Soft Skills

In simple words, it can be said that soft skills are nontechnical skills which relate to how you interact with other people in the workplace and in the society and how it translates into your success at the workplace or how you lead people to success. 

For a definition, it can be said that soft skills refer to a set of personal attributes and social abilities that are essential for effective communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and leadership. Unlike hard skills that are specific to a particular job or industry, soft skills are transferable and can be applied in various contexts, such as the workplace, community, and personal relationships.

Customer is the king because it is the customer who gives the business. A company gets business from customer satisfaction and popularity of its products. In the fast paced and interconnected world, business success can be achieved through teamwork only. That is why soft skills become the most desirable qualities in the present context. Hard skills are no doubt imperative but a person with excellent hard skills but without soft skills may prove a disaster because he may disrupt the smooth functioning in the organization. Soft skills are also known as interpersonal skills and job skills. Your hard skills can make you successful in your job only when you possess soft skills also.

Soft skills include:- 

Interpersonal skills:- The ability to interact with other people in the workplace and the society towards achieving a desired outcome.

Interpersonal Effectiveness:- Ability to communicate and interact with others in a way that achieves desired outcome. 

Communication skills:- The ability to convey information clearly in the right manner.

listening skills:- Listening actively.

Empathy:- Listening with concern for the other person and express compassion

Collaboration:- The ability to work effectively in a team with other people towards a common goal

Adaptability:- The ability to adapt to a new situation and embrace change.

Creativity:- The ability to think outside the box and generate new ideas. 

Emotional intelligence:- The ability to understand and manage one's emotions along with those of others.

Resilience:- The ability to cope with and recover from setbacks. 

Leadership:- The ability to inspire and guide others towards a shared vision.

Team Spirit:- A frame of mind to work in a team by combining efforts to achieve a mutual goal.

Decision making:- The ability to make choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternatives.

Time management:- The ability to coordinate tasks and activities to maximize effectiveness requiring less time.  

Conflict resolution:- The ability to mediate between two or more parties to reach a peaceful solution to a dispute.

Delegation:- Transfer of responsibility to a subordinate for more effectiveness. 

Motivation:- The ability to inspire or energize oneself or others to take action towards achieving a goal or objective.

Problem solving:- The ability to define a problem, determining the cause, deciding alternative to solution and implementing it.

Self Analysis:- A systematic attempt by an individual to understand his or her own personality.

Self-awareness:- The capacity to introspect for an understanding of one's strengths and weaknesses.

Assertiveness:- The ability to stand up for our own or other people's rights in a calm and positive way. 

The Importance of Soft Skills 

The importance of soft skills cannot be overstated, especially in today's fast-paced and interconnected world. Soft skills are critical in building and maintaining relationships, resolving conflicts, and promoting teamwork and innovation. They are also essential for career success, as employers increasingly value candidates with strong soft skills.

Soft skills can enhance a person's professional reputation and improve their chances of advancement, as they help individuals work effectively with colleagues, communicate effectively with customers, and lead teams towards achieving goals. In addition, soft skills can lead to greater job satisfaction, as they facilitate positive relationships with coworkers and managers.

Overall, soft skills are an integral part of personal and professional development, and individuals who possess these skills are better equipped to navigate the complex and dynamic world of work and society.

Interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills are your abilities to interact with other people in the workplace and the society towards achieving a desired outcome. They are also called people skills, soft skills, or job skills. Your success in an organization or in society largely depends upon how you interact with people and how you maintain relations with them. Unlike hard skills, they are not very special, achievable only by special training and education. Anyone can groom them. A person with very special hard skills but with poor interpersonal skills, can be a disaster for the progress of the company. While on the other hand, a person with good interpersonal skills can unite the whole workforce and get the desired result and get promoted to its top position. 

Interpersonal skills are in great demand now. Every employer wants to hire candidates with interpersonal attributes. If you possess such attributes, you are sure to be hired and get promoted later on.

Interpersonal effectiveness

Interpersonal effectiveness refers to the ability to communicate and interact with others in a way that is respectful, empathetic, and achieves desired outcomes. It involves the use of effective communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and emotional regulation to establish and maintain positive relationships with others.

Interpersonal effectiveness skills are important in various aspects of life, such as personal relationships, work environments, and social situations. Some key skills for interpersonal effectiveness include active listening, assertiveness, empathy, conflict resolution, and negotiation.

Communication Skills

Communication Skills means you are able to communicate accurately in the right manner besides understanding the information accurately in the right perspective. On the other hand, communication does not refer to oral communication only. It is nonverbal communication, written communication and stylistics of communication also that matter in overall communication. When you communicate, you not only communicate orally, the whole of your body communicates and your style of communication also matters. If your body language doesn't match with your oral communication, it may lead to miscommunication and it may give undesired response from the receiver. If you are using polite language but the style and tone of your communication is impolite, the receiver may be offended. 

The things don't end here only. You must have excellent written communication skills also because you will have to enter into correspondence with people in the organization and outside the organization as well. If you don't have excellent written communication, you will only be inviting troubles for yourself.

Listening Skills

Listening is a skill that goes hand in hand with good communication. While you need to be able to express your own ideas accurately in the right manner, you also need to thoughtfully and actively listen to the ideas of others. This will help your clients, employers, colleagues, and employees feel respected and valued. A distracted listener is a disrespect to a communicator. You have to listen to a communicator with concern for him.

Hearing is different from listening. Hearing is the entry of sound waves in your auditory organs and you don't pay attention to them but when you pay attention to the sound waves being received by your auditory organs and you interpret them, it is called listening. You must be an active listener to people you are attending and interpret them accurately in the right perspective. 

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand the problems of others and show concern. It is like putting your foot into the shoe of another person. You must be able to understand how the other person is feeling. It will happen when you listen with concern. If a customer or colleague calls you regarding a complaint or any issue, you must thoughtfully and actively listen to his concerns and express compassion for his issue. This skill is very important for the managers because they have to listen to all their subordinates. Empathy is very helpful in conflict resolution. It improves trust and confidence of customers in the organization.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the ability to work effectively in a team with other people towards a common goal. It enables individuals to work together to achieve a defined and common business goal. All the individuals cooperate with each other in a healthy environment to achieve a business goal. Collaboration involves openness, knowledge sharing, problem sharing, solution and team spirit. The members may need a conflict resolution process in case of differences or a dispute. The members may also need adaptability and active listening skills for the success of the teamwork.        

Adaptability

It is the ability to adapt to a new situation and embrace change. It means that you easily adjust to changing circumstances. You are open and willing to learn new things and take on new challenges. It is a very important skill because science and technology is changing the world very fast and those who cannot adapt to change will be losers. Change in science and technology requires that we must adjust ourselves to new circumstances very fast. For this, we need to learn new skills to keep ourselves with the pace of change. An adaptable person in the workplace can keep up with changing priorities, projects, clients and technologies. adaptable people are often critical thinkers who can assess the situation, consider all outcomes and then determine the best course of action. 

 Creativity

It is the ability to think outside the box and generate new ideas. A creative can come up with new ideas and find such people who are better at helping him in his new ideas. He is able to see the things, in a new perspective. Such people can make effective use of time in hand by their new ideas. They can improve product's appeal for customers. They may find cost cutting strategies and cost effective solutions at work. They can motivate the staff and improve the productivity of the staff. Such people can identify new ventures and business opportunities. Such people are precious possession of an organization.

Emotional Intelligence

It is the ability to understand and manage one's emotions along with those of others. It is the most sought-after critical skill required for effective leadership. The term Emotional Intelligence was popularized by Daniel Goleman in his book by the same name in 1995. There are two ways to manage the workforce by exploiting or by exploring. EI encourages the management of the workforce by exploration. There are five EI competencies i.e. Motivation, Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Social Skills, and Empathy. A leader motivates his team to perform. They know what motivates the work force and how their motivation can serve his purpose. Leaders are aware of themselves. They are aware of their drawbacks. They know that they cannot be masters of all trades. They know that they need others. They can regulate themselves by converting reaction to response. They utilize the potential of the workforce by motivation, empathy and social skills and bring out the best in others. Research shows that emotional intelligence is the strong predictor of performance. 

Resilience

It is the ability to cope with and recover from setbacks. Life is full of uncertainties. We may face challenges in our lives like death of loved ones, divorce, financial issues, illness, job loss, medical emergencies or natural disasters. People with resilience do not fall into despair or hide the issues by unhealthy coping strategies but they face difficulties head on. It is not that resilient people experience less stress, grief or anxiety but instead they use healthy coping strategies and skills to handle such difficulties. They cope with such difficulties in such a way that fosters strength and growth. Thus they bounce back and recover from setbacks. Finally, they emerge much stronger than before.

Leadership

It is the ability to inspire and guide others towards a shared vision. A leader can set and achieve challenging goals. He can take fast and decisive actions when needed  and outperform in the competition. He can motivate and inspire other at their highest level that they can. People with strong leadership skills often rise to the top level of the management. Leadership provides direction for the company and its workforce. Employees need to know this direction and whom to follow to reach the destination. Successful leaders are equipped with strong communication skills and emotional intelligence.  

Team Spirit

It is a frame of mind to work in a team by combining efforts to achieve a mutual goal. It enables you to work well with others. Employers expect employees to be team players. Teamwork is required in almost every industry. Regardless of your role, you need to be able to work well with others. You have to cooperate or collaborate with others to meet company goals. To show your team work skills, you need to have excellent communication skills, listening skills and conflict management skills. It is almost like the team spirit of a sports team that can be duplicated.

Decision Making

It is the ability to make choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternatives. It involves recognizing a problem then gathering information about feasible solutions and finalizing the best alternative. Decision making may be based on intuition or a logical process. However, a logical process is preferable on the basis of which information is collected about all the alternatives. Then we need to weigh different alternatives by evaluating their pros and cons and then choose the best one. However, you need the right kind of information about alternatives. Decision making by the managers sets the direction and clarity of action.

Time Management

It is the ability to coordinate tasks and activities to maximize effectiveness requiring less time. Time management is the process of planning and controlling how much time should be spent on a specific activity. Time management skills enable us to complete more in a shorter period of time with less stress. Good time management leads to improved efficiency and productivity. less stress and more success. It gives us extra time. Good time management gives us more opportunities by making us not waste time on trivial things. It leads us to prioritize and schedule the work. Effective time management makes us more  organized. 

Conflict Resolution

It is the ability to mediate between two or more parties to reach a peaceful solution to a dispute. It is the process of ending a dispute and reaching an agreement that suits all parties involved. Although, it is not like ending disagreement, it facilitates discussions, increases understanding and encourages controlling emotions. Like agreeing, disagreeing is part of human nature.  

Delegation

Delegation is the transfer of responsibility to a subordinate for more effectiveness. Generally, it is the responsibility that the manager himself might  have done but since the team has grown up, he would assign much of his responsibility to his dependable members of the team and he would focus on other management responsibilities. Good managers don't try to micromanage everything. They don't overwhelm themselves with the tasks but they delegate the tasks and responsibilities. Being able to delegate is important for every supervisor or manager. Managers need to be able to trust employees with responsibilities, while still ensuring that work is done well. Strong delegation skills enable a manager to know which work to delegate and who to task with the responsibilities to successfully achieve organizational goals.

Motivation

Motivation is the ability to inspire or energize oneself or others to take action towards achieving a goal or objective. It refers to the steps that managers can take to inspire his team to achieve more and greater productivity. There are many benefits in knowing how to inspire and support employees. It leads to increased consistency and improved performance of the employees. A manager can motivate his employees by creating a positive and comfortable environment, having open communication and achievable goals, upholding the company's values. increasing their skills, providing positive and constructive feedback and recognizing their achievements. Performance based incentive is also a motivation tool.

Problem Solving

Problem solving is the ability to define a problem, determining the cause, deciding alternative to solution and implementing it. Problem solving is a part of leadership skills. It builds trust between you and your team. Your problem solving skills make it easier to help them solve problems and overcome obstacles together. It may help your team collaborate successfully to create solutions and achieve goals as a unit. Sometimes, you might have to redefine the roles of two conflict-prone staff to simply eliminate the points of friction. Your creativity may help you find a new win/win solution.

Self-analysis

Self-analysis is a systematic attempt by an individual to understand his or her own personality. It is a process where one attempts to know and understand oneself with a view to exploring possible changes in one's character, personality and motives. It is a systematic approach taken by an individual to evaluate one's strengths and weaknesses both at physical and mental level. It is a casual habit of every individual to always remain in imagination while the ground realities are different and may be highly mismatching. It is possible that an individual may be living in dreams. In the present competitive world, we do not fulfill the requirements and we need to change ourselves. We need to know the qualities that we want to inculcate in ourselves. Self-analysis is always driven towards self-improvement.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the capacity to introspect for an understanding of one's strengths and weaknesses. It refers to knowing oneself with a view to making self-improvement. One can make efforts on what to improve only when one comes to know where and what one lacks. Self-awareness depends upon the capacity to introspect and will to make self-improvement. There are two aspects of self-awareness:-

1. Public Self-awareness:- It means that you need to know how you are perceived by others. For this, you need to get 100 percent honest feedback from others. It will help you to make changes in yourself with a view to how you want to be perceived by others. 

2. Private Self-awareness:- It means that you need to understand your conscious and subconscious mind. What attracts you and what dispels you and how all this is going to impact you shortly and in the long run. 

Assertiveness

Assertiveness means standing up for your personal rights - expressing thoughts, feelings and beliefs in direct, honest and appropriate ways.

It is important to note also that:

By being assertive we should always respect the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of other people.

Those who behave assertively always respect the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of other people as well as their own.

Assertiveness concerns being able to express feelings, wishes, wants and desires appropriately and is an important personal and interpersonal skill. In all your interactions with other people, whether at home or at work, with employers, customers or colleagues, assertiveness can help you to express yourself in a clear, open and reasonable way, without undermining your own or others’ rights.

Assertiveness enables individuals to act in their own best interests, to stand up for themselves without undue anxiety, to express honest feelings comfortably and to express personal rights without denying the rights of others.