012 European Commission launched the program agenda for new skills and explained to young adults the set of new skills.
Success at work seemed to be technical, that is why employers and companies hired new people based on objective competencies.
In our childhood, college educations, we are still focusing too much on the hard skills. Though, those are mandatory but not sufficient to lead a fulfilling personal & professional life.
Hard skills are still an important aspect, but soft skills are equally important.
Studies by Carnegie Mellon Foundation and Stanford Research Institute among Fortune 500 CEOs inform the idea that 75% of long-term job success was due to soft skills and 25% from technical skills.
Also, 20% of career achievements are determined by hard skills, and 80% depend upon soft skills.
In the present era, soft skills are a major differentiator for employability and success in life.
These are the main soft skills, which one should have. I call this SCALE model.
- Self-awareness
- Collaboration
- Articulation Skills
- Learnability
- Empathy
Self-awareness: The most important thing. Many of us, just don’t know about ourselves.
From day 1, they have worked, on parents told, the teacher taught or what their friends were doing.
Though on get important lessons, but finally, it’s you & only you, who knows about yourself.
Sadly, many times, we are taught, how a computer works. But, we don’t know, how our own mind works.
Assuming that your age is 40 years then it means, you have spent around 3.5 lakh hours ( 40*364*24).
Out of these, your parents, teachers, managers would have spent around 50,000 hours with you.
So you are in the best position, to know the details about yourself. What you really like to do ( and not what, your friends are doing)
How you cleared your exams or for that matter any other test (really by learning or taking shortcuts). how many times you were talking truth, how many times, you genuinely helped someone else, without expecting anything in return.
Other, external persons ( your parents, teachers, coach..) can help/guide you, up-to an extent. But remember, it’s you, who is sleeping/breathing with you for last 40 years.
Once you know, what are your strong points, what are the areas, which you don’t like/not good, activities, which give you real kick…. You can now take ‘correct help’ from others.
In let’s say, in a software development team, we require team members, who are good in coding, project management, people management…..
If you are really good at coding, you take up the coding work of your team member & ask him to help you in project management.
If you are in a senior position, you can always hire team members, who can complement you, in the areas, where you are not good at.
Remember, in sports, say cricket, not everyone can be an all-rounder. Someone will be good at batting, others at bowling …..
Collaboration: Taking the first point further, now that you know, what are your strong points & in which areas, you need help.
Are you ready to collaborate with others, who can help you with their complementary skills?
This also means, sharing the credit of a successful project. Ability to work in a team.
The best way to define collaboration would be to outline it as the process of two or more people or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal.
It is also defined as two or more people working together to achieve shared goals.
Collaboration involves
Goal setting, Active listening & Problem-solving
Articulation skills: You may be having lot of ideas/thoughts/point of view, but are you able to express that properly.
Articulation skills involves, oral speech, presentation skills, writing skills, Are you able to express your thoughts, in a manner, with which other can relate.
In a discussion, depending upon the audience & duration, can you express your idea/pov in 2 minutes or 30 minutes.
Learnability: ‘Learn, how to unlearn & re-learn new things’. One of the most crucial points in, future. 30 years back, just able to work on a laptop/computer as a big thing. Now, the young generation is, almost carrying the smartphone (which has
the equivalent processing power of 1980’s computer), in their pockets.
Learnability is a quality of products and interfaces that allows users to quickly become familiar with them and able to make good use of all their features and capabilities.
Learnability is the willingness and the ability to learn anything that would add value so that you can function better and smarter in today’s world.
Before COVID, work from home was unthinkable. But now, we are ready/getting ready to work in this ‘new normal. You & your business will get wiped out if you are not able to learn new things
Empathy: Are you able to relate, to what your peer/co-worker is going through & curate your conversation/behavior accordingly.
As per WiKi
“Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.[1] Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of emotional states. Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic, and spiritual empathy.
Empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derived from the way emotions themselves are characterized.
If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy.
On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy.
The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process.
“Empathy allows people to build social connections with others. By understanding what people are thinking and feeling, people are able to respond appropriately in social situations.
Daniel Goleman identified five key elements of empathy.
- Understanding Others
- Developing Others
- Having a Service Orientation
- Leveraging Diversity
- Political Awareness
There is an important distinction between empathy, sympathy and compassion.
Both compassion and sympathy are about feeling for someone: seeing their distress and realizing that they are suffering.
Compassion has taken on an element of action that is lacking in sympathy, but the root of the words is the same.
Empathy, by contrast, is about experiencing those feelings for yourself, as if you were that person, through the power of imagination.
According to a survey by Society for human resource management, three-quarters of employers found that it’s difficult to find graduates that have the soft skills required for a company.
Soft skills Vs. hard skills
soft skills are commonly referred to as the emotional side of human beings in comparison to IQ, which is related to hard skills.
Earlier hard skills were only the necessary skills in career employment and what usually measured from an educational background, work experience, or through interviews.
How to improve your soft skills?
- Practice the soft skill which you want to improve
Any soft skill can be improved if it is practiced. It’s just a matter of routine. For instance, you can improve dependability by finishing the assigned task on time and being punctual.
- Mimic and observe the positive skills of others
One can develop soft integral skills by observing others and practicing them in their daily routine.
For example, good communicators often note down the things when others are talking during meetings.
This helps them in organizing their thoughts so that they can ask important questions.
- Learning with the help of resources
There are several resources such as podcasts, books, online classes which help you in learning the tactics for improving soft skills.
- Setting goals
Analyze your performance review at work and compare them with the goals.
Take the help of colleagues and trusted friends by asking them for constructive criticism. This will help you in improving your goals.
Conclusion
Soft skills are those skills that don’t have a specific set of skills, such as a hard skill.
Soft skills are often used to describe the way someone interacts with other people.
People can have an innate soft skill, such as natural empathy, or they can learn skills through social interactions.
One way to work on soft skills is to spend time with people in your workplace.
