How to develop soft skills in the workplace?

Soft skills are a set of personal skills with practical implications on job performance. In addition, over time, they are increasingly valued, and for good reason: they are a sample of the potential of workers. even of those who still need training to adapt to a work context.

In this article we will see more about what soft skills are and how they can be developed.

• Related article: "Work and organizational psychology: a profession with a future"

What are soft skills?

In a world where the ability to adapt to change is becoming increasingly important in the world of work, degrees and diplomas lose weight when it comes to indicating which professionals are a good fit for their work and which not.

Personal skills and abilities no longer consist primarily of memorizing information or training certain actions and protocols, Rather, the ability to manage problems of a dynamic nature gains relevance, which often involve aspects to a certain extent. unpredictable. Technical knowledge is still required, but being aware that these apply to a complex and changing context, in which it is also necessary to know how to interact with others.

That is why what is known as "soft skills" is increasingly valued, skills that connect us to an efficient management of the real problems that must be faced in the day-to-day work, and that they are not based on memorizing information.

Soft skills are proof that the ability to adapt to a certain task goes beyond our way of theoretically delimiting the specific knowledge that distinguishes this work from others; it has to do with our work philosophy, the attitude with which we face problems and needs, and general psychological flexibility, beyond the job position.

What are its components?

Broadly speaking, the aptitudes that make up the soft skills can be grouped into the following general categories, although these overlap each other in several points.

1. Social skills and leadership

This group of soft skills are especially important in the context of companies, both for teamwork and to instruct, manage conflicts or inspire.

2. Emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence consists of the psychological skills that allow us to regulate our emotions and recognize both our own and those of others. It is essential to adapt to work and to avoid mismanagement of conflicts.

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3. Resolution skills and goal orientation

Knowledge and technical skills do not matter if the attitude with which we approach work leads us to try to show that we do not see the problems that arise in our path and we limit ourselves to nominally "fulfill" our responsibilities, despite knowing that we leave unattended several fronts with which we do not we counted.

Resolution skills and goal orientation include self-motivation, the tendency not to avoid the moment to confront problems, and time management, among other things.

4. Creativity

Creativity is very valuable when it comes to putting solutions on the table for unforeseen needs. It can be reflected in practically any of the activities that take place in an organization.

How to develop soft skills?

These are some key ideas for developing soft skills.

1. Learn from those who already have practice

As soft skills are demonstrated in the field, the best thing to do to help them grow in us is surround ourselves with people who apply them in their work and who have experience in facing various challenges in your work context.

2. Modify the environment to organize yourself better

Supporting us in external elements is the best thing to do to develop organization, discipline and good time management, if we falter in that regard. By creating clear routines and schedules, we will begin to walk that path of effective work, and once we get used to it, we will depend less and less on these aids in the form of agendas, calendars, alarms, etc.

3. Enrich your way of expressing yourself

Many avoidable misunderstandings come from a lack of preparation when it comes to expressing complex ideas. While having a good vocabulary helps, from a soft skills perspective this is not as important as get used to mastering active listening, using the resources of non-verbal language, and maintaining constant communication flows with those who work with you.

4. Learn to detect your own vices

On the other hand, to develop soft skills it is necessary to know our starting point, and that happens by recognizing the existence of defects in us. To do this, it is important to get used to analyzing frequent errors in which we fall, such as having bad control of the hours of work and mix them with leisure activities, not communicating mistakes, assuming that a clash of interests equates to a confrontation and an environment hostile, etc.

Something that can be useful is keep a diary and write down these thoughts and what happens in the moments in which we fall into recurring errors.

5. Divide objectives into sub-objectives

This is a very effective way of enhancing our ability to orient ourselves to long-term goals, which are those with the greatest ability to bring us benefits for months and years to come, increasing the probability that our projects will be viable. Having mini-goals ahead that can be easily achieved motivates us to keep moving forward..

Are you interested in enhancing your soft skills?

As we have seen, soft skills are diverse, and are based more on training processes than on memorizing information, contrary to what happens with “hard skills”. Therefore, the way in which we can learn to develop them is somewhat different from the way in which we learn technical knowledge in university or high school lectures.

If you are interested in enhancing this set of skills called soft skills, an option to consider is the live online training program "The challenge of networking", developed by the European School of Coaching through our Executive Summer School section. We are an international entity with offices in countries both in Europe and America, and on this occasion we offer the possibility of learning to develop skills such as leadership, the creation of action plans, the regulation of emotions, the creation of environments of trust, and more.

It is a training proposal aimed at entrepreneurs and managers, executives, middle managers, Human Resources professionals and other professionals in the organizational field, and gives the possibility to choose between 3 modules of 12 hours and between 10 workshops of 3 hours each one. These live online sessions take place from June 20 to July 31. To learn more about this European Coaching School project or learn more about the Executive Summer School, you can visit this page.

Bibliographic references:

• Laker, D.R.; Powell, J.L. (2011). The Differences between Hard and Soft Skills and Their Relative Impact on Training Transfer. Human Resource Development Quarterly. 22: pp. 111-122.
• Levasseur, R.E. (2013). People Skills: Developing Soft Skills - a Change Management Perspective. Interfaces. 43 (6): pp. 566 - 571.