Power Skills Your Bosses Wish You Had
When people think of work skills, they often think of the technical ability to do specific tasks necessary for their unique line of work. A heart surgeon knows how to operate on the body, a car mechanic knows how to check an engine, and a pastry baker knows how to make light and airy croissants.
But these kinds of know-hows fall into only one of two main categories of skills that need to be considered in the work space. Hard skills are exactly the kinds of abilities mentioned here — those that one must possess in order to do the job from a technical perspective. Another way of thinking about hard skills is to consider skills that can be measured. They are those for which you traditionally go to school to learn.
The second category of abilities is called soft skills. These skills have to do with pretty much everything other than technical skills, and are more personality-based. Another way of thinking about soft skills is to consider skills that you develop outside of a textbook. In other words, they are the attributes of you as a person.
Now while hard skills are of course necessary to get a job — you can’t be a surgeon without knowing how to perform a surgery — soft skills are too often overlooked or downplayed.
In fact, for some jobs, it might be even more important to hire someone with a solid set of soft skills rather than hard skills. Why? Because you can teach people how to knead dough correctly in a fairly short amount of time if that is a hard skill they are missing. However, teaching them how to be polite, passionate, reliable, and proactive is a whole other ballgame.
Not only do soft skills take much longer to develop, but they’re doing just that — developing over time rather than being memorized for a test. And even if you expose people to specific soft skills you value, there’s no guarantee they will ever ‘pick them up’ or adopt them as part of their own fabric. You might be able to distinguish someone who is passionate about his or her work versus a non-passionate person easily, but what makes that person so and how that person became that way is hard to explain, let alone instantly emulate.
That being said, though, soft skills are often what ‘make the person,’ as well as the employee. As in life, sometimes a person with a great attitude and personal traits is more valuable in the workspace than someone who is highly skilled from a technical standpoint but runs like a machine.
Here are some key (and not-so-obvious) soft skills that make you a winner at work and that you can progressively work on in order to shine wherever life takes you.
1. The ability to think critically.
Can you notice and pay attention to details, gather that data by remembering it, and then arrive at logical and well-structured conclusions? If yes, you’re on your way. Thinking critically is a super-power that so often gets overlooked until you see it in action and marvel at the person who possesses the capacity to think, assess, and react.
How to train it:
Read and watch what’s around you by paying attention to small things. When you notice the minutiae of life, you gather information. Once you have information, you can start looking for pattens and arriving at conclusions when you couple your information with other stored data in your head. Practice making assessments about things in your daily life just by being more aware.
2. The ability to communicate effectively.
Do you know when to speak up and when to stay quiet, how to speak with integrity and how to both take and give a compliment? Can you speak just as genuinely to a high-up boss as well as to support staff? Do you take the time to step away and reflect during difficult situations rather than spew in the heat of the moment? Communication is hard even on a good day, and the ability to speak with grace and dignity and openness — and to encourage the same in others — is simply priceless.
How to train it:
Watch how your role models conduct themselves through spoken (as well as non-verbal) communication, and compare that to people you don’t like or trust. Practice creating a little space when something upsets or excites you; take 24 hours to calmly think before answering. Learn to be the first person to admit your mistakes and take ownership of your behaviour. Speak as though you are the person who is going to receive your words. Take time every day to talk in front of a mirror to get an idea of how you come across to others.
3. The ability to be trustworthy and reliable.
If you say you’ll you’ll do something, are you guaranteed to deliver? Do your actions match your words? Do you know what is appropriate to share and what isn’t? Can people count on you regardless of the day, the mood, the environment, the circumstance? If you don’t make excuses, don’t hide behind reasons you couldn’t perform, and maintain an even keel regardless of what is going on in your life or in the environment around you, people will be comfortable in your midst. That is a gift unto itself.
How to train it:
Practice telling people you will do something by a specific time, and then make sure to get it done when you said you would, if not earlier. Volunteer to do little tasks regularly to get in the habit of holding yourself accountable. Force yourself to do things specifically when you’re not at your best, be it that you have a lot going on in life or you are a little fatigued. Doing so will make you feel empowered and will bring you a burst of energy as your humble pride in yourself grows for being someone others — as well as you, yourself — can count on. Knowing you can have confidence and trust in yourself, regardless of how it contributes to people around you, is something that just can’t be put into words.
Job descriptions mostly list a series of I-learned-those-in-school skills that are necessary for a position. What the people who wrote those descriptions secretly yearn for, however, are employees who have professionalism, integrity, and a sprinkling of superpowers. Train yourself to be a soft-skills master and watch your work life magically unfold.
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