Why Are Soft Skills Important?

Why are soft skills important?

 Soft skills are the vital skills that individuals need to be able to function effectively as part of a team, to lead others, and to foster and retain strong working relationships with colleagues and clients.

And they’re critical in life as well. Managing family relationships can often test one’s soft skills to the very limits!

 Soft skills are sometimes referred to as “people skills”. They’re universally valid in any situation where humans are interacting with other humans. In business, that means that soft skills are important in sales, procurement, HR, Marketing, pretty much everywhere.

 To be able to influence, persuade or communicate effectively with another person requires you to be in rapport with them, and then to develop and retain a good relationship.

 In this article from CIPS, they cite why Procurement professionals need superior soft skills.

How to hone your soft skills to be a top candidate - Supply Management (cips.org)

 It’s straightforward to quantify someone’s capability in “hard” technical skills – it’s easily measurable - someone can either do something, like operate a machine or write code, or they can’t.

 But it’s much more difficult to quantify someone’s competence in skills such as assertiveness, relationship-building, communication, negotiation and persuasion.

 The degree of soft skill capability is linked to the person’s emotional intelligence, or “EQ”, and as Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book “Emotional Intelligence – why it can matter more than IQ”, has 5 dimensions;

 1.       Self-awareness – recognizing a feeling as it happens.

2.       Managing emotions – the ability to handle one’s emotions so that they are appropriate in any given context

3.       Motivating oneself – managing one’s emotions in the pursuit of a goal

4.       Recognising emotions in others – demonstrating empathy towards others

5.       Handling relationships – managing the emotions in others

 The good news is that while some people seem to naturally possess soft skills, they can ALL be taught and learned.

How can YOU learn soft skills?

There are so many ways that soft skills can be learnt. A quick search on a book store website will reveal countless different books, covering the topics from all angles, then there’s You Tube, on-line courses on platforms such as Udemy or LinkedIn Learning.

 Observing someone who you think possesses great soft skills at work can be helpful, too. What are the things they do well that sets them apart? See how they interact with others, their body language, their demeanour, the words and tone that they use.

 And of course, there’s formal training. This can provide the perfect introduction for you to become aware of the skills you need to improve upon and give you the tools and the confidence for you to be able to practice.

 Don’t leave soft skills to chance. Success in business and in life depends upon them.

 Get in touch. I can help you develop the soft skills of you and your team, leading to better relationships and better results.