How to quickly improve your soft skills
Employers increasingly require 'soft skills' when recruiting their future leaders. But what are soft skills and what can you do to improve your soft skills quickly. Soft skills are the interpersonal, people skills that allow someone to interact effectively.
They are numerous, hard to define, quantify and measure. Soft skills often included in job requirements we are instructed on include communication skills, empathy, teamwork, decision making, active listening, emotional intelligence, among others.
All valuable and all attributes that enable people to be productive and to play nicely with the other girls and boys.
In a recent HR Daily Advisor presentation, Eric Termuende, Co-founder of NoW Innovations, gave three methods to improve your soft skills quickly.
1. Mirroring. A technique of repeating the last 3 or 4 of the last sentence of the person you are speaking with. Surprisingly easy and an effective way of quickly getting more information from a conversation and finding out more about the person you are interacting with.
2. Summarise. At the end of a conversation, either request or offer a quick summary to make sure everyone is on the same page and that expectations are clear. Simple to do and will avoid wasted time and energy.
3. Be present. (Eric used the term 'monotask').
Arguably the most important of the three methods, in a world with so many distractions. Email, phone calls, colleagues, social media, meetings, hunger, caffeine cravings all competing for your attention, it can be challenging to allow yourself the time and space to focus on just one thing. However, if you can, it will pay dividends. If your dream job is in the Cayman Islands, BVI, Bermuda or the Channel Islands, we are always happy to answer your questions.
Contact Highbury Consulting:
Cayman: +1 345 328 0555
Email: info@highburyconsulting.com
Your journey begins here.