How to accelerate your career (7 Soft Skills)

“Hard skills get you in the door, but soft skills move you up the ladder” – Unknown

Why it works

James Heckman (pictured) is an American economist and Nobel laureate known for his work on econometrics and human capital development. In his 2012 paper Hard evidence on soft skills, he described soft skills “as personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains”. He also emphasized their importance for both professional and personal success, stating that “soft skills predict success in life”.

The term soft skills originated in the early 1970s when the U.S. military recognized that key abilities—such as leadership, teamwork, and motivation—were neither systematically cataloged nor fully understood. At a 1972 Army conference, military experts defined soft skills as “important job-related skills that involve little or no interaction with machines and whose application on the job is quite generalized.”

While technical skills are important, soft skills often separate top performers from the rest. They enable people to work smarter, collaborate effectively, and achieve meaningful results. Here are 7 soft skills that will accelerate your career.

How to do it

1) Strategic thinking
See the big picture, but don’t lose sight of the small details that make a difference. Find the 20% of tasks that create 80% of your impact – the high-leverage activities that move the needle. Reduce, automate or delegate (see #3) the rest. Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule applies to many business and life domains – including your tasks, activities, and decisions. Here are ten powerful ideas to get you started.

2) Emotional regulation
Keep your cool under pressure. Stay clear-headed in tough moments, even when others might not. When triggered, top performers take a step back, put themselves in others’ shoes, and navigate challenging situations with emotional intelligence – one of the most important soft skills. As with all soft skills, emotional intelligence is a skill that you can develop. In this article, I lay out eight crucial ways to do so.

3) Effective delegation
Know what only you can do, and trust others with the rest. Embrace strengths and let go. Match tasks with skills and motivation to delegate effectively. Shake Shack co-founder Danny Meyer uses a simple 2x2 matrix to pull this off: high-will, low-skill employees get trained and mentored; high-skill, high-will ones receive the complex, most challenging tasks; low-will, high-skill colleagues are motivated and engaged; and low-will, low-skill ones are moved to a different role. If you’d like to learn more about the Skill / Will Matrix, read this.

4) Listening to learn
Ask thoughtful questions. Listen to understand, not just to respond. It builds trust and shows people they are valued. According to leadership expert Simon Sinek, trust is the foundation of great leadership. It’s built through consistency, empathy, and showing genuine care. Sinek’s top tips for leaders seeking to build trust include active listening and daring to “be the idiot” – by asking the questions everyone is thinking but no one is bringing up. Learn more about these tips here.

5) Boundary setting
Say yes to what matters and no to what doesn’t. Protect your time and energy to focus on priorities that move you forward. Entrepreneur and writer Derek Sivers has a brilliant rule to determine what’s worth doing and what’s not: “Hell Yeah or No”. When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Hell Yeah”, say “No”. For more on Sivers’ rule, check out this article.

6) Constructive feedback
Share honest, specific feedback that encourages their growth without tearing anyone down. Build an environment where team members feel safe to express themselves. To do so, offer regular check-ins, provide anonymous feedback options, and acknowledge everyone’s contributions. If you want to learn more about building high-trust teams, here are ten ways to get you started.

7) Adapting to Change
When things change, stay flexible and open. Treat challenges as opportunities to learn, grow, and improve. Embrace the unknown as a chance to adapt and become better. One vital component of getting there is cultivating a good stress mindset – regarding both the stress response and stressful events. Here’s why and how doing so will allow you to make stress work for you instead of against you.

Pick one of these. Practice it. Then move to the next.

Technical skills might get you in. But soft skills put you in the corner office.

Please share this post with someone who might benefit from doing the same.

Until next week,
Christian

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