How Soft Skills Are Recognized And How It Is Related To Performance
Posted on 01. Feb, 2010 by admin in Featured Articles
Soft skills refer to the personality traits, friendliness, social graces, and facility with language, personal habits and optimism that mark people to varying degrees. Soft skills are needed for everyday life as much as they are needed on work.
One individual may not possess all the soft skills such as interpersonal, informative, convincing and negotiation, communication and socializing skills. Some of them are important and applicable to most people such as written and oral communication skills, interpersonal skills like empathy, good manners and listening skills. Different roles demand different set of soft skills. It may take years together for a person to develop a set of soft skills to handle a range of challenges successfully that are encountered in life.
For instance, a student must need good listening skills, a willingness to learn, commitment and discipline. It is not uncommon for students with lower ranks in EAMCET to score higher percentages because of good soft skills.
In an information technology company, if a person is appointed as a team leader in case there is a team of people with similar IQ and technical skills, then the team leader is the person who shares information properly with his fellow employees about the assignments and coordinate with them in completing the given work in a stipulated time.
In the same way, it is applicable in a tech support company also. Lets say there is a team of 10 people with same technical knowledge. A person who is good in handling the customer complaints and solving the disputes would outrank his colleagues in terms of his performance, because of his soft skills and not hard skills. Most of this competence comes from his well developed soft skills. This person stands head and toe over the rest of the team members, when his performance is compared with others. Similarly, it is widely applicable in every type of job in any industry with different set of soft skills requiring for different job roles.
Lastly soft skills are not talent. Many talents are natural. A person who has talent may not be aware of it. It took Chanakya to discover the talent of Chandragupta Maurya. Also, it took Imran Khan to discover the talent of Wasim Akram. A person with talent would still need a good teacher and systematic practice to develop it. However, a person without the talent will go nowhere even with the same teacher and systematic practice or training.
This is not the case with the soft skills, which are mostly teachable and learn-able by applying ourselves correctly. That means anyone can learn soft skills. No qualification is required for learning soft skills. However, based on the career aspirations the set of soft skills will vary from person to person.
Suggested Reading:
Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career
Lessons in Management: From The Ancient Roman Centurions
Leadership Attitude: Stockdale Paradox – Confront the facts however unpleasant but never lose hope!
Management is a Practice, Not a Degree
Understand The Motivational Theories In Management
Accuracy and Precision
Kate Nasser
Feb 2nd, 2010
Soft-skills, better known as people-skills, are essential to success in life. Every person, not just front line customer service or sales staff, benefits from improved people-skills.