‘’Soft skills get little respect, but they will make or break your career.”

Peggy Klaus, Author

Soft skills refer to the Personal traits which will lead the Individual to Interact and Engage with others. These can be characterised as the mix of Interpersonal, Social Skills which will sustain the Personality Balance of people. As well as having and Maintaining a Good degree of Soft Skills give the best open doors in life. Therefore, it is important to understand the Importance of Soft skills.

What is Defined by Soft skills?

Soft skills are Social, Interpersonal, Positive, and Disciplinary Behavioral abilities or patterns that can Comprehensively nurture a balanced Personality. Communication abilities, Teamwork, Patience, adjustability, Leadership, Creativity, Time Management, empathy, and Confidence. These skills are also referred to as Emotional Intelligence or 21st Century skills. And are essential while living in an era of rapid development.

Unlike hard skills such as learning a foreign language, computer programming, and Completing a degree, developing soft skills has easy. Developing soft skills is not as complex as completing a degree. On the other hand, it is even more complicated than completing a degree because it cannot be taught under classroom education. Still, it must be attained through emotional capability, personality, social Awareness, and Experience. Some people get these skills embedded in their characters naturally, while others have to develop them through meditation, reading, and observing.

Relationship between Hard skills and Soft skills

Hard skills have a minimal value without the combination of soft skills. Think of a doctor with a PhD but zero patience. And a teacher with 100% theoretical Knowledge but poor communication skills. That is where soft skills come into action. And has much more importance when compared with hard skills.

What is the Importance of soft skills ?

Soft skills aid you throughout your life, no matter your stage. It could be your college years, during the years of your career or even your personal and spiritual growth. These skills will help you transform your Ordinary personality into an Extraordinary level. Everyone will recognise you and be rewarded for what you are. Moreover, the support soft skills can provide oneself is unlimited. At the same time, hard skills would provide support on a limited scale.

How will soft skills Nurture your Personality?

Types of Soft Skills

Soft skills such as communication skills help individuals succeed in their life as a student in college, an employee at an office, or representatives of an association and the country. It will not only lead you towards the victory but also the organisation that you represent.

Gone are the days when high educational qualifications were mandatory for top management. Presently in life modern world, people look for more emotionally advanced individuals to manage posts along with the required theoretical knowledge to get the best outcome. Moreover, a leader who has developed soft skills tends to show empathy and sympathy to those who work under them. And also possesses patience, creativity, and teamwork that breaks the boundaries of a typical leader. And is more forward with a lot of energy.

Presently. the world is more focused on the soft skills of individuals rather than paper qualifications. It is a general fact that nobody wants to work with an arrogant boss. And in an environment where the workers feel insecure. This will indeed affect the efficiency and productivity of the work. There is no denying the fact that technical skills cannot be utilised.

Further, mother nature is more interested in empathetical, calm, and adaptable human beings. As with the technological advancements daily, the world runs short of them. Emotional intelligence must go hand in hand with rapid automation to maintain the equilibrium in the world. And make it a better place that will nurture you and the world.

Summing it up, Interpersonal Skills are Personality traits. The world nowadays is rooting individuals having the perfect blend of hard and soft skills. Others refer to an individual with exceptional soft skills, so all of us should be extra conscious about the soft skills that will Nurture us.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. – Margaret Mead

The modernised world has been approaching the method of team training. It is one of the best ways to improve several skills of human beings. There are many benefits of team training.

Team training

What is team training?

It is a team of individuals getting together to enhance their procedural knowledge. At the same time, it increases the proficiency in doing a task while functioning as a part of a team.

The small number of people called a group should share a common goal, purpose and commit to the team to approach the success.

Importance of team training

It is essential in various ways. Mainly, it helps attract new members and helps to elevate the existing teams. Moreover, it creates a positive working environment, helping boost individual and organisational performance.

Working as a team

Benefits of team training

Several benefits come out as the results of team training.

One benefit that develops through team training is that it helps build new relationships with the team members.       

The developed relationships create a social network that enables everyone to engage the taskwork with shared standards and quality expectations with a success oriented goal. At the same time, building new relationships allows workers to practice applying soft skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, communication, problem-solving skills, and flexibility.

Enthusiastic Team

In addition, it creates an enjoyable atmosphere around the workplace. An enthusiastic team would be the energy for success.

Increasing productivity also can be mentioned as a benefit of team training. It can define as one of the outcomes of building new relationships. Communication skills would lead to a team that works more efficiently and actively. Inquiries and discussions also enhance the team knowledge while increasing the productivity of the growth of the taskwork.

Growth of the task work

Furthermore, team training cultivates confidence. It also generates good motives inside oneself, such as feeling valued, which is more likely to have high job satisfaction. While gaining new skills and knowledge, the motivation and the confidence helps to stand up as a worthwhile individual in society.

While nourishing the individual’s personalities and job performance, team training also advances the growth of the company, institute, or the organisation, because it directly affects the future of the company, institute, or the organisation.

Bringing up the rear, team training encourages beneficial team dynamics and ensures team member has access to the same professional growth opportunities.

“Say ‘no’ to distraction to say ‘yes’ to your destiny.”

                                                                        -Thema Davis.

Contemporarily all of us go through various crises due to many unavoidable reasons. The worsening of the problem we face tends to get us distracted. And it ultimately takes a long time to solve and come out of the crisis. 

In case of a crisis, it is essential to stay calm and optimistic. And we should practice integrative awareness: being aware of the changing reality in the outside world and how they respond emotionally and physically. This intentional practise tends to shift from viewing challenges as roadblocks to seeing them as problems to be solved and even learn from defeating distractions from the crisis. (Brassey, Brassey, & Kruyt, How to demonstrate calm and optimism in a situation, 2020)

How to defeat distractions in times of crisis?

 Deliberate calm

This means practising a calm state of mind in case of crisis. Compassion and acceptance for ourselves and others are essential ingredients for being deliberately calm. It is all about letting up on self-criticism or perfectionism. And to be able to connect with core intentions and purpose.

Bounded optimism

Optimism that comes from authentic values and trust in people’s capabilities is the source of energy for everyone to move forward. By contrast, optimism without meaning or grounding may cause disappointment and defeat.

Optimistic person

Putting integrative awareness into practice

Captain Chesley Sullenberger introduced the process of integrative awareness when he landed his commercial plane on the Hudson River in 2009. Accordingly, practising internal awareness helps catch early distress, doubt, or fear signals without acting out a stress response. This is especially critical in times of crisis. While we can never be purely objective, we can try to reach that state as much as possible. In the absence of objective awareness, signals of distress can trigger “survival” behaviour. Also, we lose the tendency to pause, reflect, and decide. 

According to Jacqueline Brassey and Michiel Kruyt, there are six main steps to developing integrative awareness.

Adapt your personal operating model

We can prepare operating models focusing on the areas of our priorities, roles, time, and energy that are elements of how you operate daily. This operating model can act as your compass, especially in a crisis expected to last for some time. Moreover, this helps to identify whether our personal operating model aligns with the changes in our work life right now and our “non-negotiable” in this model. For example, sufficient sleep, regular exercise, meditation practice, and healthy food.

A man with intentions

Set your intention

Further, we can spend a few minutes at the start of the day to go through our plan, identify high-stakes topics, and intend what we want to accomplish and how we want the experience to unfold. This enables us to predict “emotional hot spots” and provides a bulwark against reactive thinking.

Regulate your actions

While in a stressful situation during the day, we must observe our emotions to recognise the stress response, taking a pause to assess the problem, and engage our “rational mind” before choosing how to respond.

Practice reflection

Reflection is a way to process what happened during the day and create a space to listen to our inner mind and body. Reflection helps us with the big picture and our reactive behaviour and its drivers. People have many ways to reflect. Some use meditation, and some reflect while running or walking the dog. The significance is that we make it a regular planned practice.

Practising self-reflection

Reframe your perspective

When detailed scenario planning is not an option, we should choose to take a flexible perspective: which also can be known as integrative awareness in action. We should make time to revisit decisions regularly, with an open, curious, and learning mindset, building on fresh information coming in and at different stages in the crisis.

Manage your energy

One of the most challenging things to do in times of crisis is to balance work needs with our physical well-being. In a crisis atmosphere, we need recovery time. It is necessary to engage in micro-practices that support healthy recoveries. Examples are meditation, breathing exercises, cardio sports activities, and power naps.

Let’s defeat the distraction in times of crisis by correctly practising the steps mentioned above.

 “There is no such thing as work-life balance – it is all life.  The balance has to be within you.”                                                                                                                                                                                           -SADHGURU

What does “work-life balance” mean?

Work-life balance is a procedure that enables people to balance their personal and professional lives. In particular, work-life balance inspires people to divide their time based on priorities and retain a balance by dedicating time to family, health, vacations and making a career, money, workplace, and business travel. 

The importance of managing the balance of work and life

Engaging in any career can be an extremely time-consuming duty. As a result, there is only a little time remaining to interact with family and take care of personal matters. Furthermore, family members frequently get neglected due to the overburdened work schedule. Additionally, stressful jobs affect the health of people. Although work is also a priority in our lives, managing the balance of work and life is needed.

The work-life balance model permits people to maintain a balance in work and personal matters. It is essential to balance both work and life equally. Therefore, it is noteworthy that people can have a quality work-life by having a perfect balance in life. Therefore, make sure to get the maximum benefits out of 24 hours of the day. If you spend more time at work, there is no time left for your personal life. Conversely, if you only focus on life satisfaction, you will be unable to manage your career. Never assume that life is more prominent than work because your life depends on the foundation of your work.

striving for balance

Create a flexible work schedule

This is a vital point for managing the balance of work and life. Those who work without a schedule doubt their personal and professional lives. Therefore, working on a schedule declares that we achieve our responsibilities in the time allocated. Additionally, having a consistent work schedule encourages people to get their work done more efficiently. It paves the way to manage the balance of work and life effectively. Therefore, creating and sticking to a consistent work schedule is essential for a successful career and a happy, fulfilled life.

Work on one thing at a time until finished

With the workload in our lives, we try to complete the assigned tasks as soon as possible. Although it makes sense that multitasking is a time-saver on the surface, the reality is that it is not. Therefore, try to do one task at a time. Completing one thing at a time makes you stress-free, and you will be able to finish assigned tasks quickly. Furthermore, you can spend your remaining time obtaining relaxation from your busy days.

Time management is life management

With the points mentioned above, you can clearly understand that managing work and balance primarily depends on “time management”. If you wisely manage your time, you will never have to worry about neither life nor work because you have time to manage all those tasks while enjoying your life. Additionally, make sure to work to a schedule, and then you will never miss either work or happiness in your life.

Balanced life

Finally, it became evident that some people are successful in their careers but tend to fail in family and personal life. On the other hand, some people have a remarkable individual and family life yet perform worse at work. However, a genuine attempt to manage work and life balance can generate a fruitful result. Therefore, managing the balance of work and life may significantly impact your life. If you can manage both work and life balance, you can easily open the door to success.