3 Soft Skills for Hard Times.

Here are 3 soft skills to propel your credibility, to enhance your workplace relationships, and increase your presence, in hard times: 

1. Commit to your professional relationships. These are times to appreciate the colleagues you have and to maintain the rapport you have with your partners, customers and larger network. A simple task of dedicating a few minutes each week to communicate with someone in your professional circle and connect. I recommend a phone call, even if it only leads to a voice mail message, we are attracted to the new and unusual and a call amongst the sea of emails we all swim in can break the monotony. Say hello, ask them how things are, keep it positive and then move on. Times are tough now, but they won’t be always, and business is based on those relationships that weather storms with social grace. Stay in touch.

2. Read or do something inspiring. Get yourself motivated through an article or book that delivers hope and feeds your professional ambitions. There are plenty of on-line resources that offer brief articles to inspire you. Maybe subscribe to a new magazine or attend an online networking Zoom meeting. Set-up a virtual coffee break with geographically dispersed colleagues, go on a virtual museum tour or figure out an area of interest that is yours and yours alone and invest some time in your mental momentum. It doesn’t have to be War and Peace; it does have to give you a chance to learn about yourself or your work and fuel your brain with new ideas. These challenging times require we keep ourselves moving forward wherever and however we can.

3. Stop worrying and start thinking. That internal dialogue (we do talk “to” ourselves, it’s not a monologue) that plays and re-plays negative thoughts of worry can be thrown out. It is called self-talk. Those doomsday or worse case scenario tapes you have playing in your minds need you to create and accept a more positive message. As addictive as worry is, isn’t the majority of it about the ‘what if’s” of tomorrow? Well, tomorrow will come whether or not you waste today worrying about it. The best self-talk story I know is the, The Engine that Could (by Watty Piper). That train wasn’t thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to happen over that hill. I can’t possibly succeed! This is bound to fail – again. I hope the tracks aren’t blocked around the corner or that it starts to rain or that I cease up with fear. Instead, that engine thought and said, I think I can, I think I can. And so can you.

These are the soft skills that working through hard times offers us opportunity to develop, change and make our own. Many of us are experiencing the hardness of these current times – right now. A soft skills response helps you help yourself and to then to help others more effectively. 

My facilitating and coaching clients have taught me these skills, now I offer them to you. Hard times are here now. And while the future is unknown, it is the skills you develop now that will keep your professional soft skills on track. 

I know you can. I know you can.

Diana Kawarsky, MA CCP