7 Soft skills you need to master

What are soft skills?

Hard skills are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify. Typically, you’ll learn hard skills in the classroom, through books or other training materials, or on the job. Softs skills are all the skills related to how you work, how you interact with people and in my opinion the most important skills you need in your life! Soft skills and EQ, let’s take a look.

7 Soft skills you need to master

Soft skills are 1 of the 5 key components of emotional intelligence, so if you master these skills, your EQ goes up! Which soft skills you need to master in your life? We listed 7 of them for you!

# 1 GROWTH MINDSET A growth mindset means being open to change, feedback, and continuous learning.

People basically do not like change. As soon change comes around the corner, people start resisting change. It is the fear of the unknown, even if the current situation is a bad situation, at least I know it is what it is. If the situation is changed… I don’t know what I am going to get.

Giving feedback is easy to give, right? Well, that depends how you give feedback. Receiving feedback is also a skill you can learn. If you see feedback as a tool to learn, then you’re more likely to accept feedback from somebody else.

To be able to grow, you need to have the mindset to learn continuously. A good exercise is to ask proactively for feedback. Choose an activity or task you need to perform and ask your co-workers or the people who participated in your activity for feedback and write down what you learned from this feedback 

#2 CREATIVITY Creativity is a powerful weapon for driving new ideas, competitive advantages, and fully engaged teams.

In today’s highly competitive world, leaders and organizations will only enjoy sustainable success if they build and harness a culture of innovation. Innovation is the most powerful force to fuel growth, develop competitive advantage, and build personal and professional growth.

How do you become creative? Well start drawing, embrace boredom (put your phone AWAY!) and make room to play! In our online group courses you will not only learn to design your life, but also you learn to apply design thinking. Design thinking is a framework and a mindset, which can be applied to real life and therefore Life Design is born.

#3 FOCUS MASTERY Social media, office interaction, and working from home have made deep focus more challenging than ever.

We all have goals and ambitions, but most of us aren’t on track to reach our goals because we’re not taking the right action at the right time and with the right consistency.

We live in a world that’s constantly distracted. Everyone seems to be chasing short-term gratification over long-term achievement. And it’s not necessarily their fault—we have people and companies competing for our attention during every single moment of our waking lives.

So, how do you focus? First understand why you need to focus, If you have a clear why , you will see it will be easier to focus. Secondly write down your goals and ambitions and define which elements distract you from reaching your goals. 

Digital tools can also help you to keep focussed to reach your goals, I use Asana and it keeps me focussed and motivated to reach my short- and long term goals. If you are interested in Asana, just let me know.

#4 COMMUNICATION The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) reports that miscommunication can cost a company anywhere from $420,000 to $62 million.

Good communication is essential in all areas of life, but especially in the workplace. Disconnected, uninformed employees can have a damaging effect on your business and bottom line. Implementing effective communication skills, tools and strategies in the office is vital for companies to optimize performance and stay competitive.

#5 CULTURE AWARENESS Becoming more aware of other cultures is a key part of reducing the chances of making bad decisions

You Can’t Change Other People But You CAN Change Yourself. Your instincts never change, and you can’t force others to be different either. But that doesn’t mean you can’t adjust your own habits to lift yourself up to new horizons where you can see the world, and other people from different and more useful perspectives.

Cultural awareness helps us reduce the chances of making bad decisions and increases the chance of us making more insightful, considered decisions.

There are some practices to improve your cultural awareness; observe and listen to foreign customers or colleagues, celebrate traditional holidays, festivals and food or pay attention to differences in cultures.

#6 CRITICAL THINKING Critical thinking is the ability to solve problems effectively by generating and evaluating possible solutions.

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills anyone can learn. Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas.Critical thinking might be described as the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

The skills that we need in order to be able to think critically are varied and include observation, analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making.

#7 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Top performers usually have high emotional intelligence which includes empathy, self-awareness, and collaborative skills.

Unlike your IQ, your EQ is ever-changing. Without an accurate understanding of your EQ and how it impacts your personal or professional relationships, you’ll be missing out on one of the most important ways you can prove yourself. By recognizing and actively improving your EQ, you’ll be able to show that you’re ready for the next step in your personal life or your career, whatever you’d like that to be.

Soon the online course Get EQ’ed will be available, so get registered now!