Soft Skills
The word dreaded by most geeks, but also the word that will get you far in life. Soft Skills. Soft skills are essential for business people to have along with their hard skills. If you don’t have these two things, then succeeding literally anywhere is not looking so good for you. You need these skills to influence people in the business to get things done. Also, soft skills do help you out in society in general, so knowing these and knowing how to apply them is a win win for the geeks of the world.
Mkay, so you are probably wonder what a soft skill is, right? Also the hard skills too… well to start us off with the soft skill, the most difficult one to define. A soft skill are traits and interpersonal skills that characterize a relationship you have with others. In basic terms, people skills, the stuff that you use to communicate and work well with others. On the other hand, the hard skills are what the Geek Leader’s Handbook describes as the skills that you need to get the job done. the knowledge and logic behind the work. Here is the problem though, geeks have kind of a hard time with the soft skills. Geeks don’t really like to communicate, especially face to face with others. They also don’t really care to listen that much, unless it has to do with the problem they are trying to solve. It also involves you caring and emotion, something that the geeks of this world really don’t care for what so ever. So, I think that the question lying here is, how do geeks do the soft skill thingy…? The thing that makes us have to be all talkative to people.
There are so many different pieces of advice out there it is not funny, so don’t worry. From The Geek Leader’s Handbook, there are five great tips that are provided. The first skill is to listen to what’s important to people. By doing this, you are not only trying to better understand the situation, but you are also figuring out what really matters to the client about the situations at hand. You get deeper into what’s going on, different concerns that you can answer to, and so much more. The next step would be to describe a rosy future. If you start describing things, such as things you need or things that need done, or different ideas with a more positive outlook for the future, you are more than likely to get what you need, and get things done more efficiently this way. The next thing you should consider is exposing your desire. Yes, you need to get deep with your people and tell them what you want. Why on God’s green earth should I do this you ask? Well, there are two reasons; you will be more trusted in the end because who trusts a person with no wants in life? The second reason is that it just makes life a little bit easier to be up front about things. The fourth thing that you should really consider is translating facts into stories. Yes, in a business environment, story time is very important to help sell people on things. It’s the emotional things in life that help out in a business. One more thing that you should really really consider is restoring the trust. Everyone has a breakdown every once in a while, whether it be mental, or just in a relationship and so on. You always have to have trust in your life, it is almost inevitable, so when it is broken, just make sure that you are on the ball to fix it and help make everything ok so that things can get rolling again.
Yes, there is more information out there that will give important information, and expand more on things like communication skills and how you should go about using them. You should practice things such as eye contact, actually talking someone’s language so they can understand the information you are talking about, and be aware of your body language as well. You should also consider working on teamwork skills that you will need in the future, and Always keep a motivated and positive attitude, or do the best that you can with this because not everyone can be happy all of the time. Working on these areas and expanding on them can help you get better with influence and move in the food chain in the business world, so just remember that practice makes perfect, or perfect practice makes progress, and that learning soft skills is crucial to your life because most people like to add emotion to their work life, and you will be apart of that life. So, once again, go practice your people skills!
https://www.strayer.edu/buzz/9-ways-enhance-your-soft-skills