Soft skills - My list at a glance!
There's a lot of talk about hard skills and soft skills. But what exactly are hard skills and soft skills? What's clear is that they are important for your career! So you should know what they are about.
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There's a lot of talk about hard skills and soft skills. But what exactly are hard skills and soft skills? What's clear is that they are important for your career! So you should know what they are about.
For information on hard skills, see our article "List at a glance - What are Hard Skills?". It'll help, we promise!
In this article you will find a list of relevant soft skills for your professional life and career.
Definition - What are soft skills?
Soft skills include character traits, individual skills, social skills and the personal values of managers and employees. Soft skills are very important for creating value in a company, as they have an influence on the productivity and motivation of its employees. It's for that reason that recruiters are paying more and more attention to soft skills in the applications of potential employees.
For more details on soft skills and why they are important, read our article: "Definition - What are soft skills?".
Soft skills at a glance - What are soft skills?
Soft skills can be principally divided into three categories: social skills, personal skills and methodological skills.
1. Soft Skills - Social Skills
These faculties and qualities are useful when dealing with other people. Soft skills in the social skills category are important for interacting with others. They affect your impression on other people, e.g. colleagues or superiors. These soft skills determine how congenial, harmonious and positive people perceive working with you or in a team.
These include: sensitivity and empathy, being understanding towards others, style and tone, ability to communicate well and work in a team, willingness to act as a team player, flexibility, critical faculties.
2. Soft Skills - Personal Skills
These character traits relate to someone's own personality. To discover or learn these soft skills, you need to know and reflect on yourself so that you are aware of yourself as a personality and can define your goals in life and in your career.
These include: resilience, personal responsibility, commitment, motivation, curiosity, self-discipline, self-reflection, self-confidence, charisma.
3. Soft Skills - Methodological Skills
Soft skills in the methodological skills category support you in solving problems and tasks. In addition, these are the soft skills that help you learn and acquire important techniques and abilities, the so-called hard skills.
The difference between hard skills and soft skills can be found in our article "Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills - What's the difference?".
These include: dealing with new situations and media, presentation techniques, quick comprehension, problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, structured working methods, goal orientation, time management, organisational skills, stress resistance and stress management.
Soft skills list - Which soft skills are important?
Below you will find a list of the 10 most important soft skills for your application, your professional life and your career. Often these soft skills are explicitly desired or even required by companies in job advertisements.
1. Teamwork as a soft skill
The soft skill of teamwork is enormously important in professional life, because the dynamics of the team can determine the success or failure of a project. Therefore, it is very important that you are able to work in a team, i.e., that you can work together with others to achieve a certain goal and that you are constructive, considerate, respectful and fair with your team colleagues. It is also important for a good team dynamic that you are actively involved and that others can rely on you.
2. Initiative as a soft skill
This soft skill benefits you and your superiors because if you act on your own initiative, you act independently and through your own self-motivation. The way you work is therefore more productive. If you have this soft skill, you also make decisions and take responsibility for your actions. This is essential, especially for your career in a leadership position.
3. Communication skills as a soft skill
The soft skill of communication is the ability to communicate messages, situations, briefings, etc. clearly and concisely, where the way you communicate is brief but informative and includes all the essential details. Good communication also means being able to recognise and interpret the social signals of your counterpart. This soft skill also relates to the ability to speak up in (group) meetings and to be able to convince others in the end.
4. Enthusiasm as a soft skill
If you enjoy what you do at work, you won't find it difficult to work and you will be more successful because your enthusiasm will make you more intrinsically motivated and therefore more productive. The soft skill of enthusiasm is thus important at work. If you can get enthusiastic about things quickly, this will often work well for you at work too. "You see, in every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap! The job's a game." - Mary Poppins
5. Resilience as a soft skill
Hidden in this soft skill is another important soft skill, namely the ability of resist stress. If you master this soft skill, you can also deal well with pressure and stressful situations that occur in you professional life and won't fall apart straight away when something doesn't go according to plan. By being resilient, you are showing that you can better handle, channel and balance stress.
6. Adaptability as a soft skill
The soft skill of adaptability also implies the soft skill of quick comprehension, i.e., that you can quickly adapt to new circumstances and challenges and that you can quickly find your way in new situations. You should also have a certain flexibility.
7. Empathy as a soft skill
The soft skill of empathy is the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. This includes being able to recognise, understand and comprehend the emotions, signals, motives and thoughts of others. Similarly, the soft skill of empathy implies that you can engage with your counterpart, show sensibility and respond appropriately.
8. Charisma as a soft skill
Charisma is a very important soft skill, but also difficult to learn. People with charisma have a certain aura, presence and appeal which they can use to captivate other people. With this soft skill you can convince, motivate and inspire others. This soft skill is especially important in management and leadership positions, because as a leader with charisma you can positively influence your staff.
9. Assertiveness as a soft skill
The soft skill of assertiveness includes the ability of genuine persuasiveness and the strength to get things done, but it is not about always mindlessly asserting your own position and always "winning". It is about convincing others of your proposal through sound argumentation and acting in a goal-oriented way.
10. Intercultural skills as a soft skill
The importance of intercultural soft skills is one consequence of globalisation, since many companies have locations abroad and operate internationally. A diverse workforce representing different cultures and nationalities is also a positive development and enriches corporate environments. This is why intercultural skills as a soft skill are so important, because they mean that you can adjust to different cultural backgrounds, mentalities and customs, respect differences and take particular features into account. Here too, quick comprehension, empathy and flexibility are of great benefit.
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