To be successful in any job or career, you need certain skill sets. But there are certain skills you need no matter what career you enter or the job you work. Some of these are skills specific to your area of work, called hard skills. Yet, there are other attributes you need, no matter what career you’re in or want to be in. These are referred to as soft skills, skills that all employers look for in job candidates. Additionally, soft skills are one of the most universal set of transferable skills that you’ll need if you ever choose to make a career transition.
What Are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are everyday communication and people skills that help make you a good team player, an effective manager, or an engaging public speaker. These can be both social and professional skills, like being able to listen effectively, understanding what others feel and need, having empathy for others, having integrity, and being honest and trustworthy. Even if you’re lacking these skill sets, you can still develop and improve these skills. Having these soft skills will help you advance in your career. With so much competition for high-paying jobs, marketable soft skills are more important than ever.
Udemy is an affordable learning platform to develop or build on these soft skills. As such, we’ve included a link under each skill for quick access to begin developing these skills.
Why Are Soft Skills Important?
Soft skills are important because they help you communicate and work effectively with others. This includes abilities such as active listening, problem-solving, and time management. These skills are highly valued by employers because they can improve productivity, teamwork, and overall job performance. Another reason soft skills are important is because they are transferable across different jobs and industries, making them valuable for career development and advancement.
Soft Skills vs Hard Skills
As mentioned above, soft skills are considered people skills or common skills that people should have regardless of their career. Examples of soft skills include empathy, listening, negotiating, and giving feedback. While hard skills are more technical in nature and can be directly tied to your career path, industry, or job. Examples of hard skills include computer programming, medical diagnosis, problem-solving, creative writing, data analysis, and project management.
Soft skills are displayed in both someone’s professional life as well as their personal life. Whereas hard skills are usually only exhibited on the job. There are some exceptions to this. People may use hard skills such as managing projects and problem-solving every day, whether they know it or not. The bottom line is that both soft skills and hard skills are important regardless of the career you choose.
Examples of Soft Skills That Can Help You In Any Career
1. Listening
Everyone has a story to tell, and most people love to talk about themselves. The key to great listening skills is a genuine interest in what others say and being emotionally available and attentive to their needs. If you’re distracted by other thoughts or worried about what to say next, the other person will pick up on it. It takes practice to learn to listen in an undistracted way, but it’s a skill you need to make it to the top in any industry, especially in sales or management-oriented positions.
*Check out Udemy’s list of listening skills courses to help you improve your listening skills in the workplace and to be a great and effective leader.
2. Communication
Learning to speak in a way that people understand and relate to is a basic element of successful communication, a skill you’ll need to excel in any line of work. Unless you’re an accountant who works only with numbers, communication skills matter. Even accountants must talk to clients. Regardless of your field, you can’t escape human contact completely. Communicating effectively involves more than just the spoken word, eye contact, and body language matter. You’ll develop this skill with practice, but it’s also helpful to take a course in better communication.
*Udemy’s list of speaking skills courses includes skills such as public speaking and presentation skills.
3. Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand others, their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. It falls under the broad term of emotional intelligence. To build successful relationships with others, you need the ability to understand their thoughts and positions and respond appropriately. Practice the art of putting yourself in other people’s shoes before responding. Doing this will help you establish better rapport and respond more thoughtfully. Empathy is important for more than a career boost; it can also make you a better human being.
*Udemy’s list of empathy skills courses includes improving emotional intelligence and being able to lead with empathy.
4. Being Able To Read Other People
The ability to read other people goes along with empathy. As you develop greater empathy, you’ll learn to read people’s thoughts and emotions better too. Often the words people speak are only part of the story. You’ll gain more information by the way they look at you, their body positioning, the expression on their face, and whether they appear anxious or open and friendly. Look beyond appearances and focus on words and body language. Show people you’re interested in them, and they’ll reveal more about themselves. It takes practice and experience to interpret the motives of others and what drives them, but it’s worth it if you’re in a career that requires managing people or even interacting with them.
*Udemy’s topics on being able to read people falls under non-verbal communication courses.
5. The Ability to Motivate Others
For success in many careers, you must not only read people, listen to, and talk to them, but also develop the ability to motivate them. Can you imagine having a manager or supervisor who couldn’t motivate employees? The productivity and morale of the office would go into a steep decline, and the business would suffer. The ability to fire people up and keep them enthused about reaching their goals is a prerequisite for being in a supervisory role.
*Learning how to motivate others is much about being able to motivate yourself in addition to others.
6. Ability to Handle Pressure
Any workplace or career has stress and sometimes lots of it. For example, the tension in a trading firm when stocks take a plunge is palpable. No matter what career or business you’re on, you must know how to handle pressure. When you get into a leadership position, people depend on you to help them stay calm. It’s how you react to stress that will determine your success as a manager, supervisor, or leader.
*We found the bulk of the courses were listed under stress management. These stress management courses include learning how to perform well under pressure and being resilient when under stress.
7. Conflict Management
No matter what career you’re in, there will be conflict, and how you manage it says a lot about your leadership style and potential. When two people argue, you need to listen to both sides and help find a resolution. The ability to manage conflict with grace, confidence, and tact is one of the most important soft skills that you can master to move up the career ladder in any career track that requires leadership skills.
*These Udemy’s courses in conflict management mainly focus on managing conflict in the workplace.
Soft Skills Training
In addition to what we’ve listed below each soft skill, here’s a list of online learning platforms where you can learn, improve and hone in on these skills.
- Udemy
- edX
- Coursera
- iVersity
These platforms offer a wide range of courses, including those that focus on developing soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. These courses are typically designed and taught by experts in the field and may include interactive exercises, quizzes, and real-world scenarios to help students practice and apply the skills they are learning. Additionally, many of these courses and/or platforms offer opportunities for students to interact with their peers and instructors through online discussion forums, which can also help to develop soft skills such as collaboration and communication.
The Bottom Line on Soft Skills
How does your skill set match up? These are all soft skills you can develop once you’re aware of how important they are for success. Once you do, you’ll be able to advance more quickly along your career track and find success.
