The Top 5 Superpowers of Soft Skills!
As if the trials and tribulations of adapting to sudden changes to our personal lives are not challenging enough, let us add a global pandemic to the mix, shall we? The COVID-19 pandemic has been, and is currently, forcing us all to be more adaptive and agile to change in an unprecedented manner. From the beginning of this madness, work/life balance, which, for many, was already problematic, has been immeasurably altered. In-person communication has moved to a “Zoom-like” environment, making it a new challenge to understand others accurately. Precious “me time,” once only achieved during the slow commute to work, has been absorbed with setting your kids up with online learning and deciding which shirt to wear with your sweatpants and slippers. I could go on but let us not pour too much salt in the still fresh, open wound. Not only are we redefining life and work as we know it for ourselves, but we also need to adjust to everyone around us in a new way, personally and professionally. If this reality feels daunting on occasion, you are not alone. In times of great newness and conflict, soft skills may be our best chance for more successfully acclimating to ourselves, others, and the world around us. Soft skills may just be your new superpower to use against the unavoidable forces of COVID-19.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are a blend of people skills, social skills, communication skills, and the ability to navigate others’ personality traits and attitudes. Additionally, soft skills are the great many career attributes we all desire, like the ability to problem-solve creatively, brainstorm well as a group, and the social and emotional intelligence required to build and grow relationships. Soft skills enable people to work well with others, acting as a glue, a support system that allows the essential hard skills to shine. The Collins English Dictionary describes the term “soft skills” as, “Desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive, flexible attitude.” Can you see why learning and applying soft skills during a pandemic may be the best use of your precious time and money? Your new superpower!
The opposite of soft skills is, of course, hard skills. Please know that hard skills are essential and should not be ignored. Hard skills are the necessary abilities needed to accomplish the tasks associated with completing a job, like operating the Outlook email app on your computer, for example. How you carefully and empathetically craft the email in Outlook, however, falls in the category of soft skills.
Five (of many) Soft Skills Superpowers for Work/Life
Superpower #1: Self-awareness
Your ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and understand your behavioral tendencies in all situations, also known as self-awareness, is the cornerstone to all personal change and relationship management. Without self-awareness, adaptability, essential during a pandemic, can be exceedingly tricky. Surprisingly, most of us are less self-aware than we realize. For example, remember the last time you saw yourself in a photo or video or heard yourself on a recording? As humans, we often feel uncomfortable as we hear or watch ourselves because our self-perception gets ambushed by a different reality; The reality experienced by others. For example, we might initially feel like a lion, fearless and proud, but, subsequently, realize we may be seen more like a domesticated cat.
During these many recent life changes, how aware have you been of how and why certain situations have triggered uncharacteristic emotional and behavioral reactions? Are you able to filter what that little voice inside your head is telling you? Are you cognizant of what your body and voice are doing when communicating with others? If you are, is what you are doing contributing to the growth of that relationship(s) on the call in a positive way? Soft skills tend to expose the self and give us tools for self-progress so we can be perceived as, and be, the fearless, powerful lion.
Superpower #2: Empathy
In addition to self-awareness, we must also be aware of the people around us. Social awareness, the intentional awareness of the people with whom you are surrounded, in-person, or virtually, is not necessarily innate. Empathy is the desire and deliberate effort to identify and understand others’ emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and intentions. As the words “desire” and “deliberate” suggest, sometimes empathy needs to be applied on purpose.
Imagine crossing a street without looking for oncoming traffic. Sure, you might make it across the road safely, but eventually, you will end up hurt. Why not be this intentional with observing those around us as you are with oncoming traffic? Purposefully trying to understand others is a game-changer for how we can acquire important information needed to build relationships. Empathy can be learned. Empathy can be improved within each of us. Also, our capacity for empathy can fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes it can suffer greatly, especially during moments of great self-preservation, like during a global pandemic. Developing skills to sharpen your empathic abilities is critical to preserving the relationships around you, professionally and personally.
Superpower #3: Active Listening
For many of us, thanks to the pandemic, you might be experiencing meeting after meeting on a video conferencing platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or the like. Do you find people do not seem to listen as closely as they may have, once upon a time? Do you find yourself struggling to focus? Active listening is just that — active. It requires your body, face, and words to inform the speaker that you are engaged and following their thoughts. Active listening requires you to focus hard on the speaker, not while attempting to multitask. It takes physical energy and mental attention. Active listening creates a comfortable, safe environment and increases the speaker’s desire to share more information. Information leads you to greater understanding. Understanding is knowledge, and knowledge is power. Listen to learn rather than listening to speak. One of the most fruitful human qualities is curiosity, so be curious, but let the speaker know this through non-verbal communication.
Tip: If you purposely avoid using your camera, I recommend rethinking this impulse. If you rely on a Zoom-like platform for much of your communication, use the camera. The camera is truly the best tool we have right now for displaying quality active listening. Also, the more of each other we can see, especially the face and hands, the more quickly we can build trust for one another. Does active listening get more involved and intricate than what has been described in this section? Absolutely, and soft skills learning for active listening is well worth the investment.
If typical, everyday meetings are challenging or annoying for you on Zoom, what about high-stakes presentations and demos? Numerous obstacles usually get traversed when having successful, engaging, and meaningful presentations on virtual platforms. From preparing your environment and managing technology to displaying strong performance techniques and audience management skills, online presentations done well are not easy.
Superpower #4: Presentation Skills
Being aware of your behavioral tendencies, like what you tend to do with your eyes, gestures, or what you look like when you are listening, could be the key to your success presenting online. Doing all you can to help people on your calls feel welcomed can be a learned technique. Successfully managing questions, and answering them eloquently, is a tremendous skill for building credibility. Customizing messaging for your audience with storytelling, pictures, and metaphors, are additional skills needed for better presentations. Improving vocal techniques like effectively using your volume, pitch, and articulation, while simultaneously eliminating most of your verbal filler words like “umm” and “ugh” will positively impact your audiences’ ability to learn. Command in these areas will also improve your audiences’ perception of you. Being a content expert is a required hard skill for any presentation. Properly applied soft skills can make the presentation be engaging in a way that gets remembered.
Superpower #5: Leadership and Teamwork
All previous points made in this article are more easily improved with having excellent leadership within reach. Better leadership is achieved by boosting each of these categories, as well. Teamwork, or the ability to play well with others, collaborate effectively, manage and resolve conflict respectfully, and so on, all require a certain level of emotional intelligence. Managing the complexities of leadership and teamwork is tricky in the best, most predictable of times. However, during volatile times, our personal struggles have a way of manifesting themselves into our professional lives. Building the above soft skills, among others, will facilitate growth for how to be a better, more compassionate leader who tends to meet the unique, individual needs of your team members. The “team,” when thought of as an acronym, could read Together Everyone Achieves More . Eyeroll-worthy, perhaps, but also true. Let us each learn new ways to build ourselves, knowing it will help those around us.
A Final Case for Soft Skills Superpowers
In any of our relationships, romantic or otherwise, we want to feel respected, cared for, admired, and special. We want to feel the relationship adds purpose and value to our lives. Through actions or words, we want to know how grateful the other person is to have us in their life. We want to be provided with the necessary information and tools needed to return these feelings, and so on. The relationship between a company and its employees is no different. In both cases, the efforts taken to illustrate these qualities go a long way to making others feel like you care. Investing in employees’ personal and professional soft skills development, including emotional intelligence, demonstrates that you are there to enable their success, not just as a team member, but as a fellow human trying to navigate this ever-changing world.
Humans, like your car, benefit from the occasional tune-up. Too often, during these difficult times, mental wellness is easily compromised. Acedia, a word that helps to summarize what many of us have felt these past several months, describes the state of listlessness or immense apathy. It does not take a Harvard study to know that immense apathy destroys productivity, job satisfaction, our desire and ability to play well with others, and worst of all, a sense of purpose. Why not do all you can to help the humans on your team thrive by offering them new tools to navigate these volatile work/life challenges? The New Year is a perfect opportunity to implement such a change. If not during these troubled times, when? In closing, every morning, as you put on your imaginary superhero cape, consider applying soft skills throughout the day. You might be surprised by their powers!
David Marcotte, Head Coach of Marcotte Coaching, is a communication skills development specialist for corporate professionals. For nearly 20 years, through various topics such as presentation skills, storytelling, emotional intelligence, leadership, and team building, David has developed online and in-person learning to help professionals of all levels bridge the gap between oneself and others.
To book live, online soft skills classes with David Marcotte — visit the Complete Professional page of the Marcotte Coaching website. To read David’s other blogs and learn more ways Marcotte Coaching can help your organization thrive, visit us at www.marcottecoaching.com .
