What Are Soft Skills?

When you think about the corporate work environment, employees need to be able to do a number of things. Of course, they need to be able to perform their job duties adequately, and they should be able to provide benefits to the organization through their normal, daily duties. However, the skills required to simply do one's job only tell a portion of the story. Soft skills are just as important in the workplace as the more concrete skills associated with performing one's job properly, but they're much more difficult for most people to integrate into their toolboxes. Since these skills are so crucial to proper leadership, as well as the development of future leaders, it's important for key members of any organization to know the answer to the question, “What are soft skills?”

What Are Soft Skills? A Basic Definition

When you talk about leadership, you're really talking about leading people. Business leaders don't lead sectors of their organizations, they don't lead equipment and they don't lead documents and reports. These items are important to leadership, of course, but they are merely tangential. True leaders understand that management issues are people issues, and skilled leaders know that solutions to workplace challenges lie in their ability to help people understand their roles and perform them well. That's where soft skills come in.

Soft skills are the skills that allow leaders to empathize with their team members and understand what drives them. They are the skills that allow leaders to communicate effectively, and they are closely related to an individual's EQ, or emotional intelligence. Some people like to think of them as general interpersonal skills, but they encompass so much more than that.

The interesting thing about soft skills is that they're generally much more difficult to attain and nurture than so-called hard skills. Hard skills can be taught quite easily, and most people – assuming that they're willing to put in the appropriate amount of work – have no trouble learning the basic skills that are required to perform their jobs. When it comes to soft skills, however, teaching them is not quite as simple.

Because soft skills are so difficult to nurture within an organization and its leadership, many businesses have decided to stop focusing on them, particularly in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the decision to remove focus from soft skills has resulted in a workforce that feels like it's not important enough to be invested in.

What Are Some Examples of Soft Skills?

Here are some of the more common soft skills that drive the effectiveness of leadership within an organization:

• Communication skills

• Conflict-management skills

• Team-building skills

• Coaching skills

• Mentoring skills

• An ability to provide real-time feedback

• An ability to provide real-time challenges

• Delegation skills

• Time management skills

• Strategic thinking skills

• Collaboration skills

• Managerial courage

Stay tuned to the Ex3 Matters blog because my next post will go into greater detail about these skills and what they mean to organizations that want to be successful.

Soft Skills Can Be Improved With the Right Help

When you look at an organization and its leadership, it's likely that you see a need for improvement when it comes to the soft skills (or lack thereof) displayed by key team members. Some people believe that individuals are either born with these skills, or they're not. While this is partly true, the fact of the matter is that soft skills can be taught, developed and improved. People possess a number of hidden talents, and they're probably sitting on some soft skills that they never knew they had in them. By working as a consultant, you can begin to uncover and nurture these skills, thus giving businesses a major boost in terms of leadership, growth potential and much more.

Have you been asking yourself, “What are soft skills and why are they important?” Ex3Matters has the answers you need. Stay tuned to our blog for more information and insights, and feel free to check out the many resources we have available right here on our website.