Why are "Soft skills" increasingly important for company culture

Contrary to what many believe, not everything is about “Knowing how to do your job". Carrying out a role correctly will be the result of a set of factors, more specifically, the combination of your hard skills, which have to do with your professional role, and your soft skills, which go even further and are increasingly valued by companies.

What is mastering soft skills all about? and why should you learn how to manage them to better position yourself for your professional and personal growth?

What are “Soft Skills”?

“Soft Skills” go beyond technical abilities. Managing the technical skills needed to apply for a job are obviously important. However, soft skills are gaining more ground in every company because of the need to maintain a positive and productive company culture. Therefore, if you are going to apply for a new job, you are hiring, or you want to make your company culture better to increase retention and productivity, knowing what "Soft Skills" are will come in very handy.

What do we mean by soft skills? In short, they can be understood as skills related to the relationship you have with yourself and with those around you, related to the way you work, far from technical abilities. For example, how you manage your work time, how you interact with your colleagues or how you deal with unforeseen events.

Although soft skills remain outside technical ones, they are closely related to them because the way in which you manage your soft skills, or the fact that you have them, will improve your work performance and will collaborate to generating a positive and productive environment for your organization.

Hard skills versus soft skills

Hard skills are the "more traditional" skills, the ones you can specifically train for your position. The ones you develop will depend on your job position, and have to do with the technical skills for the specific performance of your current role.

While hard skills have to do with what is exclusively technical in terms of performance in a specific role, soft skills have to do with the human factor and personal characteristics that will influence a person's job performance.

Why are "soft skills" sought after even more by companies?

You may be wondering why it is that companies look for "soft skills" when hiring someone, and place them at the same level of relevance as hard skills when choosing who to hire. Despite the specific differences between the tasks you will perform, almost all positions require interaction between employees. That is why, in most job openings, soft skills are almost as important to consider as hard skills.

Soft skills include emotional intelligence, communication, assertiveness, social interaction and time optimization skills. What use would it be to hire someone excellent at what he/she does, but without these soft skills? They are not an added bonus, they are a necessary and crucial factor.

In addition, it has been proven that soft skills are "contagious". In other words, if you hire people with a good command of soft skills, they will probably transmit them to the rest of the team.

Which are these crucial "soft skills" we should develop to have a positive and productive work culture?

Ability to work in a team If you are going to be part of a team, the ability to assertively work together with other people will be absolutely necessary. What use would an excellent professional be if she/he doesn't know how to work collaboratively?

Assertiveness and Communication Effective communication with colleagues, clients, and guests requires emotional intelligence. Empathy, teamwork, and compassion are also skills that fall under effective communication.

Ability to be resourceful and creative Creativity is not only a necessary technical ability. Being creative and resourceful is also necessary when having to look for solutions in order to overcome obstacles.

Have a growth mindset This refers to the willingness to face new challenges, with a growth point of view personally and professionally. This soft skill refers to how you face challenges, how you deal with criticism, do you have the ability to be resilient, to fall, get back up and learn from your mistakes with a personal growth mindset. Remember, it is not about never making mistakes, but about knowing how to do something with what "I did wrong" and learning from it so it does not happen again, that is what resilience is all about.

Ability to adapt to new circumstances or unexpected changes. This soft skill is extremely important and highly valued. Being able to work on achieving goals and adapting to unforeseen events, is crucial to achieving high performance.

Emotional Intelligence. How do we manage our emotional world? Something that is crucial considering we are not robots! therefore, our emotions will have implications and affect our own behavior and in turn the people around us.

Of course technical skills are crucial when hiring and employee, but emphasizing soft skills is the glue that will hold the organization together, when we focus on hiring and creating an environment surrounded with employees who can solve problems, juggle increased responsibilities and work well with each other, then we truly generate outstanding results. Soft skills aren't just useful, they are invaluable.