How to Improve Your Soft Skills? - Prof.M.S.Rao

“You don’t have to be great to get started but you have to get started to be great.” – Les Brown

A few people think that soft skills are inborn, not cultivated. It is a myth indeed. Soft skills are basically behavioral skills that you can hone by continuous reading, observation, training, practice and experience. What is needed is the acquisition of training from professional soft skills trainers. You can learn anything and everything when you are passionate. So is the case with soft skills as well.

You can acquire soft skills by involving in group activities. In addition, you need to read various books related to communication skills, leadership, team building and networking skills. These serve as basic inputs and guidelines to master soft skills. Thus reading several books along with successful involvement will help you to learn these skills. Let us look at the six fold process of acquiring soft skills.

Find out your strengths and weaknesses. Focus more on your weak areas for improvement.

Observe people closely and keenly i.e. the way people talk with others especially their approach, body language and the physical distance between them during conversation. Observation is the key to enhancing soft skills.

Create network of friends and practice soft skills. As you cannot learn swimming by mere reading books, you cannot master soft skills by reading books alone. Therefore, you need to involve yourself actively with an attitude to hone your soft skills.

Join clubs and associations where you can interact with people of same area of interest. By continuous interaction you get motivated to improve.

Attend workshops and programs related to soft skills training as it a quick way to acquire soft skills. The activities conducted by professional trainers and the information given by them are beneficial to bring out behavioral changes within you.

Finally take feedback. Continuous feedback is essential to track the status of your takeaways. Find out the weak areas where you failed and try to overcome by further involvement, interaction and practice.

Unveiled below are few more detailed ways of improving your soft skills:

You need to listen attentively and actively with positive body language by nodding your head wherever required during conversation. Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology says, “Active listening involves focusing on the moment, participating in the conversation, waiting your turn to speak, and asking for clarification when necessary.”

Always learn to empathize with others. When you empathize issues from others’ perspective almost half of the issues will be resolved automatically. It also builds bridges among the people. When in doubt, seek for clarifications and move on to conversation. Appreciate the feelings and emotions of other person by paraphrasing and repeating conversational content. It easily connects you with other person thus building a good rapport.

Avoid usage of jargon when you talk to a common person. Jargon alienates and eliminates your communication. Everybody is not expected to know the jargon of a particular sector or industry. Make your language simple, straight and neutral and free from jargon to get across the message. During conservation always look for a common ground with similar areas of interest.

Learn to lead from front. You need to walk the talk to improve your soft skills. Involvement is essential for improvement.

Keep good anecdotes and small stories in your kit. During conversation, use the same appropriately to connect with others quickly. It not only builds rapport with others but also makes you as a leader.

Learn to appreciate the disagreements among the individuals and build consensus before making any decision. Whenever there is any conflict, listen to all parties without any prejudices and arrive at the solutions amicably.

Always look at the commonalities, but not differences among the people.

Always remain cool, composed and collected during crisis. Don’t be in haste in making decisions. Look at the pros and cons and then make the decisions accordingly.

Above all, maintain ethics as these things will last forever. At times, short term gains look lucrative but will have long term negative implications and complications. When you maintain integrity and honesty, you stand tall forever.


Conclusion:

There is no short cut to mastering, learning or improving soft skills. It requires continuous practice, learning, observation, training and experience.

You need to sharpen the saw on regular basis to remain productive and competitive in this century. The world is changing at a mind boggling pace due to rapid growth in technology. It is difficult to predict where the technology would take us to the next level. It all leads to uncertainty and complexity. Therefore, mastering soft skills help you a lot in tackling several challenges and staying you ahead of others.