One cannot repeat it often enough: soft skills have become essential for success in today's professional world. Working in a team, communicating effectively with colleagues, managing stress, staying motivated and making informed decisions are all necessary skills to face daily challenges and succeed at work.
Want to know the 5 essential soft skills to master in 2023? In this article, we will give you an overview of the key skills you can develop in your professional life and not only.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand their feelings and emotions in a given situation. Those who master this skill can literally sync with their interlocutor, making them feel deeply understood. Empathy is crucial for working effectively in a team, communicating clearly, and building strong relationships with colleagues and clients.
The good news is that empathy can be developed at any age, particularly through experiential learning and exposure to situations requiring empathy. Some personality and cognitive traits can also influence the development of empathy. For example, people who tend to be more open-minded, compassionate, and altruistic are likely to be more empathetic. Similarly, certain cognitive abilities, such as identifying others' emotions, understanding social situations, and experiencing similar emotions, can also influence empathy development.
To learn more about empathy and discover our practical tips for developing and applying empathy at work, read this article.
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to face challenges and difficulties, recover quickly from failures, and keep moving forward despite obstacles.
A resilient person learns from their experiences, even painful ones. They look forward to the future and free themselves from past difficulties, knowing that we cannot go back in time. They absorb failures by taking their share of the responsibility and remaining confident about the future. Through their proactive attitude, they see challenges as a great opportunity to surpass themselves and go above and beyond.
In a constantly changing work environment, it is essential to be resilient to adapt to changes, cope with work pressures, and continue progressing despite setbacks.
To learn more about resilience and discover our practical tips for developing resilience on a daily basis, read this article.
Stress management
Stress tends to often have a negative connotation, and is synonymous with exhaustion, work pressure, fear, overload, fatigue, conflict, tension, difficult situations, etc.
But stress can also be positive. Positive stress is otherwise called "eustress". Positive stress is beneficial in our daily lives and can even become our ally. This soft skill can be developed if we become aware of it and make regular efforts.
Stress management is therefore the ability to deal effectively with stressful situations and to maintain a positive attitude in the face of adversity.
Having a positive reaction to stress can have a reverse effect on our psychological activity: motivating us, boosting our performance and generating satisfaction by giving our best.
Find out in this article our tips for turning stress into your ally.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking or critical reasoning is a combination of cognitive and soft skills.
This ability helps us to analyse, synthesise and evaluate information to make informed and logical decisions.
It is a way of reasoning effectively and consciously, but also a way of facing the world and questioning it in order to grasp its complexity.
Critical thinking is thus based on sharp logical reasoning that calls for open-mindedness, intellectual humility and self-confidence.
Critical thinking is particularly important for people in management and leadership positions, as these roles require making complex decisions that can have significant consequences for the organisation and its stakeholders.
To find out more about critical thinking and our tips for developing and applying it in everyday life, read this article.
Self-discipline
Self-discipline is the ability to set goals and work steadily to achieve them, even when motivation is low or the tasks are difficult.
It is a pivotal skill that enables the acquisition and development of other skills such as perseverance, resilience, commitment, stamina, self-motivation, self-confidence, rigour, organisation, autonomy, etc.
Studies have shown that self-discipline is a more reliable predictor of success than IQ (intelligence quotient). It has been shown that people who have a greater capacity for self-discipline are more likely to persevere with their long-term goals, even when they encounter obstacles or setbacks.
And the good news is that this skill is developed and honed through practice. Daily practice, until it becomes a habit, an unconscious attitude.
Discover in this article, our tips for applying and developing self-discipline in everyday life.
