What Are Soft Skills and Why Are They Important for Your
Having good soft skills can lead to high performance, strong working relationships and even save you time and energy. Here’s our top 10 soft skills that can help you excel at work.
1. Communication
It seems obvious but having good communication skills is essential in ensuring your work gets done efficiently and smoothly. It helps others understand what you need from them and keeps everyone working on the same page. Some attributes of communication are:
- Listening
- Negotiating
- Reading body language
- Writing skills
- Verbal communication
2. Adaptability
Not being stuck in your ways and being open to a new way of doing something. “The way we’ve always done it” isn’t always the best way forward. Being able to adapt to new situations or processes is an asset to any company.
3. Creativity
You can’t teach creativity, but you can definitely enhance it. Creativity isn’t just about storytelling or creating a piece of art. It’s also about being innovative and critical thinking.
4. Teamwork
Working collaboratively within a team helps improves productivity and minimises conflicts by creating strong and long-lasting working relationships.
5. Conflict resolution
There will be conflicts in the workplace from time to time, but being able to resolve them in a professional way, and having conversations not confrontations is an important soft skill.
6. Decision-making
Making good decisions is considering both the facts and emotions at play. Thinking logically and looking at the situation objectively, taking all possibilities into consideration.
7. Empathy
Understanding where other people are coming from, what’s impacting their life/work and how decisions you make can affect them.
8. Time management
Managing time effectively can lead to getting more work done, better quality of work and over all less stress because the tasks are under control.
9. Networking
Developing connections and relationships with people both within the business and outside of it. Understanding the importance of knowledge sharing and building strong partnerships.
10. Positive attitude
No, we’re not talking about a “good vibes only” mentality. Having a positive attitude is considering all aspects of a situation and focusing on the good, or why something is possible. Some attributes of a positive attitude are:
- Respectfulness
- Enthusiasm
- Courtesy
- Co-operation
- Honesty
