Soft Skills Revolution: Transforming Careers and Shaping Success"
Business is changing with time, so do requirements for it. Nowadays successful organizations put an emphasis not only on hard skills, such as subject matter expertise or degrees, but also on soft skills. Communication becomes the leading tool of interaction between clients and businesses, and the main idea is to make this collaboration as comfortable and efficient as possible.
How can the development of soft skills impact the company? Let us analyze some of the most important skills and their effects, focusing our attention on the L.E.A.D.E.R. formula:
L – Leadership. Teamwork is the dominant form of work organization in the majority of companies. Consequently, every team needs a leader who can manage the group and delegate tasks in accordance with abilities and knowledge of its members.
Leaders know how to act in stressful situations. Using logic and critical thinking they need to choose the most suitable solutions for the current issues. They have to know how to create a reliable image so that the team members trust them when they are under pressure or cannot achieve the objectives.
Leadership comprises numerous capabilities, such as the skill of creating a positive atmosphere at the working place, knowledge of psychological tricks which can help to mentor individuals and organize the team, as well as strategic planning, because leaders are to analyze the situation in the company and calculate possible consequences of their decisions.
E – Empathy. Understanding and sharing the emotions of others is an important part of work. Employees who are able to recognize emotions and feelings of their colleagues and clients benefit from it in many ways.
Chasing professionalism, many workers may become more ‘robotic’ in their speech and pay less attention to the people they are working with. However, emotions play a crucial role in formulating the image of the business. If employees respect the emotions of each other and the clients they are dealing with, it significantly increases the chances of successful communication and negotiations, as people feel seen and their emotions are considered as valid.
Moreover, empathy is essential for the friendly working space. Both team leaders and team members are to cooperate, and the knowledge of types of emotional response to stress, happiness, pressure or misunderstanding can help to set more positive tone for conversations, thus making them more effective.
A – Adaptability. The word ‘business’ can be viewed as a synonym to the word ‘new’, because something changes in this sphere every minute: new clients, rules, promotion campaigns, ideas and concepts. To keep up with trends and be ready for changes, employees need to be adaptable.
Adaptability makes workers ready for any kind of unexpected challenges. Being open-minded and flexible, they learn to alter their attitude and behavior in accordance with various social circumstances.
D – Decision-making. People who are able to take responsibility and make a decision without an unnecessary hesitation change the whole team around them. This soft skill includes a high level of confidence, as the one who decides something needs to be sure in this decision.
The process of making a decision is tricky, because typically there are multiple options to choose from. In order to make everything correctly, multiple factors need to be taken into consideration: the opinion of the team members, goals of the company, circumstances, possible consequences, both positive and negative, as well as rising expenses. That is why this skill is not easy to develop, however it is notably beneficial to have.
E – Emotional intelligence. Sometimes empathy and emotional intelligence are regarded as the same thing, but there is a difference between them. Empathetic people can recognize and share emotions of others; emotional intelligence, on the other hand, teaches employees to understand their own emotional state.
To work productively and be able to communicate with others in a polite, friendly manner any worker needs to feel calm, comfortable and focused on work. Understanding of their own feelings and emotions allows employees to detect anxiety, a lack of concentration, tiredness, early signs of a burnout, etc.
R – Resilience. Problems are inevitable in many situations. The key point is to teach employees to deal with them effectively. Resilience means that workers can analyze their mistakes or critical situations they got into and learn from this experience.
A lack of resilience can have a negative impact on one’s self-esteem, as failures are typically associated with poor knowledge and bad skills. Resilience teaches workers to critically observe any situation and to exercise a growth mindset. It means that they need to focus on growing points and look out for self-improvement opportunities rather than punishing themselves for a failed task.
To conclude, soft skills are directly linked to effective communication. If the company wants to have successful interaction with clients and partners, it is certainly required to look for workers with developed soft-skills and to provide training for the working groups.
