SOFT SKILLS
Before I explain why soft skills are
important, let us understand what are soft skills?
Many of us would have come across the term
soft skill some or the other times, but could not be able to understand what
these skills are. When I take classes and open the topic with first question
asking students, “What are Soft skills?”
I often come across many vague and sometimes funny statements.
Soft Skills is a sociological term relation to
personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits,
friendliness and optimism.
In other words these are the skills which help
us to develop good intrapersonal skills. We as humans have always faced
problems in dealing with relationships in our life. Soft skills help us to develop
skills that help to build better relationships personally and professionally. Soft skills are essentially people skills -- the
non-technical, intangible, personality-specific skills that determine your
strengths as a leader, listener, negotiator, and conflict mediator.
"Hard" skills, on the other hand, are more along the lines of what
might appear on your resume -- your education, experience and level of
expertise.
While talking about the professional career of a person soft skill is an
important part of their individual contribution to the success of an
organization. Particularly those organizations dealing with customers
face-to-face are generally more successful, if they train their staff to use
these skills. Screening or training for personal habits or traits such as
dependability and attention to details can yield significant return on
investment for an organization. For this reason, soft skills are increasingly
sought out by employers in addition to standard qualifications.
It has been
suggested that in a number of professions soft skills may be more important
over the long term than occupational skills. The sales profession is one
example where the ability to deal with people effectively and politely, more
than their mere occupational skills, can determine the professional success of
a Sales Manager.
Increasingly, over
the last two decades, it has been recognized that when IT Professionals acquire
soft skills, better relationships are built between IT and the other business
units within the enterprise. A key element of IT Professionals building these
relationships is their ability to communicate, it has been suggested that
communication is a measurable and improvable type of intelligence.
Soft Skills can be
called behavioural skills. Also
known as Interpersonal Skills, or people skills. This include proficiencies such as
communication skills, anger management, and negotiation skills, personal
effectiveness, problem solving, strategic thinking, team building, influencing
skills and selling skills, interview skills etc.
Few years back, hard skills were thought to be
all a person needed to be a successful leader. However, given the way the job
market and employment roles have evolved, its become necessary for managers and
for those in leadership roles to have a well rounded skill set.
Showcasing these
attributes in your resume and again in an interview can put you ahead of the
game making you someone to remember when it comes to picking the next executive
or leader.
Soft skills give power
to you and create opportunities.
The main benefit of
soft skills is empowerment.
How does your technical skill transform to
value?
To Be Continued...........
Author
Ms Ratna
Soft Skill TRAINER
9034007002
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