The 7 Most Important Soft Skills

1) SELF-AWARENESS. This is the most important soft skill because it’s foundational for many of the soft skills essential for career success. Knowing your values, purpose, strengths, challenges, and blind spots helps you interact with others more authentically.

2) FEEDBACK. Both giving and receiving feedback are essential for keeping relationships on solid ground and for making meaningful performance improvements.

3) EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE. The ability to manage your emotions and the emotions of those around you is essential for nurturing relationships. EQ trumps IQ in the workplace.

4) LISTENING. Arguably the most challenging of all communication skills, listening is essential for understanding others and showing them that you value what they have to say. Listening in the virtual world, where visual cues can be hidden, takes even more effort and practice.

5) INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP. With less in-person connection, people are feeling untethered. Leaders must make their people feel included and a sense of belonging to the organisation. This requires getting to know people on a deep, emotional level.

6) COACHING. Adopting a coaching mindset helps you engage with your employees and colleagues in productive and non-confrontational ways. Coaching is a high EQ way of enabling your people to be their best, without being directive, demanding or demeaning.

7) VIRTUAL PRESENCE. While mastering the technical aspects of Zoom is not a soft skill, showing up as confident and leading captivating hybrid meetings when you have fewer visual clues and are competing with a suboptimal meeting environment (such as a 13” computer screen) is a soft skill that is particularly relevant now. With loneliness increasing and connectedness waning, being adept and facilitating meetings from a people perspective pays dividends beyond the action items that are doled out.”

Soft Skills Are Social Skills

To give soft skills the import they deserve, let’s all agree to start calling them the more accurate and descriptive term: social skills. With strong social skills, you can thrive in any work environment, expand your personal brand and advance your career to new heights.

This article was originally published in Forbes

WILLIAM

Arruda

William Arruda is the bestselling author of the definitive books on personal branding: Digital YOU, Career Distinction and Ditch. Dare. Do! And he’s the creative energy behind Reach Personal Branding and CareerBlast.TV – two groundbreaking organizations committed to expanding the visibility, availability, and value of personal branding across the globe.