Managing your Personal Development that Impacts your Professional Life

Personal skills: list and examples

People are in continuous learning, not a day goes by that we go to sleep without learning something new. These learnings mean that the next time we have the opportunity to put what we have learned into practice, we can do this activity without difficulty or, at least, with less difficulty than the first time.

Through this learning, different skills are developed throughout our lives, which are improved with experience. However, many times we don't know what it really is to have a skill.

For this same reason, in Psychology-Online we want to explain, using examples and definitions, what personal skills are and what they consist of.

What are Personal Skills?

According to the definition found, skill refers to the dexterity, talent or aptitude that people have to perform a task effectively.

It can be said that when we say that someone is skilled, we are referring to the ability to succeed in the task they are performing, thanks to their dexterity.

Skills can be considered both innate and learned, as some of them are acquired only through trial and error.

A distinction of personal skills can be made into three large groups:

? Cognitive skills: are all those involved in mental processes, that is, memory, logic and the use of formal languages, as in the case of mathematics.

? Social Skills: Dealing with others and relevant communication with them are involved in these skills. Here you will find the types of soft skills.

? Physical skills: within these are those that require body coordination.

?Are skills and capabilities, aptitudes or talents the same thing?

According to the RAE, we define capacity as the circumstance or set of conditions, qualities or aptitudes, especially intellectual ones, that allow the development of something, the fulfillment of a function or the performance of a position.

In turn, aptitude is defined as the innate ability to acquire a certain type of knowledge and to develop in a certain subject since childhood. It can be said that they are all the conditions that a person has as a “base” to fulfill specific objectives.

The talent itself is the “special” intellectual capacity to learn things easily and skillfully develop a specific activity. People with talent excel only in the subject in which they have facilities. They tend to stand out in this activity when compared to others. It is an innate gift you are born with. While it is true that it can be developed over time, the person who has it will perform the activity naturally and effortlessly, even without having practiced.

After analyzing the four definitions individually, it can be said that we are not talking about the same thing, however, all concepts are interrelated with each other. That is, to develop a skill it is necessary for the person to innately present a certain aptitude for it. Furthermore, in order to develop the skills necessary to perform an action, it is not enough to have the ability to do so, but prior knowledge of how to carry out that activity is also necessary.

If a person is capable of carrying out an action, he has the necessary skill to do it, however, if he is not capable, but has the potential to learn to do it, we speak of capacity.

The term talent is the one that is more separated from the others when it comes to definition, as it is about doing something in a special way without previous experience, study or training, while skill would be the ability to carry out such an action through learning. .

.List of soft skills and examples

Here is a list of skills that people can develop throughout their lives. I want to emphasize that the top 10 are, according to the WHO, the ones that every person should develop.

1. Self-awareness: ability to be aware of ourselves and to know what our strengths and weaknesses are, as well as to recognize our own feelings.

2. Empathy: Knowing how to put yourself in the shoes of others is completely necessary to be able to make appropriate decisions that do not affect the rest of the people around us.

3. Assertive communication: refers to the ability a person has to express their opinion appropriately, defending their point of view, but always respecting the opinion of others, even if you do not agree with it.

4. Interpersonal relationships: being able to create and maintain relationships with those around us. It does not only refer to relationships with close people, but also work relationships, daily relationships, etc.

5. Decision-making: Being able to make decisions based on reasoning and experience will help you not to rush into decisions that you will later regret.

6. Problem and conflict management: it is very important not to get stuck in the moments when a problem occurs. Therefore, being able to manage these situations by making the best possible decisions will allow the person not to get into a stressful situation.

7. Creative thinking: This skill gives us a way to look at situations from a fresh perspective so that we can contribute new ideas and solutions.

8. Critical thinking: ability to evaluate things and situations through objective evaluation and analysis, that is, without getting carried away by opinions.

9. Emotion management: being able to understand our own emotions and learn to manage them is a capacity that is in continuous learning, but that allows us to improve interpersonal relationships. Learn these 12 emotional control techniques.

10. Tension and stress management: being able to control stressful situations and not let them affect our effectiveness in performing a task.

11. Flexibility and adaptation: all areas of society are constantly changing (technology, science, …), so being able to learn and adapt flexibly to new changes will allow us to confidently face new challenges.

12. Solving capacity: life is full of problems, therefore, being able to create batteries of proposals to solve them will help us in our performance.

13. Ability to work in a team: on a daily basis, we have to live and interact with other people, especially in the workplace. Therefore, having this skill will help us to get an efficient and satisfying job.

14. Motivation and Confidence: To achieve a goal, we need to visualize it and believe in ourselves with confidence and conviction. These thoughts will allow us to increase our motivation and therefore we will try harder to achieve it.

15. Know how to work under pressure: getting used to managing stress and pressure helps the person with this skill to progress in the best way possible. Always keeping calm.

16. Proactivity: taking the initiative and anticipating the facts that may happen will help the person to develop in a safer way, without the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen.

17. Communication: being able to express yourself is a fundamental skill to be able to interact in any area of our life.

18. Professionalism: Developing good work habits will allow us to organize ourselves and carry out tasks assigned to us efficiently.

19. Attention: this is a practically unconscious skill, because even if we delude ourselves, our senses are still paying attention to what surrounds us.

20. Memory: there are people who are surprising for their high memory capacity, however, we all have this skill developed, because every learning that we carry out is stored in our memory.

21. Reasoning: we have the ability to draw conclusions from the reality that surrounds us and the root of that act, as a result.

22. Association capacity: this is considered the basis of any learning, because without the action-consequence association, we would not be able to understand the causal events that surround us.

23. Strength: some more and others less, but we all have the ability to exercise muscular tension to overcome any resistance that appears to us.

24. Endurance: This skill refers to both physical and social skills. It is a person's ability to sustain effort over a long period of time.

25. Active listening: listening is very different from hearing, so being able to pay attention to other people and listen to what they tell us is really important for our social development.

26. Patience: as they say in my field, is the mother of science. Patience is a skill that helps you relax and avoid getting into situations of continuous stress.

27. Metacognition: refers to the ability to evaluate from one's own cognition, that is, having the capacity to analyze the information that we lack in order to optimize and improve our capacities.

28. Inhibition: this is about being able to ignore those stimuli that surround us and that are irrelevant, which can create interference in the development of a task.

29. Speed: within physical skills, we refer to the ability to make one or more movements in the shortest possible time. But in cognitive skills, we refer to the ability to respond or think in the shortest possible time.

30. People management: being able to understand the personalities of the people around you and adapt your interaction with them to your needs.

This article is merely informative, in Psicologia-Online we do not have the ability to make a diagnosis or indicate a treatment. We recommend that you consult a psychologist so that he can advise you on your particular case.

Bibliography

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