Soft skills for improving career

Soft skills for improving career

Imagine walking into the interview arena with your polished “skilful” self and tremendous potential and confidence to crack the interview. Your probable employer asks you a question that makes you dumbstruck at the absurdity of the question thrown at you. You realise you cannot communicate!

The prologue here stands interesting as this raises the demand of the communication skills in an individual. But it is not only this skill that comes into the purview when being judged about your potential for success in your career.  You have worked hard for your career and develop all the necessary skill set to outshine others in the same niche. Have you really developed all the skills? This is a question to ask your own self.

There are 2 types of skills- Hard skills and soft skills. Just like a computer system has two components- hardware and software with software being the intangible part and hardware the tangible, the hard skills are like the tangible part of your skills which can be easily quantified and judged upon. However the soft skills cannot be identified easily except for a few impressions that might either speak for or against your career. You can study whole day and score a hundred percent marks in your exams but if you are emotionally foolish, you can expect to suffer a lot. If you want to take home the best example of how soft skills in a person can do wonders, think about the legendary businessman Steve Jobs

In answer to a question from the public

“Does Steve Jobs know how to code?”

to which the co founder of Apple Steve Wozniak writes

“Steve didn’t ever code. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design...”

These lines can only make one ponder the wonders soft skills can achieve! 

What soft skills do you really need for your career?

This is a question worth asking if you want to not only build an effective, rewarding career with your shining personality but also become successful in every aspect of your life. Just like the seven habits of highly successful people, there are these 7 soft skills that you need to develop early in your career life.

Communication

“The art of communication is the language of leadership”

          ⁃James Humes, the author of “Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln”

The art of communicating well is so intricately tied with the art of leadership that one cannot talk without the other. The first quality of leadership is the communication skill. The development of leadership as a soft skill will be highlighted later here but as far as communication is concerned, it is not only oral. This line might ring loud in your years that pen is mightier than sword and it turns out to be true if you are excellent in paraphrasing or expressing your words in the material form on paper, words that can strike deep into the minds and the hearts. The oral communication skill cannot be overemphasised. The orators and the businessmen shower inspiration and communicate targets and solve problems through oral communication. Written letters and documents can play a big part here too. You must learn the art of when to write and when to say and this ability can be learnt like any other art. Words have power be it spoken or written. Written or documented sentences have more power than spoken provided they are read with utmost attention.

Why do employers seek for such skills in you? Communication is not only about speaking but also about comprehension of the words being told to you. The employers expect you to listen and understand the whys and hows of the company you are working for, your daily targets and the relationships you establish with your co workers including the employers themselves to carry out the work without compromising on the quality and quantity. Being a presenter is as important as being a top notch exam cracker! Learn to present well which can happen when you develop communication skill.

Problem solving ability

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”

          ⁃        The Mastermind Albert Einstein

You do not need to have a high IQ or a big brain to solve a problem. You need creativity just like Travis Kalanick said

“Every problem has a solution. You just have to be creative enough to find it”

Creativity is a much desired skill which can make you a problem solver. Your employer expects you to bring solutions to the problems and not your own problems! You are expected to show a tendency to use your analytical and creative skills to approach the possible solutions to a problem. Again here there are two types of people- One who chit chats about the problem incessantly and the other one who stops talking and start solving. Your employer needs you to be a problem solver and not a problem creator.

Emotional Intelligence

At home your wife shot you a word or two that you did not deserve to hear. It created an internal conflict in you and before you got any time to sort it out, you were getting late for the workplace. Since energies can neither be created nor destroyed, all the frustration inside you was transferred to your work. The result is more than obvious that the work has become affected which is an undesirable thing to afford. Does the anger of your boss not become inevitable?

The word IQ has been so overemphasised that EQ or Emotional Quotient has not been provided proper justice. Oftener than not, EQ has proven to be more important than the Intelligence Quotient that can either be developed or born with. EQ can be developed through mind control techniques and meditation. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean you cannot be emotional! Being emotional is the best asset that you can have. What I mean to ask is do your emotions have a steering wheel? A wheel to give the car a direction? It is the direction of these emotions that is required from you. If you put your emotions in the work-strong positive emotions, the work will be said to be put out from the heart and anything done by heart is deemed to be the best. Simple meditative techniques along with anger management techniques can ensure success in your career.

As I am writing this, the beautiful words from Napolean Hill, the author of “Think And Grow Rich” are ringing loud in my ears

“Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind”.

This is what defines a good Emotional Quotient. Do not underestimate the power of it and you will be in high demand for the services you provide to your employer. Your career will be greatly enhanced in the long run.

Leadership and team player

I can hardly be able to imagine a football match being won due to a single player himself. Had it not been for the effective and tactical passes with strategic positioning by the football club manager, the team would not have won. If you think the footballer who has made the most goals in a match is the sole contributor himself, it simply means you undervalue the essence of being a team player.

A team player plays for the team, not for purely personal selfish reasons. Your employers would love to look at your accolades and certificates in the sports niche. Why is that so? They portray your ability to be a team player. They show your knowledge about the fact that the game cannot be one without the art of Cooperation.

Cooperation is a powerful term and it is only the power of a leader to drive organized effort in a highly effective manner. A leader is a team player who has the capability to understand human nature and has his vision crystal clear. Every organisation has a vision board which depicts its vision. The employers expect us to understand and base our actions on the stated vision. Being a team player is the first step to leadership.

Your boss will prefer you to be a team player and if you exhibit the personalities of a leader, you will be raised to a higher position to lead people.

A team player does more than what he is required to do. If you show tendency to work for the amount of salary you are given, you will stagnate in your current position. But the moment you start taking initiatives, you will be offered what you truly deserve. Team player and leadership are must to develop soft skills. They will not come easy. You will need to work for them.

An aptitude for technology

In this technological boom, a business cannot be successful without successful implementation of the Information Systems. The robots are replacing humans while the humans are expected to know how to run those robots. Those robots can mean any automated system that can carry out the work at your command. Computers are no less than robots. They work at your commands even though in 1s and 0s.

You may be wondering if this is even a soft skill to worry about!

The situation has grown complex. Gone are those days when your employer required hand written notes and documentations from you. Everything is now stored in the database and you must be adept at handling access and retrieval operations. If you have a good aptitude as well as curiosity for technology, you can make a big niche in your career as a senior executive who can oversee a majority of operations of the business. The importance of having technological skills cannot be ignored in any career, be it just being agile in typing on a basic Microsoft word!

Even if you are not required to know for instance, knowledge about advanced excel to carry out the tasks, there is a tremendous scope for making your tasks easier and more efficient if you do know it. Technology can help divert your precious time in analyzing instead of being clerical. Employers will always want the work to be completed in as less time as possible without loss of quality. Technology is a huge time saver.

Eagerness to learn

Now this term can make you go nuts because you do not know what I exactly mean by the phrase “eagerness to learn”. It is time to keep your ego about your hard skills aside and realise the fact that you still do not anything even if you have learnt “everything”.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”

If the wisest man Socrates knows nothing, how can you expect to know everything?

Why does your employer want this curiosity to learn?

As business organizations are getting complex everyday with increased competition, you will be expected to know much more than you are bound to do for a fixed income every month. Your boss will always want a learner and not a preacher! If your co worker or your boss is teaching you something, you need to be as curious as Issac Newton and inspect the apple. The moment you realise you know everything about what you are doing, your learning will stop and cannot further contribute to the organization as a whole

Resilience

Being the last point, you might overlook it but to speak the truth, your boss will try to test your resiliency. Why is being resilient so important?

Your ability to bounce back from the face of tough situations will always be desired by your employer. It is in fact one of the most favourable assets that you can possess. When your company starts incurring losses, your boss will not want you to shift to greener pastures instead of being creative and analyzing and solving problems. Being creative is always desired but being creative in case of tough times will amount to resilience. Resilience will decide your ability to handle failures and get back up and start changing your tomorrow for the better.

If you want to shine like a bright lamp in your career, make sure to imbibe these quality soft skills. Without soft skills even if you get a big handsome amount, that will only be temporary.