5 Soft Skills You Need to Work on to Accelerate Your Career

College degrees are significant, but the development of soft skills is a crucial part of fostering a dynamic workforce.

Soft skills are the intangible but essential qualities that employers crave in candidates. These traits enable you to solve problems, work and interact with people effectively.

In short, due to their high demand, soft skills are gradually becoming the hard skills in today’s workplace.

So, let’s check out the 5 soft skills below that are essential for success—all of which you can develop and practice in your daily interactions:

Listening skill

The most basic and powerful way to connect to people is by listening to them. Listening is the ability to receive and interpret messages in the communication process accurately.

Listening is key to effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages will be misunderstood; trust will be lost, resulting in a communication breakdown.

Good listeners don’t think about what to say next when the speaker is talking; instead, good listeners give their attention and ask follow-up questions.

Good listening skills can lead to better customer satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes, and increased sharing of information, leading to more creativity and innovation at work.

Accountability Skill

Accountability is a self-driven skill that makes you feel fulfilled and accomplished.

Accountable individuals hold themselves responsible for their work and lay a path for teams to follow.

If approached correctly, accountability can allow you and your team to produce positive and measurable results in the workplace.

An accountable employee can be trusted to hold others responsible, follow-up on tasks, build trust among the team, and get promoted faster.

Creative Thinking

Being creative often means thinking outside the box and finding ways to solve problems with limited resources.

A creative thinker will find new solutions rather than simply identifying and implementing the norm. 

For example, you might brainstorm new ways to cut costs during a budget crisis or develop a unique marketing strategy that will win more clients for your organization.

Employers want creative thinkers because it benefits their bottom line. Companies that foster creativity may see more revenue growth.

When you’re applying for jobs, think about how your creative nature has helped you in your past jobs and how it might be an asset in the jobs you’re seeking.

Also, in your resume and cover letter, consider including keywords that demonstrate your creativity and position you as a creative thinker before the hiring manager.

Emotional Awareness

Emotional awareness is the ability to recognize and make sense of your own emotions and those of others.

This awareness, also known as “emotional intelligence” (E.I.), means solving problems by understanding emotions and cheering others up when they are feeling low.

Employees with strong emotional intelligence will understand people better, maintain a good relationship with colleagues and clients, make better decisions, perform better at work and move up the career ladder faster.

Empathy

The importance of empathy within an organization cannot be overstated. Empathy in the workplace is about showing respect for employees and co-workers.

It is also about business managers showing that they care about their employees as human beings and recognizing that workers have lives outside of the workplace.

When we take others’ feelings and opinions into account at work, we can quickly build a deeper connection, trust and loyalty with colleagues, leading to improved employee productivity and business revenue.  

Would you like to accelerate your career quickly? We’ve got you covered. Take our Free Soft Skills Course now and become a superstar employee at work.