Soft skills to set you apart

These days it’s no longer enough to purely posess an education and the technical qualifications and skills that go with that, employers are looking for more. ‘More’ comes in the shape of soft skills that help set you apart from your colleagues as these aren’t skills that can necessarily be taught in a typical classroom. Soft skills are often used interchangeably with ‘people skills’ and can be innate, rely heavily on a person’s emotional quotient and general environmental exposure too. Soft skills are defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the “personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.” To simplify it further and perhaps to state the obvious, soft skills are the opposite of hard skills in that they impact how you interact with and work with others. These are generally gained through experiences and exposure and although not all of them can be taught, they can be trained through creating awareness around them.

Some of the core and most highly valued soft skills include communication, adaptability, problem solving, critical thinking, active listening, time management, flexibility, dependability, leadership capabilities, creativity conflict resolution, negotiation skills, time management, empathy, team work and self-awareness. From a career standpoint, soft-skills can play a critical role in an employee’s ability to be successful in their respective roles as it has a direct impact on their ability to collaborate, participate in team work, work autonomously, manage their time, contend with company dynamics, and ultimately thrive in more complex corporate environments.

Forbes Magazine has outlined eleven key essential soft skills that employers value in 2024. The first and most sought after soft skill, understandably is communication. This impacts every aspect of life, in both our personal and professional spheres. Communication is not just limited to verbal communication, but non-verbal communication too, which is more nuanced. Other important communication skills include the ability to present, communicate in written form and to practice active listening – which is listening to understand, not just to respond. Leadership comes next, and at this juncture it’s important to distinguish leadership from management in that leaders look to motivate and inspire through their vision, managers look to ensure and enact company efficiencies via its employees. Leadership skills also include coaching, mentoring and problem solving.

Team work is another undervalued soft skill, not everyone ‘plays well with others’, however being able to “work towards a shared goal” which entails accountability, collaboration, mediation and conflict management. Outside of these, Forbes also highlights creativity, time management, adaptability, problem solving, work ethic, critical thinking, conflict management and lastly emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence can be one of the most complex to master due to the fact that this does not come to everyone naturally. Emotional intelligence otherwise referred to as EQ refers to the ability for us to “recognise and understand one’s own emotions and those of others.” Ultimately possessing these soft skills in conjunction with technical skills will go a long way in ensuring your applicability, continued relevance and distinguish you from others in the workplace.