5 social skills that will make or break your work experience
When it comes to work or job hunting, people often fill their CVs with their experiences, practical skills and interests, rushing to showcase their talents and expertise. Although practical skills are very important when you want to get a job, soft skills are what make or break your actual job experience, but mostly go unnoticed because people tend to think that they come naturally or can be acquired easily.
Today we hope to remind you of the importance of soft skills and the fact that you need to constantly work on yourself to develop and grow in the way you handle yourself, tough work situations and others.
Here are 5 of the most important social skills that help transform your work environment and relations:
1. Creative thinking and problem solving:
The word “creative” is excessively used in the digital world but it holds great importance in many ways. As for task-based importance of creative thinking, you need it to be able to introduce new ideas, find the creative angle in heavily informative briefs and work with various departments at once, offering insight and adding a valuable asset to the table. Developing such a skill requires researching, reading and a lot of hands-on experience.
Outside tasks and deadlines, creative and critical thinking are very important for having a good relationship with your co-workers and finding new ways to open opportunity doors for yourself. To hack into creative thinking, you need to throw yourself outside your comfort zone -we realise it’s a bit cliche- but it’s true.
2. Work with a team and communicate well:
Work is not a place for the stubborn, angry and lone wolves. In order to have a happy, healthy work environment you need to be able to work with people in an effective and efficient manner. If you waste too much time on trivial arguments, how much work can you actually get done? Understand that you can’t always be right. Here are some tips to help you navigate your way with teams or for when you need to communicate your needs: listen well, think before you speak, don’t shoot down ideas, be willing to compromise and be a sponge. Being a sponge means that you need to get yourself ready to absorb opinions, ideas, requests etc. Another important aspect of team work is filtration; listen to all, but benefit from some, know what to take out of a conversation and what to leave out.
3. Good work ethic and voice of reason:
This is a tough one, we all think we are doing a good job almost all the time. In order to master the art of work ethic, you need to be able to be honest with yourself, being your own critic from the smallest to the biggest of things. Do you come on time? Get your tasks done in a timely manner? Do you keep your quality as consistent as possible? Do you help your coworkers? Etc. The answer to those questions does not have to be a 100% yes, but you need to keep a decent percentage. Work ethic is hard to teach, but people who have a strong work ethic possess certain qualities that include: Attentiveness, dedication, competitiveness, motivation, multitasking, punctuality and reliability. Make a checkpoint with yourself and see if you have any of those qualities, and if not, ask yourself how can I add this to my skill set?.
4. The art of leadership:
Leadership is such an important quality for seniors and juniors alike, because you never know when you will need to hold the centre-stage.
But being a leader is tricky business, because you need to walk the thin line between being bossy and being a leader. This is what researchers call “Gentle Leadership”. Also defined as “Not the exercise of power and authority, but rather the exertion of influence over the feelings, thoughts and actions of others”. Sounds pretty, but how? Some attributes of great leaders can be summed up in 11 Cs: Character, Charisma, Conscience, Convection, Courage, Communication, Compassion, Commitment, Consistency, Consideration and Contribution.
5. Be quick on your feet and adapt:
This is something everyone around you in the workplace will come to appreciate, because nobody likes that one person who whines about every single task and only sees the worst in everyday office mishaps.
Being able to adjust quickly and having the flexibility to work in different environments and under different circumstances is an invaluable asset in work, especially in fast moving digital industries, where something new is discovered everyday, with changes and updates happening day in and day out. Being able to adapt requires a personal skill set with curiosity at its centre.
Some related skills you can work on that will ultimately lead to maximum adaptability include: Self-management, Decision-making, Calmness, Optimism, Open-mindedness, Analysis, Self-confidence, Organisation and Self-motivation. Meaning that you don’t have to wait for the perfect circumstances to do your best work, instead you must learn to work with what you have and make the best out of it.
To conclude, we suggest you never lose sight of your soft skills and always try to find new ways to develop internally; as it will reflect on your work relations, work-life balance and highly improve your office experience and open new doors of opportunity and exposure for you. Whether you choose one and work on it or make tiny improvements in all 5 aspects, it’s definitely worth the effort!.