Personal Skills Required To Achieve Strategic Goals – Is there someone (or hopefully several people) at your company that everyone seems to want to work with? Maybe it’s someone with amazing soft skills that gets them into a brainstorming session. Or maybe they are the best consultant for some of the most impactful business issues. Or maybe it just seems like everyone on your team really likes them. Soft skills have the power to grow your career in the same way that hard skills and talent can. But what exactly are soft skills? And why are they so important to growing your career? Keep reading to find out, or use the links below to jump to a section. What are soft skills? How to learn soft skills The 7 soft skills What are soft skills? Soft skills are the combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, emotional intelligence and personality traits that make it easy to get along and work harmoniously with other people. Soft skills can be learned, but they are not as simple as hard skills, which are the specific characteristics that can be clearly defined, measured and taught for success in a job. With hard skills, you can learn advanced techniques and methods that produce measurable results. They can even be directly linked to the business’s bottom line. But when it comes to soft skills—things like small talk, empathy, and flexibility—it’s not an exact science, but they’re just as impactful. You need hard skills to get a job, but you need soft skills to advance in your career. So we’ve compiled a list of the soft skills most important to building a successful career – and how you can learn them. How to Learn Soft Skills Soft skills are different from hard skills in that they require situational awareness to know when to use which skill. When you’re hired for an accounting job, you know that most days you’ll have to do hard skills you learned in school, like math formulas, bookkeeping, and probably working in a spreadsheet application. However, it is not as cut and dry as you would use soft skills because it depends on intangible factors. This is why learning soft skills is so unique. Practice is the best way to learn soft skills and demonstrate them effectively. And you may be wondering, “How can I highlight soft skills in my role?” The answer is simple – having a genuine concern for others is the main ingredient to strengthening your soft skills and growing your career. Listen to your colleagues and leaders to understand their success, challenges, opportunities and concerns. Then see if there are any skills, experiences, advice or resources you can offer. Practice doing this in your meetings, one-on-ones, and even during your lunch with the team. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you learn these soft skills and grow your career. Here are seven soft skills and examples that will help you make an impact on your colleagues and your career. 7 Soft Skills You Need to Career Growth Emotional Intelligence Team Player Attitude Growth Mindset Openness to Feedback Adaptability Active Listening Work Ethic 1. Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and manage your emotions and the emotions of others. It consists of five key elements: Self-awareness Self-regulation Motivation Empathy Social skill You can read more about the details of the characteristics of emotional intelligence in this post if you want to learn more, but in the context of the workplace, emotional intelligence boils down to a few key abilities: Can you recognize and regulate your emotions and reactions in the workplace? Can you build relationships and positive relationships with other people? Can you empathize with others? Can you give and receive effective, constructive feedback? This may not sound like the most important skill for job growth and success, but in some cases it is. In an analysis of new hires who failed to meet expectations during the first 18 months, 23% failed because of low emotional intelligence. (Take this quiz to assess your emotional intelligence and identify areas where you can improve.) 2. Team Player Attitude The ability to play well with others is a soft skill you’ve been working on – unknowingly – since your first day of preschool or daycare. You may not have known it when you were fighting over blocks or figuring out the rules of a made-up game, but you were actually preparing for a lifetime of workplace collaboration. Whether you’re an individual contributor or a people manager, you need to work with other people – in meetings, in brainstorming sessions, and on various cross-functional projects within your company. A positive, can-do attitude when working with others is essential for team harmony, which means you need to be able to run an effective and inclusive meeting, be open to new ideas and work together respectfully work with others. Read our guide to running better meetings for all personality types here, and ask these rapport-building questions to get to know and work well with any team member you encounter. 3. Growth Mindset In any job, no matter the role, you will encounter roadblocks, disappointments and other situations that can frustrate you. A soft skill critical to your ability to persevere is having a growth mindset—a term psychologist Carol Dweck coined to refer to a frame of mind that reflects your abilities, talents, and view intelligence as skills on which you can grow and improve. Someone with a growth mindset may view a failure to meet a quarterly goal as an opportunity to identify their strengths and weaknesses to tackle the next quarter’s goal. However, a person with a fixed mindset may tell themselves, “I’m not good at ing,” and let that negative outlook—without any belief in the ability to improve—affect their next term’s success as well. Watch Dweck’s TED Talk to learn more about the growth mindset here—and try to find places in your daily correspondence or reflections where you can reframe your outlook by viewing a challenge or setback as a way to you can grow 4. Openness to feedback This is part of emotional intelligence, but especially when it comes to the workplace, being open and able to receive developmental feedback is critical to success at a job – especially a new job. Think about it: Constructive feedback helps you do the best work you can, and if you take it personally or react defensively, you can’t hear the feedback and adapt it to your current strategy. The key to giving and receiving feedback is to come into the conversation from a place of kindness: You don’t receive constructive feedback because that person hates you personally, it’s because they want you to be the best you can be. can be. You should put in the little effort to receive feedback that can help you achieve your goals more effectively. If you still don’t feel comfortable with feedback, try immersion therapy — make feedback part of your daily to-do list. Ask for feedback from more people you work with to get instant help honing your skill set – and to make it easier to take. 5. Adaptability No matter what your role, and no matter what your industry, the ability to adapt to change – and a positive attitude about change – goes a long way to growing a successful career. Whether it’s a seat move or a major company pivot, no one likes a complainer. It is important to not only accept change as a fact of life in the ever-evolving business world, but as an opportunity to try out new strategies to thrive in environments of change (remember the growth mindset? ). If you don’t feel comfortable with frequent changes, either in your team or at your company, write down your feelings and reactions, instead of verbalizing them immediately. By articulating how you feel and why you feel a certain way, you will be able to distinguish legitimate concerns from complaints that may not need to be discussed with your team. 6. Active Listening You can probably tell the difference between when someone hears words you say and when they actively listen to what you say. If someone is typing while you’re giving a presentation at a meeting, or they’re giving you that slack-jawed look, they probably aren’t really hearing what you’re saying. Active listeners, meanwhile, pay close attention to meeting presenters, offer clarifying questions or answers, and refer back to notes in future discussions. They don’t need things repeated to them because they’ve heard it the first time—which makes active listeners not only respectful colleagues, but also more effective workers. If you think you could stand to improve your active listening skills, challenge yourself not to look at your various devices during meetings – instead focus entirely on speakers, and take notes by hand if necessary (which proves is that it helps with memory retention).
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