How to Improve Your Soft Skill

Soft Skill adalah nama lain dari “Emotional Intelligence Quotient”, yang merupakan sejumlah kemampuan kepribadian yang dibutuhkan dalam hal mencari kerja dan kesuksesan dalam berorganisasi. Yang dimaksudkan dengan kemampuan soft skills diantaranya adalah kemampuan berkomunikasi, etika, kemampuan berbicara dan berbahasa dan lainnya. Kini, kemampuan soft skills ini banyak dicari oleh perusahaan dan diharapkan dipenuhi persyaratannya oleh para pencari kerja. Soft skills ini juga dinamakan dengan interpersonal skills, yang merupakan cakupan dari : kemampuan berpartisipasi dalam tim, kemampuan untuk mengajar, pelayanan, kemampuan untuk memimpin, negotiasi, toleransi dan motivasi.

Beberapa langkah yang dapat meningkatkan softskill antara lain:

- Develop communication skills. Your goal should be to communicate clearly through written, oral, and nonverbal communication. Start simply by being aware of how others feel when they are around you or are talking with you.

- Practice active listening skills. Listening requires focus and self-discipline. We listen for many different reasons: to understand instructions, to empathize with another individual, or to judge whether a plan is good or not. Regardless of the reason you are listening, there are several things to keep in mind.

- Build relationships. Interpersonal skills are important in the workplace, especially since so many organizations are designed around teams and departments. Seek to build friendships with peers, supervisors, clients, and business partners.

- Practice leading. Leadership is simply influencing other people. As such, leadership skills can be used by any employee at any level in the organization.

- Take initiative. Demonstrate responsibility and enthusiasm for your job by striving to go the extra mile. This starts by finishing work without constant reminders from your supervisor.

Any one of these soft skills will take time to improve. At a high level, here are five tips I recommend to start improving your soft skills today.

1. Build self awareness – understand why you react to certain situations and people a certain way, why you become stressed, angry, shy, irritated, etc… In order to develop any self management skills, you first have to understand yourself. Change starts at the point of awareness

1. Understand other people’s motivations – with any interaction with people, what you are dealing with is your motivation / insecurity and theirs. Any action that cause conflict in motivation or trigger yours or other person’s insecurity, will create a difficult or unexpected situation. By proactively trying to put yourself in their shoes before any interaction, you could communicate better and can better manage your reaction to unexpected situations

1. Don’t try to eat a cow in one bite – this is a famous Chinese proverb that basically means don’t try to achieve too much in one step. You will set yourself up for failure and end up feeling defeated. You cannot improve all your soft skills over night, so identify one soft skill you want to start with.  Use my recent post on What are soft skills to identify one.  Start researching (books, blogs, etc…) and practice on that one skill. Once you make progress on one soft skill, it will give you the confidence to improve more on others a step at a time.

1. It’s all about changing yourself not others – Some people may think improving soft skills can help you manipulate/change others’ actions. It’s not true. Improving soft skills is all about changing yourself, your perception, your approach to situations. Only when you change, will people’s reaction to you also change.

1. Practice, Practice, Practice – soft skills are not something you can just study in a book to get better, improvement takes practice over time. Improving soft skills is fundamentally about changing your.