What are Soft Skills? Why are they Important Nowadays?

How would you feel if you were thrown out of your corporate job at this moment that the economy continues to deteriorate? More importantly, how certain are you; you wouldn’t be the next in line to be thrown out of the job? Even if you are thrown out, do you have any soft skills to help you but your pieces together and get a better job?

Interestingly, since the evolution of computers, the world’s economy has continued to grow into a knowledge-based and information world, thereby increasing the urgent need for more technical skills. This has resulted in the establishment of thousands of schools and colleges to help compact this need. But irrespective of the how the many technicians, educated elites, managers, programmers, scientists, inventors and business owners depend on their expertise, the need to have a soft skill is of great importance as this invariably affects the growth of their organization.

Quite a good number of hard skilled geniuses have failed in their professional endeavours owing to poor interpersonal skills. For instance, Tesla Nikola an inventor, who invented both the alternating current (AC) and coil system used for wireless radio technology and who was among the great brains behind the discovery of X-ray technologies, remote controls, dynamos and lots more died poor. Despite his great technical skills, he lacked the necessary soft skills to properly market his technical skills. He was unable to read, write and properly negotiate his resources with marketers.

What really are soft skills?

Soft skills also known as people skills are those personal characters that indicate a high level of emotional intelligence.  These personal characters could be your communication skills, interpersonal skills, detailed skills, attentive skills and managerial skills. These skills help us reshape, change, enhance our personality, mindset and attitudes in order to help us in our various professional endeavours.

Why are they important?

There are endless reasons to why soft skills are important, some of which we will explicitly be treating here.

The first reason isn’t farfetched from the questions asked at the beginning of this article. Assuming the economy keeps going bad and your company decides to lay off some workers in which you were quite unfortunate to be among, what will be your next line of action? With the high rate of unemployment comes with limited employment slots. Companies are bound to seek for exceptional individuals to employ. These individuals are required to possess both hard and soft skills. This is because these companies believe that individuals with both hard and adequate soft skills stand a better chance to improving and expanding their organization.

The second vital reason why soft skills are so important is associated with the different generational peer groups that make up a workforce. Currently, workforce groups comprise of four different generations: those born in the late 1940s, the baby boomers, the generation-x and the generation-y. These generations are bound to have some misunderstanding if the write soft skills aren’t out in place. Therefore using the right soft skills, such as the right communication and writing skills, the various gaps associated with these generations, will be adequately eradicated thereby, creating an excellent working environment.

The third importance of soft skills isn’t limited to our various customer service centres or departments. Are you wondering how? If after purchasing an item from e-bay or any online store, your goods get to you and then you realize your goods have been broken. All you need to do is to inform the customer service care center of your present predicament which they respond to swiftly. Now imagine a situation whereby the customer service agent doesn’t have adequate soft skills, you will get frustrated trying to explain whatever your plan is. I bet you wouldn’t like such experience. Customer service requires the services of a soft skilled employer with adequate communication and interpersonal skills to enable ease communication and understanding thereby increasing the company’s growth.

Good communication skills is of great importance in all career fields. Nowadays, no matter how superb you hard skills may be, if you aren’t able to communicate effectively with people in order to sell yourself, you may likely remain unemployed. Most often people with less technical skills but with proficient soft skills get easily employed. They are also given adequate consideration during promotions over those with proficient hard skills. Therefore no matter how excellent you might be in your field of endeavour, if you cannot communicate perfectly with your colleagues, employer, or clients, you might be perceived as an incompetent worker. Soft skills are therefore very important in the labor market.

Can I develop my soft skills?

The answer to this question is a big YES. Soft skills can pretty much be adequately developed but not without the help of some professionals as you cannot develop your skills alone.

If soft skills were to be that easy to develop, everyone would have already done it. But in order to really activate those wonderful inner skills, you need to employ the services of a professional; either a mentor or a coach.

Coaches can be found in almost all areas of life. The help footballers, basketball players and athletics in general enhance their strengths and weaknesses. They inspire and motivate them to their pathway to success. A soft skill development coach, pretty much works the same way. They help people discover and enhance their talents and potentials. They help you learn how to set goals and achieve these goals. A mentor, on the other hand, will walk down the road with you. Mentors are however preferable to coach in terms of soft skills development. They have the ability to identify feelings of depression and confusion because they themselves have been there before. They will ensure you are properly developed by following you through every step – though they won’t be doing the work for you. To wrap it up, join a mastermind group. Mastermind groups are mostly groups with well-developed soft skills willing to assist one other in developing their various skills.

If you are willing to take that business and profession of yours to greater heights, ensure you acquire get soft skills as they are the key values to success.