Soft skills: What are they – How to acquire them

In life we ​​are constantly learning. We go to school and university, we build relationships, families, friendships, love affairs, we read, we talk, we observe, we ask, we interact. In general, we live and thus as human beings we shape our personality and character. Through all of the above we develop our soft skills. The latter are different from the hard skills, those we acquire through education. The hard skills are our IQ while the soft skills are the emotional intelligence which is the EQ. It is worth noting that the knowledge and skills we gain outside schools are equal to those we acquire in our education. In recent years, both types of skills have become very important when we are looking for a job. In fact, several times a candidate with highly developed soft skills is preferred to another who simply has excellent education.

What are they

Among other things, horizontal skills include: -critical thinking – team spirit -problem solving -time management -communication skills (both oral and written) -decision making -stress management – adaptability -crisis management – leadership skills -creativity -persuasuin -acceptance of criticism -ingenuity

How to develop them

Unfortunately, soft skills are not taught in formal education. But the biggest school, as they say, is life itself. Living, therefore, through trial and error you can develop some soft skills. You can also ask your family and friends for feedback so as to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. Finally, you can read books  or take free online courses on platforms such as Coursera, Lynda.com, Udemy, edX that have created courses specifically for soft skills. Giota Florou Recent Articles