Top 10 Soft Skills To Master In The Modern World

Soft skills — flexible or soft skills (often translated literally) — is a category of skills that is not directly related to a person’s professional activities, but at the same time has a direct impact on the development of his career, productivity, and the ability to build relationships with others.

Agile skills can be divided into four broad categories: communication skills, managerial skills (managing people, time, projects, etc.), emotional and thinking skills. Depending on the profession, the employer will pay attention to different flexible skills, but there is a universal set that every person needs. And no, this is not the hackneyed resistance to stress and the ability to work in a team, which were previously indicated in every first vacancy.

1. Research of the information space.

In common people — the ability to “google”. We live in the center of the information ocean, and the ability to quickly collect, analyze and organize information is one of the most important skills of a modern person. You must be able not only to search for data but also to determine the reliability of their sources, to get to the bottom of the essence and separate the correct information from different “ducks”.

For some specialists, for example, for journalists or analysts, the skill of information research is included in the list of hard skills, basic professional skills. For the rest, the ability to “google” is a nice bonus that makes it easier to navigate the world.

2. Negotiations.

The ability to negotiate with people at completely different levels is an indispensable skill that will help both in work and in everyday life. If you can convince anyone and anything, you can always count on assistance in your every endeavor.

A separate category here is the ability to conduct written negotiations, which includes both literacy and the ability to grasp and convey written intonation, and knowledge of correspondence ethics (for example, voice messages are bad manners for an extreme case, many messages in a row — only in friendly correspondence, yes and that’s not worth it).

Again, there are professions for which negotiation is a key professional skill. Try to find a salesperson who can’t negotiate.

3. Self-study and teaching others.

New technologies and professions are emerging at such a rate that the ability to learn and train others quickly and efficiently is a powerful competitive advantage. It is not for nothing that many universities have a Learn to Learn course in their curriculum: if you understand how to draw up a curriculum, how to select materials, how to set the frequency of classes, how to consolidate and repeat material using memorization curves, then you can easily master any profession.

Learning to retrain also gives you additional freedom: you know that at any time you can change your profession and change your own way of life.

As a bonus: constant training keeps the mind in good shape and allows you to keep it for many years. You don’t think about it yet, but after eighty still thank yourself for it. Cognitive abilities decline with age, and if not trained, they even dive.

4. Setting goals.

A person who knows where and why he is going is many times more productive than someone who just goes with the flow. The habit of setting goals and going towards achieving them disciplines builds strength of character, raises awareness, and makes you one of the most effective employees. If you do the work just because someone else said so and do not pursue your own goals (improving, improving the quality of life, professional development), there will be no additional motivation. And if there is no motivation, there will be no results.

Achieving goals also have a positive effect on self-confidence and the development of ambition. The main thing is not to go too far, sometimes stop, analyze and rest. During this period, it is worth rereading your goal diaries and looking at where and why you had recessions.

5. Time management.

Hundreds of books and millions of articles have been written about time management. And until now, each of us on the fingers of one hand can count the people in his environment who know how to calculate their time and energy. Time management is a real art, and what makes it especially valuable is that time is the only irreplaceable resource that we own.

To become a time management guru takes iron discipline and years of exploring your own capabilities, but even basic time management skills will set you apart from someone who has never touched a day planner.

6. Project/team management (and big data).

Previously, management skills were required only for managers. Nowadays, the ability to manage projects, people, and data sets can be useful to everyone. In this skill, you need to be able to see the big picture, make a perspective, and outline the cycle of movement. All of these sub-skills can be learned if you perceive your own development as one big project.

In the text of vacancies, you can often find this skill under the generalized name “organizational skills”, although without specifying what exactly needs to be organized: processes, fish in an aquarium, or a popular uprising.

7. Problem-solving.

A flexible skill that is similar to the previous one, but also suggests that you have additional abilities. Here you need to make decisions quickly, have conflict resolution skills, and not get lost in emergency situations.

People who solve problems without panic and discomfort are irreplaceable employees in any field and reliable companions in life. Not everyone can master this skill, as it is highly dependent on the individual. The same notorious “stress resistance” also applies to them.

8. Emotional intelligence.

Every year they talk about him more and more and put him on an equal footing, and even higher than general intelligence. Emotional is characterized by the ability to be aware of one’s own and other people’s emotions, interpret them correctly and act in the appropriate way.

The guru level is emotional intelligence in correspondence. We have already mentioned this above, but we will repeat ourselves because, in a world where more and more people write and fewer and fewer phone calls, it is vital to distinguish other people’s emotions in writing so that there are no misunderstandings.

9. Cognitive flexibility.

The ability to quickly adapt to new working or living conditions is a skill that will make life much easier for you in the 21st century. Conservatives today are losing a lot to those who know how to quickly and effectively rebuild, master new methods of work and feel comfortable in any conditions and surrounded by any technologies.

Our world has become too fluid, and if we do not learn to adapt, we will have to constantly swim against the tide.

10. Creative thinking.

“Everything has already been invented before us” — this is exactly the feeling you get when you take up some idea. He came up with a brilliant invention — and it already exists, I saw in a dream a cool plot of the film — and it was already filmed, invented a bomb startup — and his next office has already opened in a nearby house.

It seems impossible to invent a new solution or find a fresh approach, but this is only true for those who do not have creative thinking skills. They, like any other skills, can be developed, you just need to practice regularly and not abandon them.

We hope you have found for yourself this collection of skills that you want to develop. Set new goals, work on yourself, and upgrade to a tough employee, for whom employers will fight (or to an employer, to whom there will be a line of employees).