Whether you’re striving to succeed as a leader, a long-term individual contributor, or are just beginning your career, you want to succeed. Whether you’ve completed formal education at a university, technical school, or earned certifications, the truth remains formal education has its limits. Hard skills are essential, but they’re not all you need to succeed.
While education is one aspect employers look at, it’s not the only thing. In fact, the best employers take a holistic view of each applicant's strengths and challenge areas. They look for cultural fit, ease of training, and other elements that show this person will be a good fit in the job and company.
SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) published a survey in May 2020 titled “Leaders and Employees Need Soft Skills Now More than Ever”. In it, 97% of employers surveyed said that soft skills were either as important or more important than hard skills.
Schools often focus more on hard, measurable skills. Soft skills are difficult to measure, grade, and give certifications to prove exceptionalism. Certainly, you practice soft skills at school, but to be truly successful you need to hone them like you do hard skills.
Let’s discuss what soft skills are and why they matter in the workplace.
Soft skills are non-technical skills that relate to how you work. They include how you engage and interact with your colleagues, how you solve problems, and how you manage your work. We’ve covered specific soft skills before in one of our most popular blogs. Here’s another list of what employers value when it comes to soft skills. These include (but aren’t limited to) adaptability, communication, integrity, teamwork, and leadership.
Adaptability
Adaptability is defined as being able to rapidly learn new skills and behaviors in response to changing circumstances. In the world of work, things change constantly. You can’t be successful and valuable to your organization if you aren’t adaptable. Someone demonstrating adaptability in the workplace is flexible and can respond effectively to their working conditions — even if things don't go as planned. You’ve mastered this soft skill if you can see change on the horizon and be proactive in recommending how you get in front of it. On the contrary, if you’re someone who constantly digs in and resists change, you’re not only not helping, you could be part of the problem.
Communication
Employers look for applicants with superior written and verbal communication skills for almost every job. How many times have you said or written something to someone that they understood differently from your meaning? This happens all the time. The best employers need leaders on every level that can exercise care in their ability to listen and respond to customers and coworkers.
The soft skill of communication goes beyond effective verbal and writing skills. Communication breakdown is the root of almost all conflicts – and work team conflicts have a huge impact on workforce productivity. The most effective communicators are great listeners. They listen with the intent to understand. They also know how to adjust their style to match the preferred communication style of their listener. If you want to know more about your personal communication strengths, and where you may have some blind spots, the Omnia Professional Development report provides valuable insight.
Integrity
Schools rely on a student’s integrity when it comes to independent work, honesty in test-taking, and creating authentic projects. But is it taught and developed? Sadly, no. Is it critical in today’s work environment? Absolutely. It’s the cornerstone of an organization’s brand and reputation and can make or break a company’s long-term viability.
Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral, ethical principles and values. At work, it means keeping your promises, generating trust with clients and colleagues, and taking pride in doing good work.
Teamwork
Hiring managers look for job candidates who can work well with others. Whether you will be doing a lot of team projects or simply attending a few departmental meetings, you need to be able to work effectively with the people around you even if you do not always agree them.
Some skills related to teamwork include the ability to negotiate with others, and to recognize and appreciate diversity in a team. Another related skill is accepting and applying feedback.
Leadership
While not every job opening is a leadership role, most employers want to know that you have the ability to make decisions when push comes to shove and can manage situations and people. The ability to step up to the plate in a tricky situation and help resolve it is something employers look for in prospective employees. Other leadership skills include the ability to resolve problems and conflicts between people and to make executive decisions.
Hiring managers search for candidates with strong soft skills because they are important to everyone’s success in the workplace.
Let’s do a quick exercise. Think of the people you've been paired up within school or at work.
Person 1: Excellent technical skills; proficient in a specific job; doesn’t work well with others.
Person 2: Competent technical skills; adequate in a specific job; personable and friendly with colleagues and clients alike.
You probably have a few examples of each. Which person would you prefer to work with? In most cases, we’d all select Person 2. Certainly, there are instances when an expert is needed and it’s always nice to have access to them, but if you can’t communicate your needs to Person 1 how beneficial is that access?
We can take another example from the SHRM article “The Hard Facts About Soft Skills”.
“Imagine an organization where leaders approach questions and concerns and mistakes with empathy and understanding,” Kristina Johnson, chief people officer for Okta Inc., says. “Then consider a workplace that’s aggressive and blame-focused, where employees are afraid to make mistakes and too embarrassed to ask questions. As you can imagine, employees will stick around at one of those organizations much longer than the other.”
Hard skills versus soft skills aren’t a popularity contest, though it’s often easier to work with someone who has at least decent people skills. No one wants to make their work or life harder than necessary.
Bonus, soft skills are transferable skills that can be used regardless of the specific job. Adaptable employees are a valuable asset to any company as their goal is to grow and change, not stagnate. Understanding and improving upon your soft skills will make you a valuable asset and add to your success potential.
Suppose you aren't strong in all of these skills. That’s ok, it’s never too late to develop them. Understanding where you excel and where you can improve is helpful. If you find areas for improvement and have an interest in strengthening them, you are in a great position.
To find out which soft skills are most needed in an organization, look no further than your most successful colleagues. See if there are certain traits that allow them to prosper in your workplace.
For example, you can learn a lot by seeing other people within a company who excel in these five areas. Also, offering to take on more responsibilities at work (serving on committees, planning events, leading projects, etc.) can help you gain valuable experience. If possible, consider taking online soft-skills courses. Developing soft skills will make you a more valuable employee and boost your chances of career success.
Employee assessments can also reveal areas where improvements could be made, making it easier to put together a development plan to address those needs. If your organization isn’t already using assessments, it may be worth mentioning in conjunction with development and retention efforts. People often focus on technical skills or competencies when planning their development but neglecting soft skills can make it difficult to succeed in future positions that require a high degree of emotional intelligence and social interaction.
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