How To Hone Your Soft Skills? Is it that hard?

“Why can’t I speak up when I want to? That woman is always dominating me..she bullies me all the time! I know I am right, then why am I so hesitant to speak?”

“Uggh, I messed up once again! Why did I react without thinking? I should have calmed down and reacted!”

“I have this great idea to improve work methods. Should I speak up before the boss? Or will people laugh at me?”

Can you identify with any of these statements? Is that you reacting?

If yes, you need to work on your soft skills. First, let us see what soft skills actually are. In contrast “hard” or technical and job-related core skills, soft skills are the more non-technical, people management and personal leadership skills.

What are Soft Skills?

     Soft Skills are behavioral competencies, also known as Interpersonal Effectiveness, or people skills. In today’s chaotic world, these skills sometimes matter more than any degree or professional competency. 

Soft Skills include the following:

ü   Self-Awareness

ü   Communication and listening skills,

ü   Conflict and stress management

ü   Inter-personal effectiveness,

ü   Creative problem solving,

ü   Original thinking and creativity

ü   Team playing,

ü   Influencing, negotiating,

ü   Empathy

ü   Leadership

You will notice, soft skills include both personal competencies as well as social and interpersonal effectiveness. So, improving these would require working on both your personal responses/behaviour, along with your social interactions. 

Read on to know ten easy steps to hone your soft skills.

10 Steps to Improve Soft Skills

Honing your soft skills is not that hard! You just have to consciously observe your own behaviour and responses. While interacting with others, keep your bias and judgement in check. And visualize yourself responding differently to situations.

Confused?

The following steps will help:

• Find out which areas need improvement, whether it is communication skills or conflict resolution or creative thinking

• Seek honest feedback from close friends, family members

• Observe your own behaviour while interacting with others (try to recall your responses to situations, how others reacted, how things turned out)

• Write down two alternative responses, and their expected results.

• While listening to people, keep an open mind. Do not judge immediately.

• 
  Get help in rectifying your problem areas, and develop a plan for improvement (a personal coach or counselor can help) 
  
• Write down small improvements that occur in your behaviour 
• Congratulate yourself when you get positive feedback, celebrate small wins!
• Meditate and do some positive visualization daily

• Read good books and watch good cinema

Remember, soft skills cannot be improved overnight. Change will come only with sustained efforts. Try to improve one small thing every day.

I mentally pat myself on the back whenever I succeed in improving any one soft skill, in however small measure.

You will soon enjoy the process and become a better individual in the process.

All the very best!

#SoftSkills #SelfImprovement #BetterSocialSkills #InterpersonalEffectiveness #HowToBeABetterPerson