Bruce Tulgan, founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, a management research, training and consulting firm, is a strong advocate for soft skills training. While hard (technical) skills are an absolute requirement in any job, many business leaders and managers believe that soft skills are ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘must have’ – a luxury they cannot afford to prioritize. Yet for the majority of today’s workforce, soft skills are the key to success in the workplace and competitive differentiation in the marketplace.
Soft skills, such as people skills, matter to customers, vendors, coworkers and managers, and can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Employees must have the hard (technical) skills to do the job, but the soft skills make all the difference, whether at the lowest end of the technical skill spectrum or the highest.
An important category of soft skills is people skills, including attentive listening, observing, perceiving and empathizing; effective use of words, tone, expressions and gestures; and effective communication one-on-one, in groups, in-person and remotely.
While soft skills are often a function of attitude and personality, they can be developed through training programs that include practice in small groups, role plays or other interactive techniques.
Read full post: The 12 most important missing soft skills
*Soft Skills: personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people
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