Empathy: The Most Important Soft Skills

Empathy is an indispensable soft skill. Yes, we can learn to talk better, listen better, negotiate better, present better and generally improve any soft skills we need to get ahead. But to get ahead while still retaining an ounce of humanity? For that we need empathy, the capability to put ourselves in the other person's shoes and see what they are seeing. Empathy is more important if you want to be a leader.

In his book “Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution”, Roman Krznaric says,

Empathy “is not just about seeing things from another perspective. It’s the cornerstone of smart leadership. The real competitive advantage of the human worker will be their capacity to create relationships which means empathy will count more than experience.”

Also Read This Useful Guide On All You Need To Know About Empathy

How To Motivate Yourself

Here are the five best tips on motivation:

1. Get perspective (the world is not about one particular thing)
2. Break it down
3. Look at your idols
4. Celebrate the wins
5. Take time out

Also see this Youtube video titled ' How to stay motivated when people criticize you'

Interpersonal skills: What should we know?

These are the most important things we need to know about interpersonal skills. Some of my favorite tips from the article:

1. The best tip about having great interpersonal skills (people skills) is to make people feel good, which we do by getting into the other person's shoes (empathy).

2. To deal with people, understand yourself and the others first.

3. 'Give and take' is how our world works (My favorite)
 

4. The other secret of networking: They should also like us.
 Really listen to the other person: They say there is a huge difference between 'I heard you' and 'I agree with you'.

Also see this Youtube video on interpersonal skills  Improve your interpersonal

Test & improve your basic knowledge of soft skills.

How to be great at public speaking

Here are 30+ Techniques About Killing It With Public Speaking. This big guide to Public speaking covers everything, from prepping to practicing, and from handling the audience to handling yourself on the stage, all step by step. My favorite bits from this very useful guide:

1. The magnificent seven:

- Understand the purpose of your speech

- Know your audience: their interests, attention span ( 5 W –Who? What? When? Where? Why? 1 H)

- Keep your message clear and concise (Keep it Simple (The ‘KISS’ principle)

- Be prepared: get information on the topic

- Be vivid (unforgettable delivery - give examples, upbeat body language, talk slow, use variety of tone of voice, use visual aides) - Can you deliver a joke?,

- Build on your strengths: Some people have a great voice, some are great with presenting the facts (using metaphors, proverbs), some just wing it

- Detailed information is best given in Print; Speeches should deliver concepts and motivate.

2. Have a great opening, which fills people with excitement and anticipation.

3. Effective relaxation techniques: Meditating before speech; deep breathing exercises, or medicine such as Inderal (United States) that fend off hyperventilation. Or, slow everything down. Control your nerves by deep breathing and talking slowly. Apart from simple deep breathing in private (even before a stressful meting), you can relax by making faces in the washroom mirror - this reduces tension effectively.

Feeling upset? Close to tears? Breathe, Breathe, Breathe.

Repeat the 'Nothing lasts for ever' mantra.

Also see this Youtube video on ''Tricks to sound confident while speaking'

Best Small Talk Tips

Here are 100+ most useful techniques for great small talk. This useful guide to small talk covers a lot: Ice breakers, questions to ask (and answer), appropriate body language. My favorite bit of small talk tip:

Ask open ended questions

Use words like Describe, Tell me, How did and What was the most/least. And, do not forget about follow-up. 'How was your day today', with 'What made it so great', 'How did you celebrate', 'Tell me about it'.

You want to get him/her to open up.

Also see this Youtube video: 5 tips to master small talks


And this video How to Break the Ice

More useful guides to important communication skills

How to improve our attitude and take on life in a positive way

Red says in 'Shawshank Redemption', 'Get busy living or die trying'. That sums up the attitude we must try for, however hard things get in our life.

Please read this quick but sharp guide to having a great enthusiasm and attitude in life. My favorite bit on attitude is this:

Attitude is how see ideas, activities, people, places, things, and situations.

Often, our attitudes are based on our past, our upbringing, our present circumstances and/or our innate nature.

For example, some people are enthusiastic about things right from childhood - the so-called 'gung-ho, can-do' attitude.

 ...There is nothing fixed about the kinds of attitude though.

Different people, different definition.

Also read this quick guide to Growth mindset

Three Useful Problem Solving Techniques

My three favorite problem solving methods from a very big guide on 30+ Problem Solving Techniques:

Root Cause Analysis Using 'The Five Whys'
This is also known as the Toyota method, which five whys to get to the root cause of an issue, each of the whys resulting on the answer given to the previous 'why'.

What would (insert name of your idol/famous figure) do?
How would Warren Buffet solve this business problem, for example?

Working backwards
A visualization technique. See yourself having solved the problem and people are reaping the benefits. How did that happen? What did you do? Write it down, backwards - 'I must have...then I must have...'

More problem solving techniques

Critical Thinking: An Important Soft Skill

From a guide to critical thinking skills:

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is thinking for yourself and understanding the difference between fact and opinion. It is the opposite of parroting off what you have heard others say/write.

What is the problem with our thinking?

The saying goes, 'Fact is what people I agree with tell me. Fiction is what people I disagree with tell me.'

Most of the time we believe what we want to believe.

So, how to think critically?

Critical thinking is you fully understanding the useful information (ask 'why' five times, if you want to), and then use what you have learnt to form your own opinion or decision or plan.

Also see this video on importance of Critical thinking skills

The Most Important Soft Skills We All Need If We Are To Get Anywhere In Life Successfully

These are the most important soft skills that will get you good jobs, advancements in your line of work and that much needed security in your professional life. The list is from the very useful Success Manual guides.

1. Communicating skills:

2. People skills

3. Self management skills

4. Boss management

5. Managing subordinates

6. Leadership skills

7. Marketing skills
 
8. Productivity/Time management skills

9. Career management skills

10. Job searching & Job-interview skills

11. Creativity and problem solving skills

Also see these interesting Youtube videos on soft skills here  and here

Seven Things About Communication Skills You Should Know

1. Use 'You' a lot. Say 'Thank you' often.

2. Being precise and concise. Get key points “across” within the audience ’ s short attention span.

3. Being always ready with elevator pitches/impromptu speeches.

4. Using plain language.

5. Giving relevant and persuasive presentations, speeches and arguments.

6. Being 'light', smiling often, and listenting intently.

7. Talking only you have something important to add.

Via Communication Skills Guide

More Communication skills guides are here

Also see this Youtube Video on Communication skills

Six Basic Things About People Skills You Should Know

1. Making people feel good.

2. Using empathy: Put yourself in other people ’ s shoes.

3. Be interesting by being interested. (corollary: To be listened, listen first)

4. Understanding the value of 'give and take' and building a useful professional network.

5. Knowing the difference between confidence and over-confidence.

6. Building rapport by mirroring the other person - interests , habits etc.

Via social skills and interpersonal skills guides

Four Basic Things About Marketing skills You Should Know

1. Building a rapport with target customers/users by knowing what they need.

2. Promoting the most relevant benefits of the products/service.

3. Selling benefits, not features.

4. Above all, selling hope.

Via Marketing Skills Guide

Four Most Important Things About Productivity/Time Management Skills You Should Know

1. Prioritizing and focusing on what's important first.

2. Using checklists, cheatsheets and shortcuts to do rote tasks faster and better.

3. Delegating out the small tasks.

4. Time boxing: Working intently for 50 minutes and taking a 10 minute break to rejuvenate.

Via Productivity Tips and Time Management Guides

Six Most Important Things About Leadership skills You Should Know

1. Examining the big picture to identify opportunities.

2. Caring for your people, giving due credit, genuine compliments and encouragements.

3. Inspiring loyalty by showing your loyalty to yoru people.

4. Delegating small tasks, and / or empowering the juniors.

5. Walking the talk.

6. Being proactive and farsighted - knowing where the company and the industry are going.

Via The Leadership Skills Guide: leadership tips | What a Leader does

Four Things About Creativity & Problem Solving Skills You Should Know

1. Thinking outside the box.

2. Working on solving problems instead of whining.

3. Looking at a problem from multiple points of view.

4. Coming at a final decision after considering various options.

Via The Creativity and Problem Solving Skills Guides