Professional competence is not everything! It is only through soft skills that 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, together with hard skills, determine professional success and often the success of your entire company. The non-technical competencies include:
personal competencies such as self-confidence,
social competencies such as team spirit,
methodical competencies such as self-organization.
We present to you below the Top 5 Soft Skills in Companies that are important to truly succeed – 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 global data to find out the most important hard and soft skills in companies. While the important hard skills depend heavily on the industry and field of work, 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 as innovative solutions for 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 business!
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 towards productive avenues because without goal orientation, even the most creative idea will not lead to success.
Learning Creativity
To a certain extent, creativity, like all soft skills in companies, is more pronounced in some employees than in others. However, creative thinking can also be learned and trained by employees. There are countless tips and guides for this, such as these 7 tricks for more creativity.
As already mentioned, it is particularly important for companies to give creativity a framework. For example, it helps to ask the following questions:
For what? – 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 convey such and many other methods to employees in training to strengthen creativity and align the results with corporate goals. To implement soft skill training creatively, you can, for example, use sketchnotes directly!
Soft Skill No. 2: Persuasiveness
Persuasiveness describes the ability to assert oneself in communicative confrontation with others argumentatively. (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 sales or as a leader.
Learning Persuasiveness
Persuasiveness as a soft skill is not a single competence, but includes many components:
The mental attitude toward the company, the idea, or also the counterpart
The fundamental knowledge, for example, about didactics and conversation management
Specific techniques of communication and argumentation
Especially the knowledge and techniques that contribute to persuasiveness can be imparted in special soft skill trainings. Particularly important here are practical exercises, for example with coaches or other employees. Communication can only take place in dialogue!
Soft Skill No. 3: Analytical Thinking
Analytical thinking describes the ability to generally identify and solve problems. (karrierebibel.de)
Analytical skills are particularly important when workflows are not routine and are subject to frequent changes. Flexible working hours, modern work concepts, digitization: Work 4.0 says hello!
Analytically thinking employees approach all situations as systematically and scientifically as possible, fitting all connections into the “big picture” and deriving logical conclusions from it. This way of thinking significantly contributes to optimizing not only their own work but also benefitting the entire company.
Learning Analytical Thinking
The soft skill analytical thinking has much in common with creativity: Employees should above all learn structures and working methods that are aligned with corporate goals. This includes, in terms of soft skill training, the self-learning competencies of your employees.
Particularly for leadership training, simulation games are also suitable. This works like the flight simulator in pilot training: Situations from the company context are presented, analyzed, and further developed as realistically as possible. This sharpens analytical thinking through practical examples!
Soft skills like creativity, teamwork, and analytical thinking are essential to effectively advance companies in the world of work 4.0.
Soft Skill No. 4: Teamwork
Teamwork is the umbrella term for the willingness and ability to productively and constructively interact with other people in groups. (soft-skills.com)
Teamwork is perhaps the most commonly requested soft skill from applicants. No wonder: The globalization of work brings together increasingly larger, often internationally operating teams that work together on important corporate goals.
Employees with high teamwork abilities can easily integrate into a group, collaboratively work out constructive solutions, and connect the strengths of each individual for a common (corporate) goal.
Learning Teamwork
To achieve good teamwork, employees should especially learn and improve the following competencies:
Willingness to compromise: Combine one’s own ideas with those of the other team members and make the best choice for the set goal.
Language skills: Discussion and persuasive skills to convincingly present one’s 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 best learn these abilities through a combination of theoretical knowledge, for example, about communication models, and practical exercises and experiences.
Soft Skill No. 5: Adaptability
Adaptability describes the individual ability to engage in often difficult situations in such a way that shared goals are achieved more quickly and better. (kompetenzatlas.fh-wien.ac.at)
Why adaptability is one of the top soft skills in companies today is evident again in the context of “Work 4.0” and “New Work”: Work models are changing, processes are continuously optimized, and digitization opens up new opportunities that must be adapted to.
Employees with a high adaptability can easily integrate into a new work environment and quickly adjust their working methods to new situations. A significant advantage, especially for internationally operating or highly digitized companies!
Learning Adaptability
Adaptability encompasses many other competencies such as creative problem-solving, analytical approaches, and teamwork. To foster your employees' adaptability, supportive knowledge also helps:
Various models for project and time planning
Clear communication of corporate goals
Specific training for agile work
These measures help your employees develop their own concepts and handle new processes. Since such concepts depend heavily on personality, individual coaching is a good complement, especially for (future) leaders.
How to Achieve Modern Soft Skill Training?
As different as the top 5 soft skills in companies are, they have much 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!
For training soft skills in companies, therefore, methods are needed that are both individual and convey factual knowledge, while also including a practical component.
The Perfect Soft Skill Training with Blended Learning
Specifically promoting soft skills in companies: What sounds terribly complicated at first can be easily realized with the method of blended learning.
In blended learning, different forms of learning are intertwined. In corporate training, online courses are combined with practical training or coaching to leverage the advantages of both training methods.
In the online course, factual knowledge is conveyed independent of location and time. A variety of media can be used flexibly: Texts, graphics, and videos can convey even complex concepts and models simply.
In the face-to-face part, a trainer or coach supports the employees in implementation, clarifies questions, and leads practical exercises. Through group discussions, situational exercises, and immediate feedback, new workflows and behaviors are practiced and established.
Blended learning can be freely adapted to the training's objective: You can use an online course as preparation for the face-to-face exercises or use a face-to-face day as an impulse for long-term online support.
