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Sunday, August 3, 2008

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/

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