Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career

Soft skills represent a fundamental attribute that today’s knowledge based economy is demanding of its employers, employees and businesses. Soft skills give the opportunity to enhance organizational skills and leadership skills to improve team results.

If you are perceived to be difficult and unfriendly, of what value are your hard skills when nobody is ready to work with you? The people who interact with you such as your colleagues, clients, and managers must perceive you as a significant contributor, an asset to the team, and this is possible only when you possess good soft skills. Because, it is the team performance that counts but not the individual performance in organizations. In such an environment soft skills are important for you in getting work done from your team.

An employee may be thoroughly trained in the technology he is using; but how good are those skills, if the same employee has no idea of how to handle a customer complaint or to effectively handle an important project? In many situations, it’s often the soft skills that matter the most in dealing with the day-to-day operations of a company.

A customer usually has no idea about the computer program you are using, but they appreciate when you complete a project beyond their expectations or resolve an issue quickly and effectively. A customer who receives great customer service is sure to keep coming back and tell others about his positive experience. Some common soft skills that are important for most of the people in building their careers are writing skills, presenting their work assignments status and the ability to work within a team.

Though a person has good hard skills, it is the soft skills that create opportunities for that person. What is the use of technical skills if nobody knows that you have got such skills? The essence of your technical ability is opportunity. So, one must have such soft skills to create opportunities.

Soft skills not only create the opportunities but they empower by making you to take advantage of the opportunities such as jobs, career or business. No matter how great your hard skills are, your persuading skills should be good. Otherwise, others who may not be as capable as you, but who have better persuading skills might beat to the jobs. Though you require hard skills to work on a job, but it is soft skills that make you to be likeable by others and to get associated with success on good projects and critical assignments. Obviously, nobody wants to have an unlikable person in their team or in an organization.

Your technical skills will not have any value if you possess poor soft skills. How well you coordinate and communicate with your coworkers, clients or mangers matters a lot. Soft skills make you to contribute at your best to the team and the organization in achieving better results. So, along with the technical skills you must possess good soft skills to have even a moderately successful career.

In order to contribute for better results for the company, a person needs to work with other key people in the company. This requires both competence in their specialization as well as being able to work with others and being aware of others roles, challenges and strengths. In addition, critical projects in a company carry risks and some amount of stress. To be able to handle your emotions is essential to deliver on these critical projects. So, a person with only technical skills will not be able to perform well in critical or important projects in a company. Success in such projects establishes who are the champions in the company and these people will be rewarded.

Republished with permission from Management-guru.in.

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