1. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the ability to manage one’s emotions. The capacity to understand and regulate your own and others’ emotions is referred to as emotional intelligence. It is made up of five main components:
Emotional intelligence boils down to a few important qualities in the workplace:
Can you give and receive constructive feedback that is both effective and constructive?
It may not appear to be the most vital talent for work advancement and success, but it is in some circumstances. In a study of new employees who failed to fulfil expectations during their first 18 months on the job, inadequate emotional intelligence was found to be the reason for 23 per cent of them fail.
2. Team Player Attitude
Playing well with others is a soft skill you’ve been honing since the first day of preschool or childcare, albeit unconsciously. When you were arguing over blocks or working out the rules of a made-up game, you weren’t realizing it, but you were preparing for a lifetime of workplace collaboration.
Whether you’re an individual contributor or a people manager, you’ll have to collaborate with others in meetings, brainstorming sessions, and on a variety of cross-functional initiatives. Team harmony requires a positive, can-do attitude when dealing with others, which means you must be able to manage an effective and inclusive meeting, be open to new ideas, and work respectfully with others.
3. Growth Mindset
You’ll face bottlenecks, disappointments, and other events that will frustrate you in every employment, regardless of your role. Having a growth mindset — a concept coined by psychologist Carol Dweck to refer to a frame of thinking that reflects perceiving your abilities, talents, and intelligence as skills you can grow and improve upon — is a soft skill that’s crucial to your capacity to endure.
Failure to meet a quarterly goal may be viewed as an opportunity to evaluate one’s strengths and flaws to tackle the next quarter’s objective someone with a growth attitude. A person with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, can tell oneself, “I’m not good at blogging,” and let that negative attitude affect their next quarter’s success as well because they don’t believe in their ability to develop. Watch Dweck’s TED Talk to learn more about the growth mindset and try to find places in your daily correspondence or reflections where you can reframe your outlook by viewing a challenge or setback as a way you can grow.
4. Openness to Feedback
This is part of emotional intelligence, but especially when it comes to the workplace, being open and able to receive development feedback is critical to succeeding at a job, especially a new job.
Think about it: Constructive feedback helps you do the best job you can, and if you take it personally or react defensively, you aren’t able to hear the feedback and adapt it to your current strategy.
The key to giving and receiving feedback is to come into the conversation from a place of kindness: You aren’t receiving constructive feedback because that person hates you personally, it’s because they want you to be the best you can be. You should be chomping at the bit to receive feedback that can help you more effectively hit your goals.
If you don’t feel comfortable with feedback yet, try immersion therapy — make feedback a part of your daily to-do list. Ask for feedback from more people you work with to get immediate help honing your skill set — and to help make it easier to take.
5. Adaptability
No matter what your role, and no matter what your industry, the ability to adapt to change – and a positive attitude about change — go a long way toward growing a successful career.
Whether it’s a seat shuffle or a huge company pivot, nobody likes a complainer. It’s important not only to accept change as a fact of life in the constantly-evolving business world but as an opportunity to try out new strategies for thriving in environments of change (remember the growth mindset?).
If you don’t feel comfortable with frequent changes, either on your team or at your company, write down your feelings and reactions, instead of immediately voicing them. By laying out how you feel and why you feel a certain way, you’ll be able to distinguish legitimate concerns from complaints that might not need to be discussed with your team.
6. Active Listening
You probably can tell the difference between when someone is hearing words you’re saying and when they’re actively listening to what you’re saying. If someone is typing while you’re presenting at a meeting, or they’re giving you that slack-jawed look, they probably aren’t really hearing what you’re saying.
Active listeners pay close attention to meeting presenters, offer up clarifying questions or responses, and refer back to notes in future discussions.
They don’t need things repeated to them because they heard them the first time — active listening makes not only respectful colleagues but more effective workers too.
If you think you could stand to improve your active listening skills, challenge yourself not to look at your various devices during meetings, instead to focus completely on speakers and take notes by hand if needed.
7. Work Ethic
You can’t succeed in a role without being willing to put in the time, effort, and elbow grease to hit your goals, and company leaders and hiring managers are looking for people who will put in the extra legwork to succeed without being asked.
If you want to get a new job or get promoted, it’s essential that you hone your work ethic — so quit bellyaching and put in the extra time you need to succeed. Or, if excelling means learning new skills or tools, dedicate time to learning those outsides of work hours so you can make your time in the office as effectively as possible.
What weaves all of these soft skills together is a positive attitude. It might sound cheesy, but believing that there’s a positive outcome in any and all challenging situations will help you navigate the day-to-day of your job while making other people really want to work with you. These soft skills are harder to teach, but the payoff might be even bigger, so make sure you’re investing time and effort into auditing and improving your soft skill set
Sources:
https://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-development/mobiles-for-just-in-time-learning
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/soft-skills
https://www.omniagroup.com/the-7-soft-skills-you-need-to-be-successful/
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