Twelve Soft Skills Still Needed Today

Paul Petrone, editor of Linkedin Learning has listed the skills companies need in 2019. The skills were determined by "looking at skills that are in high demand relative to their supply. Demand is measured by identifying the skills on the LinkedIn profiles of people who are getting hired at the highest rates. Only cities with 100,000 members were included." Those listed were both soft and hard skills. In this article I will concentrate on the soft skills confirmed both Petrone's findings and my own experience.

For thirty-five years Fontanie Associates in collaboration with their training partners have developed, delivered and promoted the necessary soft skills for small, medium and large companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies. I'm pleased to learn that these skills are still in high demand. They are skills needed in today's workplace and in life. Although my list of skills is similar to Paul Petrone's, they differ to some degree. They include:

1. Creativity: The ability to conceive solutions for tomorrow. According to Wikipedia "Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be something intangible... or a physical object..."  Creativity is simply the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into something real. Creativity a skill needed in today's workplace.
2. Persuasion: The art of getting people to buy into one's thinking or object. It is one thing to produce a product or idea, it is another thing to get people to buy into it.
3. Collaboration: As organizations become more responsive to customer needs working with others collaboratively becomes more necessary. We live in a complex world where answers no longer reside in one individual (I'm not sure they ever did) but in the brain trust found throughout the organization.
4. Adaptability: We live in times of rapid change and for some chaos, so we must adapt and navigate change with the same speed. Today's solutions will not solve tomorrow's problems. We can learn from experience but tomorrow's solutions may be different from those we found worked in the past. 
5. Time Management: The ability to achieve tasks within the time one has is both a discipline and an art. It is a skill that never seems to go away. It appears more important today than yesterday as we are faced with more distractions from the internet, emails, text messages and people interrupters. All of which are important when managed well.
6. Reasoning: Analytical reasoning is required to make sense of all the data that confronts and confuses companies. With the advent of data information technology and data mining, knowledge workers with analytical reasoning are in high demand.
7. Writing: Although some see this skill as technical I place it in the category of soft skills because telling compelling stories takes creativity and ingenuity. The ability to translate thought into words on paper or on the computer is both an art and a skill.
8. Customer Relations: It takes strong relational skills for building rapport and resolving customer concerns including the ability to communicate openly, honestly and forthrightly. 
9. Strategic Thinking: The ability to think ahead and make today's decisions in light of future requirements will continue to be a skill for the foreseeable future. 
10. Communication: With today's social media, instant communications and rush to respond the ability to communicate on your feet, so to speak, becomes increasingly important. We live in a time when disruptive communications and access to information outing company mistakes suggests a rapid  transparent communications strategy and ability. 
11. Cultural Awareness: Our workplaces are much more diverse and multi-cultural than in the past. The ability to communicate across cultural boundaries, understand cultural nuances, and accepting others with respect and cross-cultural intelligence becomes critical in developing strong work teams and peaceful workplaces.
12. Influencing: The capacity to become a compelling force that effects the actions, behavior, opinions of others both within the workplace and without. Influencing is a skill needed for salespeople, managers and all those dealing with people.

There are many on-line one or two hour sessions giving insight and tools to improve the skills mentioned above. However, I remain convinced that face-to-face workshops that last one or two days are a better way to strengthen skills. Don't get me wrong, self-learning whether that is through reading or participating on on-line training is helpful, but our experience shows that effective face-to-face workshops with follow-up coaching has more lasting results. Look to LinkedIn learning if you are a member of LinkedIn or Human Resource learning for short one to two hour session. For results oriented one to three day sessions I recommend Priority Management Skill Training. Find one of their offices near you.

Thank you for reading,
Richard P. Fontanie BA, MSW

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