A short guide to soft skills: what soft skills are and why everyone should develop them

What are soft skills and how can they help you at work?

All professional skills are divided into two large groups:

• Hard, or basic, are hard skills. These include the skills with which a specialist solves his problems. For example, layout in Tilda for web designers or using the Spring framework for Java developers.
• Soft, or flexible, are soft skills. These are critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity and other skills that help you work comfortably in a team and find an approach to clients.

The main feature of soft skills is that they are almost impossible to represent in numbers. After all, there is simply no single KPI for friendliness or creativity. However, it is unlikely that you will be able to build a career based only on basic skills, even if you are a brilliant specialist.

Let’s say that at a simulated plant there are two engineers and one vacant managerial position. The first candidate is unsociable, sensitive to criticism and does not like to change anything in the routine. At the same time, he always does his work quickly and without errors. The second one sometimes makes inaccuracies and may miss the deadline, but he gets along well with colleagues, generates non-standard ideas and is ready to learn new things. The position will most likely be offered to him. And the point is not only that such a leader is more pleasant to communicate with. Developed soft skills directly affect the quality of work. In 2017 Google

decided to checkwhich teams in the company are the most productive. The best results were shown by groups with strong soft skills - the ability to communicate competently, empathy and leadership.

What skills should you pay attention to?

The list numbers in the dozens, so some researchers give up trying to name and describe them all. Instead, they suggest dividing soft skills into thematic groups. Thus, American business author Seth Godin highlights five blocks.

• Self-control. This is the ability to control oneself and achieve goals in the most unexpected work situations. These include adaptability, ambition, risk-taking, and others.
• Performance. Or the ability to effectively apply your basic skills in business. For example, this includes hard work, the ability to set goals and make decisions, and time management.
• Wisdom. These are qualities that help to cope with complex social tasks at work. For example, the ability to negotiate even with difficult partners, mentoring skills, empathy for colleagues.
• Perception. The ability to notice non-obvious details in work and relationships between people: observation, strategic thinking, the ability to sensibly assess situations.
• Influence. These are the qualities that are important for managing a team. Ability to give feedback, self-presentation skills, charisma, leadership.

Working in a specific company, role and team may require a different set of soft skills. For example, leadership skills will be critical to one manager, while creative thinking and motivation will be critical to another. As a rule, recruiters are interested in the universal personal characteristics of applicants:

• communication skills;
• skill to work in team;
• empathy;
• critical thinking;
• creativity;
• observation;
• emotional intellect;
• fast learner;
• self-organization and time management.

How to improve soft skills

Soft skills are not as easy to assess as technical skills because there are no degrees in adaptability or critical thinking. These behavior patterns need to be observed while working. Therefore, for initial feedback, you can contact your manager and ask to list the soft skills that, in his opinion, you need to develop. Or take one of the special tests, for example questionnaire Peterson and Seligman. And then use the methods that are recommended for mastering specific skills.

Teamwork skills

The success of collective projects is built on the ability to hear each other and give adequate feedback. To develop active listening skills, try asking more open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no. For example, if a colleague is sharing his feelings, you can ask: “How does this make you feel?”, “What do you mean when you say that?”, “Why does this upset you?”

The principles of feedback are as follows: it should be to the point and not affect the person’s personality. The universal feedback model is built using the sandwich method:

• highlight the positives. This will help set a friendly and supportive tone for the conversation. For example, “You made an excellent layout and very subtly captured the customer’s color wishes”;
• get to the problematic point in the middle of the message. It is important to explain why you think differently. Let's say, “Your idea could be improved by choosing a more rounded font. This will emphasize the softness of the palette”;
• end on a positive note. Then the employee will not leave in a depressed mood, but with the feeling that he has opportunities for professional growth.

Self-organization

Or, in other words, work discipline. To begin with, it is worth analyzing how much time is spent on specific tasks and which of them cause difficulties. The visualization method will help with this. For example, you can enter into a spreadsheet the hours you spend on tasks throughout the week. Record everything, even social media and coffee breaks.

After such an audit, you can move on to more efficient organization of the working day. Try to plan it in the evening. When it takes several hours in the morning to finally wake up and get ready, time is wasted on unproductive things. Do the most difficult tasks first, alternate them with more enjoyable ones. After some time, this approach will become a habit, and you will procrastinate less.

Learning ability

Motivation and consistency will help here. Think or write what exactly you want to achieve in your career: higher earnings, a management position, or development in a completely new field. Based on this, determine which basic skills you already have and which ones you need to improve. After this, you can proceed to search for the necessary educational materials or courses.

It is important to regularly apply the acquired knowledge in practice. For example, if you are improving your spoken English, try to read more literature in the original and watch films without subtitles.

Critical thinking

This is perhaps the most difficult soft skill to learn because our brains have many quirks that make it difficult to make good decisions. But you can’t do without this skill in almost any job. With developed critical thinking, it is easier to avoid brain traps. It consists of skills that help you analyze information, make thoughtful decisions, and defend your point of view.

Various methods have been developed to develop critical thinking. Among them:

• System 48 questions. They were created by the team at the online educational platform Wabisabi Learning to help students eliminate cognitive biases and emotions when analyzing facts. For convenience, the questions are divided into six blocks, each beginning with its own pronoun: who, what, where, when, why, how. For example, “Who will play a key role in this?”, “What is preventing the idea from being implemented?”, “Where to get more information?”, “When is the best time to implement this?”, “Why is this important?”, “How can it bring benefit? System will help comprehensively evaluate information or analyze an unpleasant situation at work.
• SCAMPER technology. It is too series of questions, designed to help in the brainstorming process. The name of the method is an abbreviation for the words Substitute (replace), Combine (combine), Adapt (adapt), Modify/Magnify (modify/increase), Put to other uses (suggest another use), Eliminate (eliminate or reduce actions to a minimum), Rearrange/Reverse (change to the opposite, change order). Each word is a specific stage. By going through them sequentially, you will be able to create a solution to the desired problem.

Constant practice is important to develop soft skills. And there is also an atmosphere that is conducive to this. In companies with an authoritarian management style, it is difficult to find space for initiative, creativity and the ability to engage in constructive dialogue. If you feel that this is the type of job you are working in, you might want to think about changing employers.