Why Soft Skills Matter?
by Ramneet
(Delhi)
IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS IN PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE!
It is very important to have great soft skills to establish ourselves like a great person. It has many advantages to it, like becoming a great speaker. A person has to be a very good speaker so that he or she will never be interrupted when they are making their point. Being good with soft skills also means being a great listener. A good listener will never interrupt the conversation unless it is very important to do so. Let us talk about the importance of effective conversations if we want to get something done perfectly the way we want it to be, we have to be very clear when we explain the quality of output. We must be able to describe thing’s very clearly in order for them to be perfectly executed. At same time we have to exhibit the best of our soft skills to get the best out of people. With a bit of encouragement and good choice of words we can make people go for that extra mile to help us. When it comes to professional life we must be pretty good with our soft skills to prove that we possess all the knowledge that we carry on our documents for instance we must be able to tell them how good we are.
In an interview to impress a panel of judges, apart from speaking, listening, reading, and writing modules of a traditional English test we have brought to you few qualities that are great to possess. They are not taught to us in a regular test environment. We have made these points after having interesting conversations with wise successful people. We have listed these qualities below.
Request when required: This is one of the important areas of advantage that we always have to look up to, please understand the importance of requesting or asking. We all might have been through this situation when we did not get for something when we asked for it for the first time, then after a while or may be right away we request for the something and we get it.
When we requested them the second time may be we impressed them with our soft skills. So it’s all about asking nicely, politely, requesting or appeasing. Some people who are hard to impress will only be impressed when we request them twice or multiple times.
Hence it is the key to getting things done. Because at the end of the day we all want to get the job done and we don’t mind requesting them politely. If we are into sales and marketing this quality to impress them with soft skills is more than other areas of work. Because the clients or potential customers may not be impressed the very first time we present an idea to them. Sometimes we have to do it time and again in fact we all have been through this situation when sales people ask us to buy something multiple time. Again we always have to bear in mind that we do not ask them too many times.
Cultivating Kindness: It is also very important to have kindness in everything we do. The kindness we possess is shown in the way we speak. People who have a kind tone and voice are always good to talk with. This kind quality is not just a part ofsoft skills it’s applicable to every part of our life. It should be rewarded if not instantly may be at a later point in our lives we will be rewarded for being kind. Especially in a professional work environment our kindness is highly appreciated after all it is a quality known to be easy to remain God’s Angel. We know it is not so possessed by kind and patient all the time but when we do posses this quality it clearly shows that we could get things done pretty easily, making it easy for everyone.
Imagining ourselves in a situation when we desperately need help and some responds to us in a kind attitude, how does it make us feel? It may make us think twice it was god talking to us through that person.
That is the kind of kindness we are talking about. We all have to try to incorporate this quality in our soft skills for a positive personal and professional life.
Appreciate Accordingly: We must say it is more than important for us to appreciate someone for a favour they do, no matter how small the help is or how big it is, we always have to remember to appreciate them.
It is these small things we say with gratitude earn us a lot of value in everyday life. For someone who is not working for big profits and only working regular jobs or business with small profits it could be quiet tearing to work with a little appreciation even though it may not be official part of soft skills to appreciate. In addition to grammar, pronunciation, articulation, intonation and the other official or traditional areas of soft skills, when we appreciate the others for what they did, it makes them feel like they could do more. In fact it’s the best way to get the best out of people using positive reinforcement. Also when we say good things to them it makes them feel like we care for them. It also makes us used to using positive words in our regular day to day life. Saying things like “it’s so kind of you” or “it means a lot to me” makes them want to do more favors.
Intonation and traditional areas of soft skills: Intonation and articulation are pretty important when we speak, because when we say something and we don’t really mean it or when we don’t say something in the way it is supposed to be said, it means nothing to all of us. For instance I say I’m sorry with a very rude tone it will not serve the purpose, Likewise everything has to be said the way it has to be said. That about intonation having right kind of tone apart from that we got other areas ofsoft skills
Articulation: – Again it’s like getting the right phonetics but this also deals with pronunciation and intonation, pitch together.
Grammar: – It is also a good thing to have grammar in place but keep in mind that we do not always talk like we read the text books there could be exceptions depending on the people we speak to.
Accent: – A lot of people around the world speak English. So they do have a bit of local language influence in their speech, now this is what people refer to as accent, we should try to be understandable.
Sustaining successful conversations with soft skills: In order to have a great conversation both in personal and professional life we have to possess best of soft skills. Now we mean not just the traditional ways of learning the language, English is spoken by billion’s of people or by majority of the population. Most of them may not be native English speakers, so it is pretty important for us to keep in mind that it’s not just about the vocabulary we use, every point we came across in this article earlier matter.
When we speak to other people we have to display empathy, show them we care for their feelings, we understand them, appreciate them accordingly. These are the kind of soft skills we are looking up to in a person. So all together it has to be a great combination of Speaking, Listening, Caring, Understanding, Empathy, Grammar, Accent and Patience. There are no hard and soft rules, having kindness is an advantage for great soft skills or communication skills.
Ramneet Kaur
http://in.linkedin.com/in/ramneetk
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