Soft skills are non-technical skills that describe how you work and interact with others.

Unlike
hard skills, they’re not necessarily something one learns in a course, like data analytics or
programming. Instead, they reflect one's communication style, work ethic, and work style.These
skills include everything from how a person talks to teammates to how one thinks about
workplace problems.
Soft skills generally fall into several different categories:
Communication skills
Leadership skills
Teamwork skills
Problem-solving skills
Critical thinking skills
Time management skills

Communication Skills
Communication skills describe how a person interacts with the people they work with from the
boss to a friendly colleague to an important client. These skills are vital in getting ideas across in
a meeting, sharing status updates on a project, or effectively negotiating with a coworker about
how to move forward. Some soft communication skills include:

Public speaking - Public speaking is a soft skill that requires excellent communication skills,
enthusiasm, and the ability to engage with an audience. Public speakers make presentations to
a group. Presentations could range from speaking to a small number of employees to
presenting to a large audience at a national conference or event. The same skill set and ability
to be comfortable speaking in public are required regardless of the size of the group. It includes
clear articulation, engaging presentation style, assessing the needs of the audience, controlling
performance anxiety, grabbing the attention of the audience with a powerful opening,
maintaining eye contact with the audience and providing an energetic, animated physical
presence, etc.

Negotiation - To negotiate successfully, you need to understand not only the problem itself but
how the other negotiating party sees the problem. You need to look at what their motivation is
and what the ‘best case scenario’ for them would be. By doing so, you’ll establish where the
middle ground is and how you can successfully reach a deal. To do this, ask open-ended
questions and consider their responses carefully. Clarify any queries you have and make sure
you’ve done your research.

Conflict resolution - Learning to deal with conflict in a positive and constructive manner that
strengthens decision making and contributes to effective work relationships. These acquired
soft skills are called conflict resolution skills.
Following are the ways one can resolve conflict-
1) Create an effective atmosphere. Arrange to meet at a convenient time when you will not
be interrupted or distracted. Never deal with conflict in front of customers. Start the
discussion of the problem in an open, positive way.
 2) Clarify perceptions. Make time at the beginning of the discussion for each person to
state his or her views. When it is your time to listen, pay careful attention to what the
person is saying. Use paraphrasing, summarizing, and questions to clarify what the
person is saying and feeling. Ask questions to determine exactly what the problem is.
Watch your language, tone of voice, and nonverbal gestures.
3) Focus on individual and shared needs. Find out what each person wants and needs to
happen to resolve the situation. By identifying their shared needs, both parties are
working toward a consensus. Attempt to arrive at a decision that takes both parties need
and opinions into account.
4) Develop a list of goals to achieve in an action plan. Sort through ideas to see which ones
will work. Set goals and develop an action plan. Create short, achievable steps that
work toward your overall goal.
5) Resolve the situation on good terms. When you have dealt with a conflict, or if you have
agreed to disagree, make a point of parting on good terms. Treat the other person with
respect and dignity. Thank the person for discussing the issue with you. Create a climate
in which you can continue to work together harmoniously. Agree to take a positive
approach to resolving the problem when another conflict arises.

Friendliness - Friendliness is an important communication skill and helps others receive your
message more readily. An example of practicing friendliness in the workplace is including
personalized messages, such as wishing someone a good evening, when communicating.
Emotional intelligence - Emotional intelligence is your ability to manage your emotions in a way
that ensures they don’t interfere with your ability to communicate. The four main components of
emotional intelligence include relationship management, social awareness, self-awareness, and
self-management.
Confidence People often respond better to those who communicate in a confident manner than
those who don’t appear confident. Practice good posture, eye contact, and an even tone of
voice to ensure you’re being perceived as confident when receiving or relaying information.
Empathetic listening - Empathic listening is a structured listening and questioning technique that
allows you to develop and enhance relationships with a stronger understanding of what is being
conveyed, both intellectually and emotionally. When you're listening empathically, keep your
own emotions in check and do not allow yourself to become emotionally involved. Remember:
understand first, evaluate later.

Leadership Skills
Leadership skills are essential in all types of roles, even if you’re not directly managing
someone. Adding these skills to a resume shows your potential employer that you’re confident
in taking charge and leading by example. Some soft leadership skills include:

Decision-making - Decision-making skills are all of the skills you need to make an informed,
rational decision. Someone with good decision-making skills at work can assess all the facts,
understand the company’s current state and goal state, and choose the best course of action.
Adaptability - Adaptability is a soft skill that means you easily adjust to changing circumstances.
An adaptable person in the workplace can keep up with moving priorities, projects, clients, and
technology. They’re skilled at dealing with changes at work, whether process updates or their
work environment.Resilience is a vital adaptability skill, no matter what’s happening in the world
or in the workplace.
Reliability - Being reliable means that you do what you say you will, when you say you will. You
can be trusted to complete any task, and you will do it well.
Delegation - Delegation means to authorize someone to work or complete your task. It must be
noted that delegated tasks must be ethical. If a task is properly delegated, it can certainly save
time and lead to success. Ideally only those tasks should be delegated in which you are good
at. This is because delegation may require continuous support and supervision.

Teamwork skills
Teamwork skills are critical in any job to work harmoniously with stakeholders across projects,
teams, and departments. These skills aren’t just about getting along, though. It’s also essential
to know when to disagree and push back to get the best result. Some soft teamwork skills
include:
Empathetic listening
Conflict resolution
Decision-making
Rapport-building - Rapport is a harmonious relationship between people who have established
mutual trust. Building rapport is how humans connect, identify shared feelings, and establish
two-way communication. Rapport develops out of meaningful conversations and a willingness to
embrace different points of view.Great rapport facilitates the development of emotional
intelligence and interpersonal skills.
Respectfulness - Respectfulness makes others feel esteemed – it makes people feel that they
are important and even honored. Respectful people pay attention to those around them.
According to journalist Deborah Norville “Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate
and understand the feelings of others. It requires consideration”.

Critical thinking skills

These skills help people identify the root cause of an issue. Critical thinkers analyze, research,
identify, and think outside the box to make sense of information. At work, critical thinking helps
people solve problems and challenge preconceived notions to help create the best path forward.
Some soft critical thinking skills include:
Analytical thinking - Analytical thinking is the ability to tackle complicated issues by evaluating
information you've gathered and organized. Analytical thinkers can detect patterns between
datasets that often lead to creative solutions. They're able to turn noisy data and information into
action.
Research - Research skills refer to the ability to search for, locate, extract, organize, evaluate
and use or present information that is relevant to a particular topic.
Decision-making

Time management skills -

Time management skills ensure employees perform their jobs efficiently and productively. While
time management is essential to any role, these skills are critical in hybrid and remote work
environments. Employers want to know they can trust employees to get things done even if
they’re not physically in an office with them. Some time management skills include:
Prioritization - Knowing which work is of greater importance so more amount of time and effort
should be dedicated. Making sure that work is done in the first place.

Importance of soft skills

Soft skills are an essential part of improving one’s ability to work with others and can have a
positive influence on furthering our career. If you are a small business owner or self-employed,
soft skills can help you find, attract, and retain clients.Highly-developed presentation skills,
networking abilities, and etiquette awareness can help you win new clients and gain more work
from existing clients. Honing your abilities to resolve conflicts, solve problems, and provide
excellent customer service can lead to stronger relationships with colleagues, vendors, and
other professional contacts. Ultimately, strong soft skills can help you gain confidence—an
invaluable trait in the business world.
Measurement of soft skills
Assessments
Behavioral Interviews
Simulation

Assessments - The first step to using an assessment to measure soft skills is to fill out a
questionnaire. This questionnaire will contain prompts such as “I take time to analyze a situation
before responding” or “I am able to remain calm in stressful situations.” The employee or
candidate will then respond to these prompts by scaling their agreement with the statement from
“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” or something similar.

Pros of assessments
The main benefit of using assessments for measuring soft skills is that the results are incredibly
measurable. By rating themselves on their agreements with the various statements in the
assessment, the employee effectively assigns a numerical value (from 1-5, generally) to their
competence in the soft skill associated with that particular prompt. Another benefit of using
assessments is that they are impartial and easy to apply consistently to multiple candidates or
employees. It is also very efficient, as one L&D professional could feasibly manage the
assessments for a large pool of employees.
Cons of assessments
Candidates may select this answer even if it’s not true. One disadvantage to using assessments
to measure soft skills is that the testing environment is sterile. You assess your employees on
their responses to certain situations when they are completely removed from those situations.

Behavioral Interviews - Another method for measuring soft skills is to conduct behavioral
interviews. In a behavioral interview, an interviewer will pose open-ended questions to a
candidate or employee. These questions are designed to encourage the interviewee to share
real-life stories regarding their responses to certain situations or stressors. For example, if the
interviewer is looking to assess the employee’s collaboration skills, they may say, “Tell me about
a time when you had to work with someone you found difficult to work with. How did you handle
your interactions with them?” Ideally, the interviewee’s answers to these questions will provide
enough context to measure their soft skills accurately.

Pros of behavioral Interviews - One advantage behavioral interviewing has over assessments is
that it requires the employee to expand upon their answers. In an assessment, someone could
indicate that they are completely comfortable riding the waves of a high-conflict situation without
proving that fact.
Cons of behavioral Interviews - The main downside of behavioral interviews is the vulnerability
of this measurement method is subconscious bias. Where assessments assign a numerical
value to the respondents’ answers to the various prompts, the results of a behavioral interview
are up to the interviewer’s interpretation. Like assessments, behavioral interviews depend on
the candidate’s self-assessment of their behavior in various situations for results. This can be a
disadvantage, as the candidate may recall an event more favorably than it actually occurred or
inflate their past performance to appear more capable.

Simulation - A simulation involves placing your candidate into a real-world situation and
observing their behavior in that environment. Using a simulation, you can replicate real-life
challenges your candidate or employee may face on the job with your organization. Instead of
asking them to self-assess how they would perform under various circumstances, you can
observe how they respond to those circumstances in real-time.

Pros of simulation - Chief among the pros of conducting soft skill training and measurement with
simulations is the authenticity of the experience.Assessments can be overly sterile and
interviews overly stressful and intimidating, but a simulation provides a real-world environment
where the candidate can demonstrate their proficiency - or lack thereof - in different soft skills.
Cons of simulation - The main downside of simulations is that it can be expensive or
time-consuming to produce simulations tailored to your specific work environment.