Professional competence is not everything! Only with soft skills do employees become a real asset to your company. We reveal which five soft skills are particularly important in companies – and how employees can best acquire them.
Soft skills in companies determine, along with hard skills, professional success and often the success of your entire company. Non-professional competencies include:
personal skills like self-confidence,
social skills like teamwork,
methodical skills like self-organization.
In the following, we present the Top 5 Soft Skills in Companies that are important for truly being successful – and explain how soft skill training can look for your employees.
These are the Top 5 Soft Skills in Companies
As part of the Workplace Learning Report 2019, LinkedIn analyzed data worldwide to find out the most important hard and soft skills in companies. While the important hard skills naturally depend heavily on the industry and work area, the following five soft skills in companies are important in all areas:
Soft Skill 1: Creativity
Soft Skill 2: Persuasiveness
Soft Skill 3: Analytical Thinking
Soft Skill 4: Teamwork
Soft Skill 5: Adaptability
But why are these five soft skills in companies so important, and how can your employees learn or train them?
Soft Skill No. 1: Creativity
Creativity as a soft skill is the ability to develop good and preferably novel solutions to problems. (soft-skills.com)
Solving problems and finding strategies is the basis for the development of every company. Whether new products, unique marketing, or innovative sales strategies – creativity as a soft skill is needed in all areas of the company!
Creative employees constantly develop new ideas, try out new strategies, and bring the creative drive. Provided that creativity as a soft skill is not only promoted but also directed into productive channels, because without a focus, even the most creative idea will not lead to success.
Learning Creativity
To a certain extent, creativity, like all soft skills in companies, is stronger in some employees than in others. However, employees can also learn and train creative thinking. There are countless tips and guides for this, such as these 7 Tricks for More Creativity.
As mentioned, it is particularly important for companies to give creativity a framework. It helps, for example, to ask the following questions:
Why? – Focus on the purpose of creative work.
How? – Find different paths and approaches.
Why not? – Break out of habits and old thought patterns.
You can teach such and many other methods to employees in training to strengthen creativity and align the results with corporate goals. To creatively implement soft skill training directly, you can, for example, use sketchnotes!
Soft Skill No. 2: Persuasiveness
Persuasiveness describes the ability to assert oneself argumentatively in a communicative confrontation with others. (soft-skills.com)
The latest idea, the most innovative product, the best service: All of this does not bring a company to the top if others are not convinced of it! Therefore, persuasiveness is an important soft skill in companies – especially in the sales area or as a leader.
Learning Persuasiveness
Persuasiveness as a soft skill is not a single competence but includes many components:
The mental attitude towards the company, the idea, or also the counterpart
The fundamental knowledge, for example, about didactics and conversation management
Specific techniques of communication and argumentation
Particularly the knowledge and techniques that contribute to persuasiveness can be conveyed in specific soft skill trainings. Practical exercises are especially important here, for example, with coaches or other employees. Communication can only ever take place in dialogue!
Soft Skill No. 3: Analytical Thinking
Analytical thinking describes the ability to identify and solve problems generally. (karrierebibel.de)
Analytical skills are particularly important when work processes are not very routine and are subject to frequent changes. Flexible working hours, modern work concepts, digitization: Work 4.0 greets!
Analytically thinking employees approach all situations as systematically and scientifically as possible, arrange all connections into the "big picture" and derive logical conclusions from it. This way of thinking significantly contributes to optimizing not only their own work but also to benefiting the entire company.
Learning Analytical Thinking
The soft skill analytical thinking has much in common with creativity: Employees should primarily learn structures and working methods that are aligned with corporate goals. This also includes the self-learning competencies of your employees in the context of soft skill training.
Particularly for leadership training, role-plays are also suitable. It works like a flight simulator in pilot training: Situations from the corporate context are presented, analyzed, and further developed as realistically as possible. This sharpens analytical thinking with practical examples!
Soft skills like creativity, teamwork, and analytical thinking are important for effectively advancing companies in the working world 4.0.
Soft Skill No. 4: Teamwork
Teamwork is the overarching term for the willingness and ability to interact productively and constructively with other people in groups. (soft-skills.com)
Teamwork is probably the most frequently requested soft skill by applicants. No wonder: The globalization of work brings together larger, often internationally operating teams that work together on important corporate goals.
Employees with high teamwork skills can easily integrate into a group, collaboratively develop constructive solutions, and connect the strengths of each individual for a common (company) goal.
Learning Teamwork
To achieve good teamwork, employees should primarily learn and improve the following competencies:
Willingness to Compromise: Combine one's own ideas with those of other team members and make the best choice for the set goal.
Language Skills: Discussion and persuasive skills to compellingly present their own ideas in the team.
Ability to Accept Criticism: Communicate constructive criticism and – often forgotten! – accept and implement criticism from others.
These and many other skills significantly improve the productive collaboration of teams. As with all soft skills, your employees learn these skills best with a combination of theoretical knowledge, for example, regarding communication models, and practical exercises and experiences.
Soft Skill No. 5: Adaptability
Adaptability describes the individual ability to contribute in often difficult situations in such a way that the shared goals are achieved faster and better. (kompetenzatlas.fh-wien.ac.at)
Why adaptability today is among the top soft skills in companies becomes evident again in the context of "Work 4.0" and "New Work": Work models are changing, processes are continually optimized, and digitization opens up new opportunities almost every day that one must first adjust to.
Employees with high adaptability can easily adapt to a new working environment and quickly adjust their working methods to new situations. A gain especially for internationally operating or highly digitized companies!
Learning Adaptability
Adaptability encompasses many other competencies, such as creative problem-solving, analytical approaches, and teamwork. However, to promote adaptability among your employees, supportive knowledge is also helpful:
Different models for project and time planning
Clear communication of corporate goals
Special training for agile working
These measures help your employees develop their own concepts and deal with new processes. As such concepts depend heavily on personality, individual coaching is a good supplement, especially for (future) leaders.
How Can Modern Soft Skill Training Succeed?
As diverse as the top 5 soft skills in companies are, they have a lot in common when it comes to learning or improving them:
Soft skills are individual!
Soft skills are supported by knowledge!
Soft skills require practical training!
Thus, training soft skills in companies requires further education methods that are both individual and convey factual knowledge and additionally include a practical component.
The Perfect Soft Skill Training with Blended Learning
Targeted promotion of soft skills in companies: What initially sounds incredibly laborious can be simply realized with the blended learning method.
In blended learning, different forms of learning are intertwined. In corporate training, online courses are combined with practical training or coaching to leverage the benefits of both training methods.
In the online course, factual knowledge is imparted independently of location and time. A wide variety of media can be used flexibly: Texts, graphics, and videos can also convey complex concepts and models easily.
In the presence part, a trainer or coach supports employees in implementation, clarifies questions, and facilitates practical exercises. Through group discussions, situational exercises, and direct feedback, new processes and behaviors are tested and reinforced.
You can freely adapt blended learning to the training goals: You can use an online course as preparation for the presence exercises or a presence day as an impulse for long-term online support.
More on this: The most popular models in blended learning: Springer, Reiher, and Sandwich
Free Online Course
Would you like to see what an online course for blended learning can look like? Then request your free and non-binding access to our sample course now! This is the best way to find out if blink.it suits your company.
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