You Should Master To Advance Your Career 7 Soft Skills

BY WILLIAM ARRUDA

MASTERING SOFT SKILLS: The Key to Career Success in a Technological Era

While technology continues to revolutionise the workforce, business remains a human endeavour that relies on strong relationships to achieve success. This means that mastering soft skills is crucial for anyone who wants to excel in their career.

Soft skills are behavioural and interpersonal attributes, like being a collaborative member of a team. Dictionary. com defines soft skills as “personal attributes that allow individuals to communicate effectively and get along with others.” Since people are what make business happen, building and using soft skills is the key to achieving goals. They’re also essential for bolstering your personal brand and for getting noticed, acknowledged, and promoted.

Hard skills are technical skills that are learned through formal education and on-the-job experience. When it comes to looking for a job, hard skills such as data analysis or language proficiency are the minimum qualifications that get you considered. However, soft skills are often what will tip the scales in your favour over other equally technically qualified candidates.

Unfortunately, the term “soft skills” often makes them seem less important than the so-called hard skills (which is also a poor descriptor for the technical skills required to do a specific job). But soft skills are becoming even more critical as technology enters the workforce. You might be great at crunching numbers or coding like a pro, but if you can’t work well with others, you won’t get very far.

Soft Skills Are Hard Won

Developing your soft skills isn’t always easy. It takes deliberate effort and practice to master these essential work skills. But it’s worth the effort because they can’t be replicated by robots. While ChatGPT and AI bots can ace the bar exam and accurately complete most tax forms, they can’t offer something that humans canour humanity, our ability to build relationships, think creatively, innovate, influence, and inspire.

As you progress in your career, soft skills become even more crucial. Mastering them early on can help you prepare for the transition from being an individual contributor to a management role, while expanding them can enhance your leadership abilities and inspire your team.

According to a Harvard Business Review article “Why Do So Many Managers Forget They’re Human Beings?” by global leadership expert Rasmus Hougaard, about 70% of leaders rate themselves as inspiring and motivating. However, employees perceive their leaders quite differently. McKinsey’s 2022 Great Attrition research found that uncaring and uninspiring leaders were one of the top three reasons why employees chose to quit their jobs, says Emily Field, co-author of The Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re already a boss, you need to have killer soft skills to get ahead. With hybrid and remote work becoming more common, there are some specific skills you must master.