By Yuritzin Pacheco
There is a quote I like: “To become a skilled man or woman in any profession, three things are necessary: Nature, Study and Practice” —Aristotle.
I interpret this as: Nature represents all the abilities we have as human beings; Study means learning never stops; and Practice means if you don’t practice, you forget. When these three come together, we become not only good professionals, but great human beings.
I’d like to share some data with you. McDonald’s sponsored a study in 2016 which found that over 500,000 people would be unable to enter the job market due to a lack of soft skills. And that’s not all — Harvard University conducted a study which found that as much as 80% of professional achievements are thanks to soft skills.
But what exactly are Soft Skills, also known as interpersonal skills? They are the skills that define you as a person and add value to who you are. But why are they so important when we were previously told that hard skills — the technical knowledge and expertise learned in school — were what mattered most?
Here are 5 Soft Skills essential for Today and Tomorrow:
- Communication
- Collaboration: knowing how to work as a team is extremely important
- Digital Literacy
- Responsibility / Commitment: self-management
- Creativity
Here are 3 tips on how to develop them:
- Perform a personal SWOT analysis — we need to know ourselves first
- Practice — once we know ourselves, we know where we need to improve
- Use methodologies like Visual Thinking and Design Thinking, which boost creativity, communication, and teamwork
If you want to learn more about Soft Skills, I invite you to watch a talk I gave on the subject called “Soft Skills: The Key to Professional Success.”
These are skills we already have from childhood — we just need to dust them off and keep practicing.