How to develop soft skills

To build a successful career, you must have professional and personal qualities.They are also called hard-skills and soft-skills.We will show you how to develop flexible skills.

Hard-skills are professional knowledge and skills.skills) are non-specialized but essential skills for building working relationships, project management, and presentations.

Types of “flexible” skills by areas:

1. Communication skills: listening, persuading and arguing skills, building a business-relationship, self-presentation, public speaking and presentation, customer focus.

2. Self-management skills: managing emotions, stress, self-development, planning and goal-setting, reflection.

3. Skills of effective thinking: systemic, creative, design, structural and logical thinking, information search and analysis, decision making.

4. Management skills: setting tasks for employees and monitoring their implementation, motivation, mentoring, meeting, delegation, project management.

Make an individual development plan

Individualdevelopment plan (IDP) is a sequence of steps to develop skills and abilities.

It is needed for the systematic and gradual mastering of skills.It can be used to arrange skills in the order of their development, since some skills need a foundation in the form of others (for example, a well-delivered speech is necessary for the skill of conducting public speaking).You can also create a “habit tracker” based on it, where you will note on which day you developed the skill, whether you are following the plan and see how the process itself goes.

Remember that you master the skill for yourself, no one forced you, therefore the responsibility is also yours.Don't pass it on to book authors, coaches, and teachers.

Tips

• Make a development plan for three months, six months or a year.

• Write: goals, competencies and skills, development tools.[twenty]

• Find someone who will give constructive feedback on the IPR.

• Clearly document how you will measure performance for each instrument and for each goal.

• Understand exactly what needs to be done and when: set a precise time frame.

• Select intermediate control points in order to regularly (at least once a month) analyze the results and adjust the IPR, if necessary.

• Keep your plan always available for reference once a week.

• Build the process of mastering new skills so that you have the opportunity to practice each of them.Do not move on to the next element until the previous one is not mastered enough.

Select Skill Development Methods

Trainings and seminars- mastering skills and abilities in the process of participating in events.

Self-study- reading books, magazines and studying other materials, listening to webinars, podcasts.

Feedback Analysis- Analysis of feedback from colleagues, managers and mentors.

Learning from the experience of others- identifying models of successful behavior in a person's work and transferring it to oneself.

Special tasks (background trainings)are independent exercises that develop certain skills and bring up personal qualities.

Development in the process of work- the search and development of effective models of behavior in solving work problems.

Tips

• Select specific skills that you need to develop in the near future;

• Assess your level of proficiency in a particular skill before starting to develop it;

• Describe the exact results you want to achieve;

• Select2-3 development tools and combine them.

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• If you are not getting the desired result, analyze why this is happening and make changes to the plan or tools.

Recommendations

• Make learning a continuous process: gain new experience, take on more difficult tasks, use new tools;

• Properly plan your time and learning process;

• Take a comprehensive approach to the learning process: use different forms;

• Pay attention to the information you get while working;

• Develop skills gradually;

• Read every day news and books on your profession;

• Develop personal and professional skills while working;

• Find people from whom you want to learn;

• Learn to use feedback effectively and determine its value.

With the right training planning and the right methods, you can achieve great results.After mastering the necessary skills and abilities, your studies and work will proceed faster, you will be able to take on more complex and interesting tasks, and you will build good relations with teachers or bosses.Remember that development is the key to success!