Soft Skills: Soft Skills Essentials For getting the Job as fresher:

It’s true that certain individuals may have a propensity to excel at activities like diffusing conflict or public speaking. Yet, even if you’re terrified of public speaking now, as many of us are, you can become a better public speaker through soft skills training and practice. Plus, people with strong soft skills can bolster them further through training.

The problem is that companies don’t always have the tools to facilitate that kind of growth. A few common problems business leaders encounter when implementing soft skills training include:

• Learn soft skills that contribute the most to your career success
• Learn best techniques in communication, problem solving and time management
• Understand importance of soft skills in your personal and professional development
• Position yourself for promotions and achievements
• Understand how to be a great communicator and problem solver
• Appear professional to your co-workers and bosses
• Utilize soft skills to build positive relationships at work place
• Lack of relevant educational content
• Limited access to capable instructors
• Failure to assess soft skills needs
• Top-heavy educational investment
• Insufficient time to implement training 
• No training reinforcement

Since soft skills relate to both personal growth and business progress, they’re essential to a company’s success on a granular and macro level. 

Optimum workplace productivity depends on everyone at an office possessing useful soft skills and complementing each other accordingly. 

Think about the composition of any successful team for reference. A speedy shortstop has talents that a hard-slugging first basemen lacks, and vice-versa. Or to move away from sports, Captain Kirk is emotional and courageous, while Mr. Spock is calculating and measured. However, their differences aren’t liabilities, they’re advantages because they work together well; they have chemistry. Good chemistry is the result of soft skills like empathy, active listening, and collaboration.

To improve office productivity, you can improve your employee’s soft skills with training!

Whether you have an existing soft skills training program you want to improve, or you’re ready to bring a new focus on soft skills at your company, these steps can work to boost your team’s soft skills:

Hire Motivated Employees  

In your hiring process, look for potential candidates who display a willingness to learn. Since it’s very difficult to teach someone a skill they don’t want to learn, you can get a head-start by simply hiring candidates who already have a good attitude and who naturally take to training sessions. 

And you won’t be alone in this effort! During the hiring process at Google, the number one attribute they look for is “learning ability” because it overlaps with the other soft skills they want a new hire to have. Even our Vice President of Operations, Kathy Irish, says she “hires for attitude and aptitude.”

Find Compelling Learning Material

Do any of the presenters in your training videos feature shoulder pads reminiscent of the original “Dynasty” TV show from the 80’s? What does outdated content say to your learners? 

While effective learning material is typically diverse in order to reach different types of learners, diverse learning material isn’t always compelling. When you’re evaluating learning material, try to find a balance of diverse and compelling lessons by looking for the following:

• Thoughtful visuals and creative graphics
• Conversational instructors who are relatable to the learners
• Consistent quality of each course, student materials, and exams
• Fresh and updated content to each soft skill training topic

You want to be sure your learners aren’t turned off or uninspired by the lack of current content!

Include a Wide Range of Relevant Topics 

Diverse, rich training content is an asset for any growing business. The more relevant content a business can offer its team members, the more opportunities they have to grow and learn. For example, leadership training could include teaching each of the DISC personalities, succession planning, and how to handle mistakes.

Additionally, there can be two different sides to the same topic. Managers need to apply soft skills in a different manner than employees. There are differences when working with Millennials vs. members of Generation Z and training can address those differences.  

Assess Training Needs

Soft skills tend to be lumped together, but the reality is that they can refer to very different abilities. An employee may have certain well-developed traits like the ability and willingness to collaborate, but they may be lacking in others like organization and time management. 

Drama is great for TV shows and movies, but it’s the last thing managers or directors can afford to deal with in the workplace. Still, many conflicts stem from communication breakdowns or misunderstandings.

Soft skills training seeks to eliminate these damaging miscommunications and ensure that a team operates at its most efficient and amicable level. 

Soft skills training can mean the difference between:

• Assertive action vs aggressive action
• Persistence vs pestering
• Constructive criticism vs condemnation
• Creativity vs chaos
• Leadership vs bullying

The benefits of an effective soft skills training program are numerous. Soft skills can influence everything from the way employees communicate with customers to the way they solve problems internally. It’s not an overstatement to suggest that improved soft skills training can influence nearly every aspect of a business operation in a positive way.

One final note, it is possible to focus too heavily on a certain soft skill, or, to attempt to promote a certain soft skill too heavily within one group. 

Some companies spend an inordinate amount of their training budget on senior management or executive positions. Yet, professionals at all levels will benefit from soft skills training. Soft skills training allows pros to become better communicators and better employees. In the end, soft skills training is an essential pursuit for both businesses and professionals.   

In order to achieve success in any venture, a professional has to possess both soft and hard skills. Hard skills are traits that can be measured and dissected easily because they operate on a binary scale. Either someone can write Javascript code or they can’t; either they can balance an account properly or they can’t. These hard skills help people get their foot in the door because they let employers know a person has the required abilities to perform a job on a base level. 

Where hard skills end, soft skills begin. 

While there are thousands of professionals with the same exact education background and level of intelligence operating in the workforce, no two people have the exact same impact at their job. In fact, studies indicate that soft skills account for roughly 85% of a person’s success over the course of their career. And employers rightly value employees with soft skills – 74% of hiring managers rate a candidate’s listening skills above all other abilities when they begin the interview process.

Some may believe that hard skills are the only “teachable” skills, but this just isn’t true. 

It is possible to train and hone soft skills, and professionals can take courses on leadership just as they would for computer programming. 

Leadership, like any other soft skill, is not a genetic trait or a birthright, but some people are born leaders. You can see it on the playground with children at recess. For those people who are not natural leaders, the ability can be improved through training, hard work and focus.