You may be the topper in the class or hold the highest rank in academics and maybe even grab the gold when it comes to sports but if you do not acquire the basic necessary soft skills required to boost your overall performance, then my friend, you need a lot more to learn than just being first in the race. You need to learn to appreciate your other opponents and help other people learn from your achievements. This can only be achieved if you have 'soft skills', the most in demand skills for the future.
Soft skills are nothing but emotional intelligence. Learning to understand your surroundings in a more humble perspective keeping good decision-making skills in mind. Nowadays, companies not only look for hard/technical skills in a candidate but also at how much soft skills they have. A survey presented by SMB World found that nearly 72% of CEOs believe that soft skills are more important to the success of their business than hard skills. But soft skills and hard skills both go hand in hand and complement each other. For example, a graphic designer needs to have creative soft skills as well as know the Adobe photoshop hard skill in order to give his overall best performance.
Let's look into the best skills to learn in 2020 which will help you land the job for sure!
1. Complex Problem Solving
One of the most important qualities of leaders and effective people in every area is the ability to solve problems and make good decisions which lead to better results. Problems are a daily part of our life but the way we solve the problems defines our approach to life. Problems can vary from person to person or even from personal life to professional life. This point simply states that complex problems can simply be viewed from multiple perspectives and may even have multiple possible solutions provided we identify the problem, understand what caused the problem, and find a way to fix it. Complex problem solving can give you the best results in situations if carried out well. There are many ways in which you can learn to solve problems in complex situations like active listening, analyzing, researching, communicating, decision making, and team building. Complex problem solving is so helpful when it comes to our everyday life making it one of two things to learn in 2020. So if you find yourself in a tough spot, you know what to do.
2. Critical Thinking skills
We are bombarded by so many decisions that it is impossible to make up our minds every time. Critical thinking is a way of approaching a question that allows us to carefully.deconstruct a situation, reveal its hidden issues such as bias and manipulation, and make the best decision. Critical thinking involves using logic, reasoning, and creativity to draw conclusions and generally understand things better. Critical thinking has a wide range of applications in the real world, it can help you to make better decisions, be more hireable, and generally help you to better understand the world around you.
3. Creativity
Creativity is one of the main soft skills to learn in 2020 and also needs to be inherited way before 2020 also. Creativity is the base of most and many inventions, be it any field. Creativity is what starts the execution of an idea or in other words, creativity is a process in which an individual generates an original, unusual, and productive solution to a problem. Creativity helps to look at situations in a new way. Creative people have the ability to carry out tasks, solve problems, and meet challenges. Creativity is also problem-solving. Creative thinking is not less different than complex problems because it involves a few skills in itself to achieve creative thinking like analyzing, open-mindedness, problem-solving, organizing, and communicating.
4. People management
The First thing we need to learn is that people don't like to be managed, they like to lead. An employee's relationship with their managers and executive team sets the tone of their success within their company. To achieve People management skills we need to learn other skills like
- communicating by writing, listening and speaking
- Interpersonal skills by cooperating, motivating and supporting
- Planning which involves solving problems, analyzing issues and developing strategies
- Organizational skills like coordinating tasks, setting goals and handling details
- Management skills include teaching, leading, and making decisions.
5. Coordinating with others
It is very essential in an organization or in teamwork to be coordinated in order to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Coordinating not only achieves objectives but also makes work more effective and efficient when there is clear coordination amongst one another. It is essential to leadership, team-building, and the creation and maintenance of strong, effective professional relationships.
In order to coordinate well with others, you need to have the following features or skills
- Clear communication
- Understanding each other's personality types
- Get organized
Coordinating can help better understand each other's roles through clear communication and allotment of roles as to who needs to perform which tasks based on their soft and hard skills. Like they say, "Team work makes the Dream work"
6. Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the quality or skill that enables us to confront patience, insights, and imaginations of the many problems we face with ourselves and other people. Managing and balancing your own emotions is very crucial in order to survive in this to-be-honest harsh world outside.
- Emotional intelligence includes three skills
- Emotional awareness, or the ability to identify and name one's own emotion
- The ability to harness those emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving
- The ability to manage emotions which include both regulations one's own emotions when necessary and helping others to do the same
Emotional intelligence most importantly can lead us to a fulfilled happy life with being emotionally aware of yourself and the actions you take upon your emotions.
7. Judgments and decision making
Decision making is an integral part of being human. We've been making decisions ever since we were kids. And as we grow older making decisions gets harder and harder because of all the knowledge we've been grasping growing up. Not everyone's perfect in making decisions but if your decision is wrong it helps you know what decision to make the next time. As organizations collect more and more data, there will be an even greater need for workers who can analyze it and use it to make intelligent decisions. Judgment is simply the thought process that we use to come to a decision. We make or finalize a decision based on a judgment about a particular thing or situation.
8. Service orientation
One of the most in demand skills for the future lies in the service industry. Service orientation is very important when it comes to customer experience from a business point of view. Service-oriented people focus on providing satisfaction and making themselves available to others. Self-orientation helps you in setting a clear and measurable set of goals, which will help you benchmark yourself against on a regular basis. The service industry is one of the largest industries in the world and is only possible because of the continuously updated needs kept by the industry for the customers in order to grow the business. You can improve your service orientation skills by practicing active listening, learning to empathize with your customers, using positive language, improving not only your technical but even soft skills, and measuring and analyzing customer feedback.
9. Negotiation
Negotiation is important when it comes to a successful business. Not every partner that is tied with your business will comply with your ideas and therefore that's very negotiation steps in. The ability to convince the opposite party to a conclusion that is acceptable yet favorable to both without losing much. Negotiation is used to land deals between 2 parties especially in the field of sales. Negotiation requires good communication and convincing skills in order to be carried out. The proposing team that carries out the negotiation needs to cover extensive research on the topic and find ground rules between the two.
10. Cognitive Flexibility
Being cognitive means you're adaptable and are able to go with the flow. Cognitive flexibility is also called mental flexibility, task shifting/switching, and attention switching or shifting. Cognitive flexibility helps you change your perspectives towards things. Someone who is cognitive flexible is able to learn things more quickly. It helps to solve problems creatively, adapt, and respond to news situations effectively. The more flexible is our thinking, the better we are to adapt to new situations. Cognitive flexibility is strengthened when your brain has more neural pathways and connections. Some ways by which you can improve your cognitive flexibility is by improving your nutrition, exercising, and working on thought stop/reframing. Therefore, cognitive flexibility better helps you to run your brain effectively in different situations which are very beneficial making it one of the best things to learn in 2020.
In conclusion, all these soft skills to learn in 2020 are mostly interconnected but based on different contexts. In today's corporate world, acquiring soft skills are as important as having your hard skills. Soft skills are what makes you a more suitable candidate when it comes to recruitment because an employer looks at the overall performance of both hard and soft skills in order to make the organization more effective and efficient with its employees in it.
Penned By: Arnold Daniel
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