Soft Skills

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

(You will benefit more if you also read all of my previous write-ups on this site).

Earlier, I have emphasized the importance of acquiring and mastering the soft skills. Hard skills are important and you should never undermine them. They are your bread and butter skills. For example, a tourist guide has to know the technical aspects of his job like showing his tourists the right places in a proper sequence with authentic commentary on them, the legalities of his job, the safety aspect of his tourists etc, yet, he will be more in demand and earn more if he also has the necessary soft skills for the job like manners and etiquette, interpersonal relations with tourists, humor, creativity etc.

Hard skills are more rational types and soft skills improve your emotional intelligence. Soft skills make you more cultured, empathic, understanding, caring and also, more sophisticated.

You must try to find out what soft skills you should choose to acquire and develop for success in your personal, professional, family and social life.

I am giving below a fairly comprehensive list of soft skills for your guidance.

1. Observation
2. Know yourself (introspection)
3. Openness and flexibility (paradigm shifting)
4. Internal motivation and passion
5. Action orientation, drive and self initiation
6. Self development
7. Self confidence
8. Assertiveness
9. Integrity
10. Trustworthiness
11. Composure and self presentation (appearance, manners and etiquette)
12. Intellectual horsepower and learning
13. Creativity and innovation
14. Conviction
15. Moral courage
16. Dependability and reliability
17. Dealing with ambiguity
18. Time management
19. Goal setting and result orientation
20. Decision making
21. Problem solving and process orientation
22. Organizing
23. Coordinating
24. Delegation
25. Communication (speaking, listening, empathy, body language, writing)
26. Interpersonal skills
27. Negotiation
28. Conflict management
29. Presentation
30. Convincing
31. Coaching and developing people
32. Counseling
33. Mentoring
34. Team work
35. Team building
36. Consensus building
37. Conducting meetings
38. Leading
39. Big picture thinking and strategic thinking
40. Motivating others
41. Controlling
42. Safety
43. Stress management

Go through the above list very carefully and tick out the soft skills where you need to pull up yourself. Then, you have to go through the cycle of gaining authentic knowledge of that skill, understanding the process of building that skill, practicing that skill following the process, practicing it, practicing it and practicing it till you get the mastery over that skill, till that skills gets internalized in you- it becomes your habit (I wrote about this model of skill building in detail, in my earlier write-ups here on these pages; please read it).

(You can download eBook "Competencies and Competency Matrix" from http://nbuu.co/cm)

Read "Management Anecdotes" authored by Shyam Bhatawdekat at: http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/

You may also like to read short articles on "Out of Box Ideas" at: http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/