10 Soft Skill Superpowers For A Rapidly Changing World
In these rapidly changing times, soft skills are your superpower to drive high-performance teamwork
There is no question that we are living through rapidly changing times. Over the last 20-years, we have had the Dot Com bubble burst, then in 2008-12 we had the Global Financial Crash & Recession. This was followed by the Climate-Change Crisis, Brexit, and now of course, COVID-19. So, many SME’s are now having to work even harder than ever to move beyond surviving and into thriving. Investing in soft skills are the superpowers that boost high-performance teamwork and a growth mindset - essential for revving up your future business success.
What are soft skills and why are they essential?
What are these soft skills and how do we grab hold of them?
Let’s start with a definition. Soft skills are a combination of people, social, and communication skills. Also included are character and personality qualities, emotional Intelligence, attitudes and attributes that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. They also complement and round off the edges of hard skills. (Added to from Wikipedia).
Soft skills - fluffy and namby-pamby, right?
Uh nope! If you still think that you’re wrong, or you’ve been living under a rock! The real game changer is to view soft skills as the driver to superpower high performance teamwork. This is why soft skills are essential.
In the '90s and 2000’s, so-called soft skills were seen by many as a fluffy set of nice-to-have qualities. I’ve even heard them termed, ‘namby-pamby’. Whereas traditionally, the big career prizes of one’s competence were mainly represented by hard-technical skills. This viewpoint needs to change and change fast.
In this rapidly changing world, soft skills will be your superpower, not a nice to have.
But, don’t be mistaken, soft skills in themselves are not an end point! No, they are a means to an end only! Soft skills are the superpowers needed to drive high performance teamwork. This is the real game changer and the difference that will make all the difference between business bumping along in survival mode or flourishing through growth.
Much research all points to an ongoing ramping up and significance of soft skills as businesses pivot and reposition themselves to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
Furthermore, the global and technology-based economy means business will grow more and more complicated. That points to; collaborative problem-solving approaches will be the way teamwork sparks innovate and create new solutions. And, it seems, taking on soft skills will fuel this approach. Added to that will be remote and home working, which will change the nature of the workplace moving forward.
Moreover, as automation gobbles up and side-lines more technical jobs in the inevitable rise of AI, that soft skills will continue to grab the headlines as essential qualities for career and business success. It’s not hard to figure out the knock-on effects for many practically based roles too!
In job interviews and promotional reviews, evidence of soft skills will decide winners and losers between candidates. Showcasing these amongst crafting one’s career portfolio along with strong personal branding will make the stand-out difference. Such skills do not get directly discussed; the trick is to grab attention through storytelling, listening and collaboration evidence to show off your soft skills as part of how you interact with others.
So what are the most in-demand soft skills to shape up your people in your business?
Top-10 soft skills for forging high performance teamwork
Here's my top-ten list of essential soft skills needed for these rapidly changing times. They are based on my work forging high-performance teamwork, and up-skilling yourself:
Compassion
Compassion is the ability to empathise and treat people how you would like to be addressed and to accept where people 'are at' in their lives. People are not problems in themselves – on the whole, most people are not problem people per se (of course there will be exceptions - such as toxic individuals etc.); people generally have 'problems' they are trying to work through.
To help build compassion, take time out of the everyday busyness to understand and care for others around you and what they are learning or going through, assisting and motivating accordingly. This has become increasingly important through this Covid-19 period. A large percentage of the workforce have been and will continue to work from home through 2020-2021.
Other aspects of demonstrating compassion are actively forgiving others, accepting weaknesses, and showing respect. Teaching through tough love and encouraging others to get over failures and mistakes are helpful ways to start to amplify this skill especially with a remote workforce.
2. Building trust
Steven R Covey, says, ‘Trust is the glue that binds people together and the oil which allows energy and passion to flow.’ Never has this been more true than today, as we learn the lessons of this pandemic.
With remote working it is especially important that you trust your people around you and show you believe in them. Actively promoting that everyone matters, means the whole enterprise thrives. With remote working, trust is the glue that will transform lives and ignite your business success.
Building trust in teams, for example, is a cornerstone skill to build authenticity, high-performance cultures and fruitful businesses. Whereas distrust ultimately leads to dysfunctional teams and cultures as well as low performance. We need to find ways to teach and learn this remotely not just in covid-safe face to face team meetings.
Spending time as a team telling each other your backstories is a smart way to make strides getting the thumbs up to trusting one another as a team - it will pay off for you. This can be done remotely too if you invest in this learning wisely. Getting help with a skilled facilitator is crucial here.
3. Harnessing Conflict
Whenever you have a conflict with others, there is one factor that can make the difference of not damaging relationships – that factor is attitude.
Conflict and confrontation at work in any culture are a fact of working life. Conflict can quickly whip up emotions making people feel ill-at-ease. But, the skill of dealing and handling conflict well in the workplace is a significant challenge for many leaders. When people work together, there will be differences of opinion, styles and perspectives too – these stir up much conflict, and unresolved hot potato concerns quickly get avoided as an unwritten ('we don't go there') rule.
However, one way of simmering down conflict is to become curious and actively listen to what other people are thinking and feeling about an issue. Learning how to smooth the fiery nature of conflict and use its energy productively and creatively in teams, and as individuals enable better solutions and decisions.
Again, this soft skill can be learned remotely too if you invest in this development wisely. Getting help with a skilled facilitator is crucial here.
4. Collaborating Effectively
Oliver Wendell Homes, once said, ‘many ideas grow better when transplanted into other minds than the one where they sprang up.’
Collaboration skills enable people to learn how to develop a positive approach as a team, get the best out of each other to do the work in hand. Working collaboratively together boosts open sharing, creative problem solving and bolsters better win-win solutions.
Collaboration is more about understanding the collective ‘we’ rather than the opinions of ‘I’. Polishing your collaboration skills makes high-performance teams sparkle. One surprising thing we learned during Covid-19 is that remote co-working can sky-rocket production.
5. Resilience
Resilience is a highly prized skill and represents a facet of your work and life ethic. Resilience is an inside-job quality. However, grasping resilience skills go hand in hand with overcoming difficulties, hardship, problem-solving, facing tricky challenges and turning them around to positive accomplishments. The more job responsibility you have, the more critical this skill becomes.
Switching adverse problems into positive learning stories as you go through troubled times is an excellent way of fortifying resilience skills and inspiring others as you go along. For leaders and business owners in remote working world we now live more of the time in, that this is a crucial skill to actively demonstrate and remind staff of.
6. Problem-solving
Becoming aware of and learning from your backstory of exactly how a problem was solved and the process and steps you took resolve it, helps to better turn on the light to your problem-solving skills.
Being clear about how to overcome obstacles along the way to success, based on how you found a solution to past problems and addressed challenges as they came up hones your confidence in using this skill well in clinching future issues as they arise. Time needs to be set aside to communicate these sorts of subtle messages effectively to remote co-workers.
7. Creativity
Creativity is finding a unique solution to a problem or approaching something from a different angle. It's about thinking differently, trying novel innovative approaches (out of the box).
Unfortunately, many people falsely believe that they are not creative, or think that creative skills have no value (hang-ups from school days for example). I have found that nudging leaders and teams to use creative thinking sparks so many new ideas. That is because creative thinking exercises your less-used right brain, whereas logic is mainly left brained. But, surprisingly, remote working has increased creativity in high performing teams.
So, the skill is to be able to imagine moving a mental slider back and forth between your left and right brain and encouraging others you are working with to use the same process. The more you practise accessing your creative side, the more powerful a skill it becomes. Leaders need to take time to allow this creative process to do its magic with remote working - the good news is it is certainly possible folks.
8. Adaptability
Being able to adapt to different situations is a nitty-gritty workplace and life skill, which makes adaptability a big-ticket soft skill. Covid-19 has taught us all of the need to step outside our typical responsibilities and sort out curveballs that comes from left-field. Adaptability is the skill of getting a grip with unexpected things that take you off plan.
Being able to accept a curveball and re-plan or, to positively embrace what is unfolding and let this inspire you to learn from and then make an even better plan is the skill of being adaptable. It doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t plan - quite the opposite, it means changing plans from plan A to B. For example, in war strategies rarely go to plan, but to have not planned or having no battle plan at all spells certain doom. Communicating these changes in direction effectively is even more vital with remote co-working.
9. Prioritising to get the important things done
Time management is a critical skill in the workplace too. Running projects for example that stay on track and re-planning when things change is a must for business success. However, with remote working this becomes harder, but certainly not impossible.
Divvying up the urgent with the important is a highly rated skill. Taking care of pressing matters that scream at you as they arise is one thing – eventually, however, that leads to burn out. The real deal though is to focus and prioritise on making time in your working day for the more on the essential things that don’t shout and scream at you — such as important goals, planning ahead, preparing for an important event. Regular morning team meetings is something that works extremely well virtually as it does face to face, sometimes it’s even more practical.
I find that adding important events into your diary gives you a better chance of spending that time planning these significant chunks of work. It's a simple but powerful solution to getting stuff that matters done. Over Zoom or Teams it may take more effort, but it’s vital that you do this extra work. Again, soft skills pay off here
10. Persuasion, influence and engagement
These come under communication skills but, they are more much than that. These skills go beyond dialogue, and conversation skills and are even more important managing remote teams..
The skill of persuasion, influence and engagement equip you to get more of what you want more of the time. One way of doing this is to take the time to tell inspiring stories. It’s also about extending and engaging with your network too to learn and apply what others are doing that you can creatively apply to your own context with your own team. Networking and swapping business stories and seeking different viewpoints with people outside your immediate workplace has never been more important than today.
To get the ball rolling here and beef up this skill, learn to read others and how others respond and react in different situations. This is as crucial for online meetings. Also, work on the outcomes you want and how to step up and get these by persuading, influencing and engaging with your team remotely or otherwise.
Soft skill tips for leaders
Invest in your learning – commit to spending a chunk of your spare time reading deeply. There are many inspiring books on this type of inside-out subject matter to educate and improve your thoughts, behaviours and habits to become the best version of you every day. For example, Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, or Seven Habits of High Effective People by Steven Covey are groundbreaking books in inside-outthinking. (See also links below).
Join a support community. For example, a few colleagues and I cofounded a community of CEOs called the InspiredCEOs that helps small business owners to grow, develop and adapt to this rapidly changing world. It’s all done over Zoom twice a week at 8am for one hour - so it doesn’t bite into the busy working week. If you’re a small business owner, then please check us out.
Hire a great coach to help you and each of your top-team to boost your work-game. Coaching is a fantastic way to help any teams grow into doing their very best work. PDX Executive Coaching can help you.
Commit to regular facilitated team building events strategically aligned with purposeful aims and objectives. Team development is vital for the growth of these top ten skills. However, the time invested in nurturing your team will pay back in significant ROI through business growth. PDX run virtual and face to face bite-sized workshops that fit around your busy work calendar. So please get in touch - we are happy to have a dialogue with you anytime.
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Andrew Jenkins - PDX CEO
Together, we Make It Happen!
To boost business productivity and achieve amazing results in a rapidly changing world is pulled off by people collaborating.
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