How to develop soft skills in the workplace?

Some recommendations and key ideas to develop soft skills in the professional context.

Soft skills are a set of personal skills with practical implications for job performance. Moreover, as time goes by, they are increasingly valued, and for a good reason: they are a sign of the potential of workers, even 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..

What are soft skills?

In a world in which the ability to adapt to change is becoming increasingly important in the world of work, degrees and diplomas are becoming less important in indicating which professionals are a good fit for the job and which are not.

Personal skills and abilities no longer consist mainly of memorizing information or training certain actions and protocols, but the ability to manage dynamic problems, often involving unpredictable aspects, is gaining in importance. Technical knowledge is still required, but with the awareness that this knowledge is applied to a complex and changing context, in which it is also necessary to know how to interact with others.

This is why what are known as "soft skills" are increasingly valued, skills that connect us to an efficient management of the real problems we have to face on a daily basis at work.and that are not based on memorizing information.

Soft skills are the proof that our ability to adapt to a given task goes beyond our way of theoretically delimiting the specific knowledge that distinguishes that job 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.beyond the job position.

What are its components?

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

1. Social skills and leadership

This group of soft skills is particularly important in the business context, whether to work in a team or to instruct, manage conflicts or inspire others..

2. Emotional Intelligence

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

3. Resolutive and goal-oriented skills

Knowledge and technical skills do not matter if the attitude with which we approach work leads us to try to pretend 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 left unattended several fronts that we did not count on.

Goal-oriented and problem-solving skills include self-motivation, self-esteem, self-confidence include self-motivation, the tendency not to avoid facing problems, and time management, among other things.among other things.

4. Creativity

Creativity is very valuable when it comes to bringing to the table solutions to unforeseen needs. It can be embodied in virtually any of the activities that take place in an organization..

How to develop soft skills?

Here are some key ideas for developing soft skills.

1. Learn from those who already have practice

Since soft skills are demonstrated in the field, the best way to encourage them to grow in us is by surround ourselves with people who apply them in their work and who have experience in dealing with a variety of challenges in their work context. in their work context.

2. Modify the environment to organize yourself better

The best way to develop organization, discipline and good time management, if we are weak in this aspect, is to rely on external elements. By creating routines and clear schedules, we will begin to walk along this path of effective work, and Once we get used to it, we will be less and less dependent on these aids in the form of diaries, calendars, alarms, etc.

3. Enrich your way of expressing yourself

Many avoidable misunderstandings come from a lack of preparation when expressing complex ideas. While having a good vocabulary helps, from a soft skills perspective, this is not as important as mastering active listening, using nonverbal language resources, and maintaining a constant flow of communication with those you work with. 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 means recognizing the existence of defects in us. To this end, it is important to get used to analyzing frequent mistakes we make, such as poor control of working hours and mixing them with leisure time, not communicating errors, assuming that a clash of interests is tantamount to a confrontation and a hostile environment, etc.

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

5. Divide objectives into sub-objectives

This is a very effective way to enhance our ability to focus on long-term goals, which are those with greater ability to bring us benefits in the months and years ahead, increasing the likelihood that our projects are viable. Having mini-goals ahead of us 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 the memorization of information, unlike 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 lectures at university or high school.

If you are interested in enhancing this set of aptitudes called soft skills, one option to consider is the live online training program "The Challenge of Networking", developed by Escuela Europea de Coaching through our Executive Summer School section. We are an international entity with offices in both European and American countries, 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 trusting environments, and more.

This 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. These live online sessions take place from June 20 to July 31. To learn more about this Escuela Europea de Coaching project or to learn more about Escuela Ejecutiva de Verano, you can visit this page.

Bibliographical 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.