You're known at your workplace for being the best at your job; you probably have scored
the highest marks in your college but it means so little, if you don't have the skills that
you need, what I mean here is, do you have the skill of teamwork? Some of the most important
professional skills can't really be taught in the classroom, and these skills are called
soft skills and they're more crucial to get you recruited than you think. So what are
soft skills? Well unlike hard skills, these skills cannot be measured, but they can be
proved. So some examples of soft skills include, “verbal and written communication”, “teamwork”
and “leadership”. So one reason that soft skills are so important is that they are the
key to building relationships, gaining reputation and creating more opportunities for you to
develop your relationships. So today I'm going to tell you what are some crucial soft skills
to get you hired or to accelerate your career goals, this is Michelle and you're watching
me on Skillopedia, the place to develop skills for the real world.
Now the first crucial skill to take your career to the next level is communication. Let me explain this further,
let's look at why we need communication, so both written and verbal communication skills
are very important in the workplace because, (a) they help you create a positive image,
second, they improve your chances of building relationships with your coworkers and (c)
communication skills boost your performance, so whether it's at your workplace or in your
college or in your department, you are going to boost your performance if your communication
is strong. Now let's look at why employers look for this skill, so of course workers
are more productive when they know how to communicate with each other. It's very simple
if you can clearly express the “who, what, when, why, where and how” of a project you'll
be a hot ticket, which means you'll be much in demand. So this is my suggestion, you must
develop your verbal and written communication but you must be thinking what are the ways
to do that? So now I'm going to suggest to you some tips to gain this crucial skill,
so the first thing that you can do is you can probably join a public speaking workshop
where you get an opportunity to speak publicly and gain your confidence. You could also do
this by watching some of our videos about public speaking at Skillopedia and try to
imitate those and learn the tips from there and apply them when you're speaking in public.
Okay the second thing that you could do is, apart from speaking you also need to be an
active listener. So active listening is when you wait until the other person has finished
speaking and really listen to what they are saying before you jump in. so this is a very
important and often overlooked skill of communication. So I'd suggest that you listen carefully and
try public speaking workshops. But that's not it lastly you can also learn to monitor
your body language, which means to develop your ability to communicate non-verbally.
So this can mean maintaining good eye contact while talk talking, nodding while you're listening
and a firm handshake when you're leaving. so these are just some examples of body language,
you can again watch some of our videos on body language to understand how you can improve
this to improve your overall communication skills. Now the other crucial skill to take
your career to the next level is, “teamwork”. so why do you need teamwork? Well you need
it because no one person doing everything by himself or herself, can make a project
successful. So success is obviously the result of many people working together to achieve
a common goal. So therefore when employers want to hire employees, they really look for
the skill of teamwork. The reason for this is because good teamwork spirit improves the
culture of the office and it improves the office environment, due to which many people
stay in the organization and top talent comes to them. So, now we know that teamwork is
a very important skill to take your career to the next level, but what are the ways to
gain the skill? So the first thing that you could do is, lend a hand, which means to help
someone when you see a friend or classmate or a co-worker in need. So you could offer
help by saying, “hey, I know you have a ton on your plate, how can I help?” this
small gesture can help you a lot to develop your team spirit skills. okay the next one
would be to say it would be another way to build the skill is by offering a cover for
a colleague which means that if someone's on a vacation and you need to cover for them,
before they ask you it's better that you walk to them and say, “hey, it looks like you're
going on an annual leave, well have fun, but do you need help with your cover?” great,
so this way you can display your spirit of teamwork. And the third way of being a team
player is to take responsibility for your actions. So that means whenever you've made
a mistake, rather than putting the blame on someone else you should accept it and say
that yes I did it, and this is a very good point to be a good team worker. So these are
my three tips for you to gain the skill of team spirit in order to take your career to
the next level. Now the next crucial skill to escalate your career is, “adaptability”.
So adaptability means the ability to adapt, which I think simply means to be flexible.
So now the question is, why do you need to be flexible? So it's because things don't
always go as planned, isn't it? When you plan something it doesn't always work. So the better
thing is instead of grumbling and complaining about how things are not turning up as you
wanted, the best thing is to find alternate solutions and this is what good leaders do,
they find solutions to problems and not increase the problem. So why do employers look for
this skill? Well it's because the speed of change in any organization is so fast that
employees need to adapt to the changes in the organization. So well, the way to gain
this skill is to push yourself, that's how you can be flexible and you can adapt to the
changes. so to be an early adopter of change, for example adapting to technology without
moaning is crucial, so people can see you as someone who's capable of meeting new challenges
or if you're in your college another way would be to attend training sessions to learn new
things about your area of study so you can display that you are quick to learn and you
love to be flexible and adapt new changes. So this is how you can develop the third skill
which I have spoken to you about today which is adaptability. Now another critical skill
for your career is, “problem-solving” so the reason you need this skill is because
when something goes wrong, you can either complain about it or take action and of course
it's taking action that will get you noticed. So knowing how to think on your feet, which
means, to think of quick solutions or to make decisions very quickly. This is a very important
skill when it comes to being an important part of an organization. So why do employers
look for it? The reason for this is very simple because companies face many problems every
day and they need solvers and these solvers a-k-a that top performers, their performance
help them to sail through unexpected challenges. So the best way to gain this skill is to always
approach your boss with a solution, not a problem… this is how you become a problem
solver. so when an issue arises, sit down and think through how you're going to solve
it before bringing it to your boss's attention and he will definitely appreciate your effort
to solve the problem even before bringing it. Our final skill that I'm gonna discuss
with you to take your career to the next level is, “critical thinking”, so why do you
need this skill? Well critical thinking is essential to bring new ideas in the workplace.
Critical thinking means to think about the positives and the negatives of every idea
and employees need to be able to think about this to be better problem solvers as we discussed
in the previous step and this skill will make you successful no matter what your job is.
So now how to develop your critical thinking skills? well I think the only way to develop
it is by learning, so find ways to learn… you could read the news every day, you could
read books, you could discuss non-work issue with your friends and family members, the
reason you could do this is to generate ideas because when you discuss problems with others
you're able to brainstorm new ideas and this will help your critical thinking processes.
So this brings us to the end of our session and today you have learned the top skills
that can take your career to the next level. So try to use these strategies that I've shared
with you and tell me how these strategies have helped you, this is how you gain soft
skills. So let me know what you felt about this session in your comments and which of
these skills is most relevant to you. Thank you so much for staying with me till the very
end of this session, I'll see you very soon with another useful session, till then keep
developing your soft skills, bye.