5 Soft Skills You Will Need To Grow & Be Successful In Your Career | Personal Development Training

You're known at your workplace for being the best at your job. You probably have scored the highest marks in your college but it means so little if you don't have the skills that you need. What I mean here is, do you have the skill of teamwork? Some of the most important professional skills can't really be taught in the classroom and these skills are called soft skills and they're more crucial to get you recruited than you think. So what are soft skills? Well unlike hard skills, these skills cannot be measured but they can be proved. So some examples of soft skills include verbal and written communication, teamwork and leadership. So one reason that soft skills are so important is that they are the key to building relationships, gaining reputation and creating more opportunities for you to develop your relationships. So today I'm going to tell you what are some crucial soft skills to get you hired or to accelerate your career growth. This is Michelle and you're watching me on Skillopedia, the place to develop skills for the real world. Now the first crucial skill to take your career to the next level is communication. Let me explain this further. Let's look at why we need communication. So both written and verbal communication skills are very important in the workplace because a, they help you create a positive image. Second, they improve your chances of building relationships with your co-workers and c, communication skills boost your performance. So whether it's at your workplace or in your college or in your department, you are going to boost your performance if your communication is strong. Now let's look at why employers look for this skill. So of course workers are more productive when they know how to communicate with each other. It's very simple, if you can clearly express the who, what, when, why, where and how of a project, you'll be a hot ticket, which means you'll be much in demand. So this is my suggestion, you must develop your verbal and written communication but you must be thinking what are the ways to do that. So now I'm going to suggest to you some tips to gain this crucial skill. So the first thing that you can do is you can probably join a public speaking workshop where you get an opportunity to speak publicly and gain your confidence. You could also do this by watching some of our videos about public speaking at Skillopedia and try to imitate those and learn the tips from there and apply them when you're speaking in public. Okay, the second thing that you could do is apart from speaking you also need to be an active listener. So active listening is when you wait until the other person has finished speaking and really listen to what they are saying before you jump in. So this is a very important and often overlooked skill of communication. So I'd suggest that you listen carefully and try public speaking workshops but that's not it. Lastly you can also learn to monitor your body language, which means to develop your ability to communicate non-verbally. So this can mean maintaining good eye contact while talking, nodding while you're listening and a firm handshake when you're leaving. So these are just some examples of body language, you can again watch some of our videos on body language to understand how you can improve this to improve your overall communication skills. Now the other crucial skill to take your career to the next level is teamwork. So why do you need teamwork? Well you need it because no one person doing everything by himself or herself can make a project successful. So success is obviously the result of many people working together to achieve a common goal. So therefore when employers want to hire employees, they really look for the skill of teamwork. The reason for this is because good teamwork spirit improves the culture of the office and it improves the office environment due to which many people stay in the organization and top talent comes to them. So now we know that teamwork is a very important skill to take your career to the next level. But what are the ways to gain the skill? So the first thing that you could do is lend a hand, which means to help someone when you see a friend, a classmate or a co-worker in need. So you could offer help by saying, hey I know you have a ton on your plate, how can I help? This small gesture can help you a lot to develop your team spirit skills. Okay, the next one would be to say, it would be another way to build the skill is by offering a cover for a colleague, which means that if someone's on a vacation and you need to cover for them, before they ask you, it's better that you go up to them and say, hey it looks like you're going on an annual leave, well have fun but do you need help with your cover? Great, so this way you can display your spirit of teamwork. And the third way of being a team player is to take responsibility for your actions. So that means whenever you've made a mistake, rather than putting the blame on someone else, you should accept it and say that, yes I did it and this is a very good point to be a good team worker. So these are my three tips for you to gain the skill of team spirit in order to take your career to the next level. Now the next crucial skill to escalate your career is adaptability. So adaptability means the ability to adapt, which I think simply means to be flexible. So now the question is, why do you need to be flexible? So it's because things don't always go as planned, isn't it? When you plan something, it doesn't always work. So the better thing is, instead of grumbling and complaining about how things are not turning up as you wanted, the best thing is to find alternate solutions and this is what good leaders do, they find solutions to problems and not increase the problem. So why do employers look for this skill? Well it's because the speed of change in any organization is so fast that employees need to adapt to the changes in the organization. So well, the way to gain the skill is to push yourself, that's how you can be flexible and you can adapt to the changes. So to be an early adopter of change, for example, adapting to technology without mourning is crucial. So people can see you as someone who's capable of meeting new challenges or if you're in your college, another way would be to attend training sessions, to learn new things about your area of study so you can display that you are quick to learn and you love to be flexible and adapt new changes. So this is how you can develop the third skill which I've spoken to you about today, which is adaptability. Now another critical skill for your career is problem solving. So the reason you need this skill is because when something goes wrong, you can either complain about it or take action and of course it's taking action that will get you noticed. So knowing how to think on your feet, which means to think of quick solutions or to make decisions very quickly. This is a very important skill when it comes to being an important part of an organization. So why do employees look for it? The reason for this is very simple because companies face many problems every day and they need solvers and these solvers aka their top performance, their performers help them to sail through unexpected challenges. So the best way to gain this skill is to always approach your boss with a solution, not a problem. This is how you become a problem solver. So when an issue arises, sit down and think through how you're going to solve it before bringing it to your boss's attention and he will definitely appreciate your effort to solve the problem even before bringing it. Our final skill that I'm going to discuss with you to take your career to the next level is critical thinking. So why do you need this skill? Well critical thinking is essential to bring new ideas in the workplace. Critical thinking means to think about the positives and the negatives of every idea and employees need to be able to think about this to be better problem solvers as we discussed in the previous tip and this skill will make you successful no matter what your job is. So now how to develop your critical thinking skills? Well I think the only way to develop it is by learning. So find ways to learn, you could read the news every day, you could read books, you could discuss non-work issue with your friends and family members. The reason you could do this is to generate ideas because when you discuss problems with others, you're able to brainstorm new ideas and this will help your critical thinking processes. So this brings us to the end of our session and today you have learned the top skills that can take your career to the next level. So try to use these strategies that I've shared with you and tell me how these strategies have helped you. This is how you gain soft skills. So let me know what you felt about this session in your comments and which of these skills is most relevant to you. Thank you so much for staying with me till the very end of this session. I'll see you very soon with another useful session, till then keep developing your soft skills, bye.