Importance of Soft Skills

What is it all about?

You might be the geek who fixes the most feared software bugs; the techie whose expertise everyone at office talks highly about; the whiz kid who never failed at mathematics like I did! So what? If you haven’t thought of developing soft skills yet, then you are soon becoming one big loser. Soft skills is not a definition of a single good quality, but a collection of numerous ones. The good news is that they are aimed at a common goal: good relationships! They call it Emotional Intelligence Quotient, which is the ability to control, assess and manage the emotions of self and of others. In other words, it is the capability of one self to handle the emotions of others just as he would handle his own.

It might not be quite that easy as it seems and sounds. We will try to give you a gist of what it is and what wonders it can do for you, but mastering this art depends a lot on your willingness. Instead of a conventional approach to this topic (which almost everyone else does), let us “connect the dots looking backwards”, with a few examples perhaps. But first, a few notes on barriers to good relationships.

Barriers:

All of us possess soft skills, but in different degrees. Some of us are very comfortable in befriending someone we have just met. Some others are so not this social type. Some speak others into doing things for them. Some are rejected, no matter what they say. Some others have a natural flair at anything they do. They like people and people like them.

This clearly suggests that relationships and shyness don’t get along very well with each other. There is your barrier to people managing skills: shyness! Get it off you because with it stuck to your back, you are getting nowhere.

If there is anything better than false pride that prevents you from listening to and respecting others, then it is surely out of the world. Giving people the respect they deserve is the most important aspect of public relationships, so lose your ego. Rid yourself of the Brit thought that others are inferior and there is nothing to learn from them just because they don’t look classy and don’t have have a trendy name or attire. In short, as they always say, never judge a book by it’s cover.

Few to begin with.

Just to help you understand what soft skills consists of, I will ask you one simple question from your life.

“How would you like to be treated by your colleague?”

Few possible answers are, respect, motivate, appreciate, listen to your ideas, delegate, influence, be ethical, and it goes on because we want to be treated best. That is all about what we are trying to say here.

It is about “Making others feel good about themselves!”.

That is extremely difficult even in a family of four where all of you are from the same culture and share a common behavior. Then how can it be made possible in a workplace that exhibits multiculturalism? If workers don’t get on very well with each other, how will they find time for being productive? The only solution to this is people management skills. It is why, in some job interviews, candidates less regular, less flashy, less technical, outshine others who are academically and technically sound.

Learning never ends!

It would be practically impossible for us (anyone, for that matter) to confine all of soft skills to a single article. Even if we managed to do it, it would not serve a purpose. It is why we thought of breaking it up into little dots, so that you can join them as you read along. We also thought it would help you practice simultaneously, what we theoretically say because even if Rome can be rebuilt in a day, soft skills can’t be mastered so fast. It should be cultivated. GSG will be providing an insight on developing inevitable skills such as self-awareness, analytical thinking, leadership, flexibility, effective communication, creativity, problem-solving, decision making, listening skills, change adaptation and much more.

Raagavan,
Editorial Team,
GSG