YOU may be smart, but without emotional intelligence your career will suffer.
So-called “soft skills” are vital for navigating complex social situations. Communication, language, personal habits and empathy with others all play a role.
For example, a key soft skill is discretion — the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offence or revealing confidential information.
One user of question-and-answer site Quora asked which soft skills everyone should try to develop. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nela Canovic shared this response:
Here are 10 soft skills you should focus on, why they’re important to you, and how to practise them daily.
1. PRACTISE GRATITUDE
Why?
• It trains your brain to focus on positive things and makes you think of what you already have in your life as opposed to what you do not.
• It keeps you grounded in your personal life so you are less focused on what others are doing with theirs, which is a huge waste of time and won’t help you get any closer to your personal goals.
How to practise it?
• Each morning, take five minutes to write down or say aloud three things you are grateful for having in your life right now. It can be something as simple as having a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, food in your fridge, clean running water and electricity, or a great relationship with a family member, a partner or a friend.
• Be specific: if it’s a family member or friend, emphasise which of their qualities you are grateful for (they’re warm, gracious, kind, loving, incredibly funny).
2. KEEP A POSITIVE MINDSET
Why?
• It helps you manage life’s challenges better.
• It also helps you enjoy life more.
• It puts you in proactive mode (life is what you make of it) instead of in reactive mode (life is what happens to you).
How to practise it?
• Apply basic principles of positive psychology to the way you lead your life, so that you can feel a more positive impact on your attitude, your motivation, and your relationships with people.
• Read books by Tal Ben-Shahar, a lecturer at Harvard University, for practical suggestions on how to make changes to your daily life, for example in school, the workplace, and in personal relationships:Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Happiness, andChoose the Life You Want: The Way To Lasting Happiness Moment by Moment.
3. BE FLEXIBLE
Why?
• It helps you grow as a human being.
• You learn to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone.
• You learn to manage change better in your life.
How to practise it?
• Learn the difference between a fixed mindset (believing that our qualities are set in stone) and growth mindset (believing that our qualities are things we can cultivate through our efforts, in other words we can change and grow).
• Read Carol Dweck’s bookMindset: The New Psychology of Successto understand how the view we adopt for ourselves (either with the fixed or growth mindset) can profoundly affect the way we lead our life.
4. RESPECT BOUNDARIES, BOTH YOURS AND THOSE OF OTHERS
Why?
• It shows that you can both give and command respect.
• It allows you to have time to do what’s important to you, and to understand that others need to have that time too.
• It acknowledges the importance of owning your life.
How to practise it?
• Don’t always answer the phone; screen your calls and call back when the time is right for you.
Ask your friends if they want to spend time with you at a certain time, instead of just assuming that any time is fine.
• Block off time and let others know when you’re busy, so that you don’t get interrupted when you need to focus on your work or your studies.
5. TUNE IN TO PEOPLE
Why?
• You can improve your communication with your family members, friends, classmates, co-workers.
• You get to know the people around you better by focusing on their emotions, their goals, their concerns, their passions.
• By getting to understand those around you better, you can learn what it takes to become a good friend, a better sibling, parent, or partner.
How to practise it?
• Ask questions to get others to share what’s on their mind.
• Look for non-verbal cues to check if they’re nervous (so you can help calm them down), feeling down (so you can find out if you can help them feel better), worried about something (so you can help them solve a problem they’re dealing with).
• Share the excitement: be present when there are good news to share, a pleasant experience to enjoy, a good story or joke to laugh to.
Remember to be curious, listen and be true to yourself.Source:Getty Images
6. LISTEN
Why?
• When you open up the space for others to talk, you can learn something you may not otherwise find out.
• It can help you understand and see your environment in a different light.
• It can help you be a better observer of people, situations, events, ideas.
How to practise it?
• Stay quiet: don’t always open your mouth to give your opinion on everything.
• Be gracious: let others speak their minds first.
• Be patient: wait for cues when it’s a better time to say something, so that you can get others’ attention instead of having your voice get lost in the chatter.
7. PROVIDE SOMETHING OF VALUE TO OTHERS
Why?
• Because you will feel it gives more purpose to your work.
• Because it will give more meaning to everything that you do.
• Because you will understand that you’re part of a bigger picture, much more important than just you.
How to practise it?
• Ask yourself every day: how am I providing value to others?
• Identify your strengths: which skill do you possess that can be useful to help someone do something?
• Find out what someone needs help with: how can you help them solve a challenge, problem, or task?
8. BE CURIOUS!
Why?
• It helps you understand the world better.
• It improves your ability to learn new things.
• It keeps your mind active and your brain engaged.
How to practise it?
• Ask “why?” to find out how things work, why they work that way, why people think what they do, why things matter.
• Observe the world: sit on a bench in a park and look at everything around you (people’s interactions, animals, nature). Listen to the sounds that surround you. Be fully aware of the present moment.
• Read books to open up your mind and learn new things.
9. BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
Why?
• You stay in touch with your values: it’s the unique blend of how you were raised, your cultural values, your religion, your spiritual practice, what you believe to be just, and the rules you live by as well as the ones you’ve created for yourself.
• You save time: when you’re true to yourself, you don’t waste time coming up with excuses not to do what is really important to you — your goals, your aspirations, where you want to go in your life, who you want to become.
How to practise it?
• Let your values help you make important life decisions: staying in a job or quitting it, choosing a partner to share your life with, selecting your inner circle of friends to trust, reacting to events that are difficult and challenging but necessary to experience.
• Build your critical thinking skills: as you learn new things, select what is important to you (based on your own personal goals, values, and priorities) and figure out what you can learn from it.
• Be careful when taking advice from others and ask yourself these questions: Does the advice align with my personal values? How would I benefit from following it? What do I want to get out of it: approval, knowledge, a shortcut to solving a problem, or to be liked and have more friends?
10. STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE
Why?
• It keeps you on your toes so that you don’t remain stagnant in your studies, your work, your relationships, your personal development.
• It helps you grow your skills, your strengths, your knowledge.
• It keeps you focused on making progress by consistently working on mastering something that is important to you.
How to practise it?
• When you start something, don’t just do it halfway: be consistent in your efforts and keep going until you complete it.
• Find ways to improve: don’t just repeat behaviour that doesn’t give you the results you want.
• Read Robert Greene’s bookMastery: it debunks the myth that it takes a genius with innate talent to produce work of timeless quality. You can learn how some of the biggest minds through history have dedicated themselves to doing deep work consistently over time so that they can achieve excellence and mastery of a skill they feel most passionate about.
This article originally appeared on Quora and was republished with permission.
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