Issue #91
Essential Skills
Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career. — Peggy Claus
We often think about soft-skills as skills that are nice to have, kind-of important but not as much as concrete, technical skills. We got it backward though.
Soft skills are not only important but crucial if you want to succeed regardless of your role, position, and occupation.
Communication, problem-solving, creativity, teamwork, time management, and compassion might seem like qualities of a decent human being, but their importance in the workplace is underestimated. You won’t be able to thrive and sometimes even endure without them. To that extent, it would be much more accurate to call them essential skills.
Luckily for us, soft skills can be learned. There is no manual though, you’ll have to do the hard work of practicing and finding ways to improve. But the time invested into building your soft skills will be paying off in the years to come, throughout your career and even life.
Stop Calling Them Soft Skills; They’re Essential Skills
We need to call soft skills what they really are: essential skills. They are skills that are absolutely necessary to thrive in the modern world.
Some Hard Truths About Soft Skills
There’s an increasingly large body of evidence showing that soft skills can help predict work performance. The consensus is that curiosity, emotional resilience, and general learning ability will make you better at your job.
Your Soft Skills Inventory
Weekly or monthly, sit down with yourself (or, more powerfully, with a small circle of peers) and review how you’re shifting your posture to make more of an impact.
Until Next Week
Don’t underestimate your soft skills when you think about your personal and professional development, they are much more important than it might seem.
Zoran Jambor
Inspiration Bits