When people start planning to add value to their skill-sets, what are the things that first come to mind?
Training and certification, qualifications and degrees can show up on the list, but what’s becoming more and more regarded as equally vital now are the intangible skills that help leverage group and personal strengths and make a good organization great. And whether you call them interpersonal skills, having high emotional intelligence, or plain people skills, these ‘soft skills’ are increasingly valuable today.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are the personality traits and interpersonal skills that directly affect the way you interact and live with other people. They are rooted in who you are and how you move in the world and in your communities.
Internal soft skills are what you possess, intrinsically. They’re what help you direct the way you approach and understand things, and how you take action in your life. They are skills like:
- Critical thinking/problem solving, and perceptiveness
- Resilience and perseverance
- Emotional management
- Growth mindset
External soft skills are the ones you use when you’re with other people. Interpersonal soft skills are vital in maximizing your impact in a work group. For example, take the following:
- Collaboration and teamwork
- Effective communication
- Self-Promotion and networking
- Conflict management
- Adaptability and flexibility
- Negotiation skills
When people think of improving their skill-sets to build more value, their usually focus on hard skills like learning particularly desirable programming languages, or spreadsheet mastery, or earning widely recognized high-impact, industry-specific certification.
More and more though, soft skills like adaptability, self-motivation, leadership, and having a growth-mindset are showing themselves to equally as valuable, and can actually provide more of an in with people and organizations.
See, if hard skills get the door open, soft skills helps cement the invitation. If hard skills provide the value, soft skills help sell it.