what are soft skills in the workplace
we're going to look at the top eight
soft skills that cut across most
professional situations
[Music]
one way to understand what soft skills
are is by looking at
hard skills these are job specific
technical skills so if you're a software
developer
your hard skills are your ability to
program if you're an accountant
it's your ability to do your clients
taxes every area of specialty comes with
certain expectations for technical
knowledge and
hands-on skills in contrast soft skills
are more general and cut across most
types of jobs
soft skills are essentially your ability
to work well with
others when a physician takes the time
to connect
with other doctors with a professional
attitude
and talk to nurses in supportive ways
and
really listen to patients those
physicians are
building relationships through their
soft skills when i do
consulting and workshops the most common
problem i see is that most of my clients
are smart
they are competent but they have
underdeveloped
soft skills and it's holding them back
so two resources
i would suggest are on my website i have
classes at the communication coach
academy
then there's always at least one free
class there i also have a free
pdf download on the five essential
communication skills that
every professional should have i'll put
links to
those in the description below the video
to prepare for
this video i looked at five different
online articles
on soft skills until i started to see
clear
overlap links to those articles are in
the description below and i
stopped at five articles because they
all started to mention the same
skills i then boiled down those separate
lists
into the eight most commonly mentioned
soft skills across those lists
so roughly speaking i list these in
order of priority
based upon those lists and also my own
professional experience
working with clients in corporate
settings so here's the list
number one the top soft skill on almost
every list is leadership
now granted you could say that all of
these soft skills are
part of leadership and that's accurate
in one sense but
here we're talking about perhaps the
difference between
management and leadership managing
in many ways is about maintaining the
status quo
management is usually tied to an
official position
leading in a nutshell is your ability to
successfully guide a group of people
from point a to point b and you don't
need
an official leadership position to
demonstrate that
i was once working with a client and i
came back a year later
to the same organization and the guy i
had been working with had been promoted
from individual contributor to
team leader he had the same hard skills
roughly as everybody else
but he showed leadership skills long
before
they ever promoted him to the actual
leadership position
so some specific leadership skills he
was good at
were communicating inspiring goals and a
vision
he's also a pretty good coach teacher
mentor
and motivator to the team leadership
also means
keeping the effort on track by
facilitating
building consensus and engaging
everybody along the way
you can do all those things even if you
don't have the word
supervisor in your job title number two
is communication and
like leadership this word means a lot of
different things so i'll narrow it down
to
being skilled at both verbal and
nonverbal
communication verbal communication often
means your ability to communicate
clearly and concisely this usually means
giving
clear updates at group and team meetings
it means being good at writing emails
and reports so they are easy to follow
and well organized nonverbal
communication often means the
vibe that you give off you are
communicating
maybe supportive positive and other
kinds of good nonverbal cues like eye
contact
facial expressions body language i know
a guy used to work with who gave off
horrible nonverbals he used to roll his
eyes and make faces when he disagreed
and shake his head
his boss finally had to talk to him
about it because it was
dragging everybody else down and really
was holding him back
from his own advancement without ever
saying a word
you can create a negative or positive
impression
just based upon your nonverbal cues at
more advanced
levels communication skills would also
include
good public speaking and presentation
skills
stand up speaking is a great way
to accelerate your career good
storytelling skills are also important
and
can help you make a point in a way that
really sticks
and your persuasive communication skills
will help you
build a case when you're asking for
project approval funding or getting
people enlisted into an initiative that
you care about
number three are your interpersonal
skills and on some lists this
is simply called people skills but
generally speaking
interpersonal skills include things like
listening well
to others we get a lot of credit for
paying attention
when other people are talking and
signaling to them that we're following
along
we also want to communicate a positive
attitude we want to be friendly
courteous to others and i'm thinking of
a guy i used to work with who had
an excellent ability to build rapport
with others to
show empathy he used light humor when it
was appropriate
and this made it much easier and
enjoyable
for him to bond with others and to get
the work done
interpersonal skills also count our
ability to communicate
assertively and say what we mean but do
it in a way
that does not come across as aggressive
or hostile
and you have to learn to be diplomatic
especially when you disagree and that
also may include giving criticism in
supportive ways and accepting
criticism with composure and maturity
number four is work ethic
self-motivation we want to demonstrate
that we have a
strong work ethic an internal drive
a dependability other people should know
for example that they can count on us
that means taking self-responsibility
for our work taking
initiative and showing good
self-direction when i receive
calls from employers for references most
employers will ask
me about an applicant's ability to meet
deadlines
their attendance time management these
are the basics and i think what they're
really asking about
is the work ethic and self-motivation
employers
don't want to hire people they have to
micromanage
and wonder if they're going to be
working hard number five is teamwork
and again this is another big word that
can certainly include
many of the skills we've already
mentioned but specifically teamwork
often means our ability to collaborate
work cooperatively with others on joint
projects
part of teamwork is knowing how to
connect and put your heads together with
other people on your actual team and
also work with
people in other departments in larger
organizations
i'm thinking of a boss a former
supervisor i used to
work for who had very high marks on
teamwork
she was able to work with a diverse
group of stakeholders who often did not
share her area of expertise she took a
good collectivistic
view of the team the team outcomes and
the entire effort
she came up out of her silo you might
call it her own little area
of expertise and jargon and she learned
how to talk to everybody
we probably all know people who do the
opposite they are too
individualistic and only concerned about
their own tasks
and their own individual projects but if
you want high
marks for soft skills and working with
other people on a team is really
critical
number six is problem solving i was
talking to a friend of mine the other
day
he works behind the scenes in television
and he said that his job
is essentially solving one problem after
the next
all day long they start with a plan but
there's never enough
money or help and there's always
obstacles they didn't see coming
and our ability to find a way to move
forward and solve those problems is
really important
problem solving usually involves
critical thinking
logical reasoning and we have to have
the ability to think through an issue
clearly and reasonably problem solving
also involves making good decisions
informed decisions we can't just do
what we feel like doing we have to come
up with a solution that
actually is going to work not just the
first idea that comes to mind
or just go with our favorite way of
doing things
and that takes preparation and a
systematic approach
research creativity and a good dose of
personal resourcefulness number seven is
flexibility
and adaptability most of us
work on a variety of tasks with all
sorts of different people
and that means we have to be flexible
and open to change
and find new ways of doing things
oftentimes
and this is really hard for some people
i worked with a client
for a while who was very inflexible and
once she got an
idea in her head she would protect it
and she would shoot down
any other suggestions well that's
not a good example of soft skills we
need to have
the self-awareness to realize that we
have our own personality quirks
our own mental boxes we have to do our
best to put that aside
we have to get better at adapting to
others and responding
to uncertainty and change with
flexibility and that means at times to
be
open trainable and work well under
pressure on deadlines and somehow
still get described as someone who is
easy to work with
we have to learn how to roll with
changes and
keep moving forward even when the
situation is ambiguous
number eight is our ability to manage
and resolve conflict
and even negotiate a little bit and this
begins of course by being the kind of
person
who does not create conflict i honestly
believe that when
people say they're looking for someone
with good conflict management skills
that's another way to say we don't want
someone who is going to
cause conflict who has a tendency to
create
drama and you can usually tell because
this type of person has a
win-lose philosophy in order for them to
win
somebody else must lose so they
act competitive in times and in places
where it's not
necessary at all in my experience people
with a win
lose or conflict conflict-driven
approach usually
brought that with them from their own
personal life and they brought it into
the workplace
they are like that every place they work
in other words
and you don't want to be this person so
first don't be a source of conflict
and next when conflict comes up between
you and others around you
learn to deal with it appropriately and
productively
that means looking for common ground
finding ways to get everybody's
interests met and somehow using a
disagreement
to make things even better in the end
and this might mean drawing on
negotiation skills or facilitation
skills to hear everybody out
make sure everybody feels understood you
want to take a win-win
approach and look for a satisfactory
outcome for everybody involved not just
you
it often means being the bigger person
the more
mature person in other words question of
the day
which of these top eight soft skills do
you need the most work on personally
and feel free to check out my free
download of the five essential
communication skills that every
professional should have
and there's always a free class at my
communication
coach academy links to all of those
resources and more
are in the description below so thanks
god bless and i will see you next time