Honestly, I can’t recount how many times in my career and private life I’ve heard sentences and comments such as „Chinelo, you have to grind your teeth, kneel into that one - be a tough cookie or you come out shit!“or „That customer/guy/woman has a rather icy grip. You want to face him/her, prove something or convince him/her? Then don’t wobble, don’t show your emotions“. In order to prove superiority or a certain kind of matureness society is prone to neglect showing emotions. Does that resonate?
The more collected the more impressive my parents always advised me as a teenager. Born to live fulfilled, yet brought up to suppress emotions in order to adapt, to merge into society. At this point I will refrain from going into details about my mixed race culture and heritage, different cultural back round, different skin color and even so religion. I prefer to deepen this quite interesting topic in a later post.
Nevertheless the above mentioned statement from my upbringing manifested itself in my social as well as corporate behavior and actually led to the state that despite being an empathetic person towards others, I dreaded myself for the ability of being so which resulted in destructive and excessive self-criticism and self-doubt.
As soon as a situation arose in which I more or less dropped my mask and followed my intuition, but had to justify it on the cognitive level to sceptics or doubters (often covert insecure people), I either lacked words to express my so-called "gut feeling" or I preferred not to tell them at all due to uncertainty.
In the event that I did and my observation met with displeasure in meetings or among friends, what happens to many people when they have their intuition clearly in front of them but do not follow it: I became my own greatest victim.
Rather than standing up for being empathic and having the ability/talent to grasp situations quickly, whether at dinner, in meetings or at the family kitchen table in the morning, to know what’s needed to soften up critical situations in teams or with difficult leaders I rather shied away from it in order to please more dominant personalities. I admit, with the aim of often satisfying narcissistic behavior in others, which mostly managed to claim far more space for itself, than me enforcing my intuition.
I eventually figured out that trusting in this gift would bring me far more pleasure, success and social acceptance than denying it - which by the way resulted in divorce, being underpaid, underestimated privately and not being promoted to an important high ranking position.
Which brings us to the importance of soft skills, what defines them and their multiple applications.Soft skills are defined as methodical, personal and social competences, which are characterised by interdisciplinary qualifications and are reflected in the personality and behaviour of a person.
While hard skills on the other hand represent the professional skills of a person. A possible metaphor to understand might be imagining a computer.
Unlike hard skills, the content of which can be used by anyone with the help of acquired knowledge, soft skills are not measurable - at least not on the basis of certificates, academic achievements or supposedly correct and important university visits or degrees.
However, and especially in the times of Covid-19, soft skills are becoming increasingly important. Dealing with internalized knowledge is one thing, but the right way to deal with oneself and others is power and leads to empowering others.
It therefor is not too surprising that not only more and more companies, but also our global society attach more importance to soft skills. HR department lay great value in soft skills. Most companies today work internationally, have locations abroad or a diverse workforce from different cultures and nations. In addition, there are global suppliers or customers. The ability to adapt to the respective cultural backgrounds and mentalities is correspondingly important. Intercultural competence enables exactly that: interacting with people from different cultures, respecting differences, observing peculiarities, being considerate and treating each other with respect. Take a look around: we are currently experiencing an overall global migration - without empathy, tolerance - no forthcoming.
Also called "personal" competences. These include soft skills that relate to oneself and how to deal with oneself. For example self-reflection, self-confidence or self-criticism. The development of personal competence also influences the next area of soft skills to a great extent.
These soft skills include skills in dealing with other people. They are important in every interpersonal contact and determine how positive, sympathetic and harmonious (empathetic) the relationship and cooperation is felt.
These competences and skills help to solve tasks and problems, learn methods and acquire (hard) qualifications. They are therefore an essential prerequisite for acquiring hard skills. These include, for example, self-discipline and frustration tolerance.
I would like to emphasize at this point that soft skills can at least from my point of view also be called emotional intelligence.
Yet, as we all know, corporate world at times likes to differ from the "ordinary human being" in its jargon. please forgive me if I sound slightly cynical, a decades-long observation on my part.
Back to soft skills. Just like a computer, hardware is absolutely useless without software. Certainly rational thinking, purposeful and safe acting, unemotional behaviour and above all "composed behaviour" were considered virtues of our society - but where do these lead to? A philosophical question, yet more and more people seem to ask themselves: where do I want to go? Who am I? Who do I want to reach? How do I want to be treated and how do I treat others? What influence does my behaviour have on the behaviour and work of others? Does respect mean submissiveness or rather a skillful, polite presentation of my opinion and feelings?
Exactly these questions, mostly eloped in personal crisis or uncertainty are now key to personal growth and business success. In a world struggling with Covid-19, poverty, restructuring processes, rising divorce rates, more mental awareness and mindfulness, soft skills are the currency of the future.
Invest in unfolding and regaining access to them. It not only might be well worth it. It is!
You are always welcome to write me a comment over Linkedin or Instagram (thesoftskillscoach) or simply right me an email under cer@coskills.org
I love soft skills. C.
P.S.: I’d appreciate to not receive orbiting sent me immoral emails or insults.
