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The soft skills that are crucial in the modern workplace

By J Shaw for reachremarkable.com

Workplaces are changing — and you need to keep up if you want better opportunities. Now that organisations are disrupting their processes with automation and other technologies, recent LinkedIn data revealed that job skillsets have already changed by a quarter since 2015. Professionals need to further step up their upskilling considering that job skillset changes are again expected to double by 2027.

With automated tools handling more work processes, employers are now more interested in the soft skills that professionals can offer. In the new face of the workplace, these are the soft skills that are taking over:

Creativity
Many individuals limit their perception of creativity to artistic talents. However, this soft skill is becoming crucial in workplaces, especially because it sparks innovation.

Creativity can be a lifesaver in tricky career challenges, which is why our article on the ‘Three Easy Everyday Creativity Tips’ suggests that you should dare to be different. Rather than keeping up with industry trends, you can try to suggest products and services that you may have encountered in your personal life. You can also get inspiration by reading books, movies, or even TEDTalks about highly creative individuals.

Agility
Industries have had to change working conditions and processes in the past few years, forcing employees to learn how to become more agile and flexible.

Given the drastic changes, it’s no surprise that 24% of professionals listed agility as their top answer in LHH’s poll on the top soft skills to develop in 2022. Since agility is a key part of resilience, you’ll often see it described as flexibility in resources that discuss the importance of resilience in the workplace. Being adaptable to change is a necessary skill to develop in the modern workplace since it teaches you how to become open to various processes in your professional life.

Communication
Workplace communication was already a big problem for some companies, but this became even harder once remote and hybrid teams were established.

Communication skills are often taken for granted, and Business Advice points out that this can result in misunderstandings, arguments, and even financial losses. So if you think that you need to be better at presenting your ideas and handling arguments, then you have to practise delivering concise messages and treating your co-workers with respect.

Self-confidence
Many professionals think that confidence is a value, but it’s actually something that you can develop through learning, practice, and persistence.

Instead of ignoring negative self-deprecating thoughts, our article entitled ‘Mindfulness is Not…About Stopping Your Mind Thinking‘ suggests that you can start by being aware about your thoughts on yourself and your work. Once you’ve become aware of these perceptions, whether negative or positive you can properly acknowledge your thoughts and let go. By keeping these thoughts in check, it’ll be easier to focus on your unique strengths and become more confident handling work projects, meetings, and more.

Time Management
Big work responsibilities can get so overwhelming that many professionals end up using more time worrying about the task itself than actually doing it.

Instead of worrying, time management expert Julie Morgenstern suggests that you dedicate 15 minutes of attention to the tasks you want to accomplish. Since it’s easy to set aside 10 to 15 minutes of your time, you can use this as a chance to draft an important e-mail or to do some quick research, freeing up your mental space for other tasks.

Strong soft skills are able to help your hard skills shine in the workplace. By developing your soft skills, you’ll find it easier to cultivate work relationships and accomplish crucial tasks.

 

A man who did his duty on earth

Nelson_Mandela-2008_(edit)That’s how Nelson Mandela said he wished to be remembered.  It’s common to talk about following your passion, and using the word ‘passion’ conjures not only positive intent but also a happy, even easy life in its pursuit.  Though the people we remember, those we would describe as remarkable, who impact our lives whether on the world stage as the great leader of a country, or just the lives of one or two, they don’t seem to follow the easy life.

The Free Dictionary suggests synonyms for passion including fervour, fire, zeal and ardour – these get closer to a better definition for me.  If it is to guide our contribution to the world, then surely that is something about which you would have fervour, fire, zeal and ardour.

The great man used the word duty.  In our world of autonomy, where we may feel we have a right to happiness, duty is not a word we often use.  Following our passion suggests that we make the world fit our needs, the needs of self, which we sometimes shorten to ‘selfish.’  Duty suggests the opposite – serving, doing what is right irrespective of the personal consequences.

But then, passion is used to describe the final path to crucifixion took by Jesus Christ, on his path to save.  Nelson Mandela, as prisoner 46664, somehow found it in himself to take the road of peace – he chose to love his aggressors rather than to fight them.

Perhaps passion is the right word, and it’s simply about direction; a passion for others, for compassionate justice, for peace.

The world may have lost a great man last night, but we are blessed and forever changed by his passion to do what was right, and we live with a better world because of a man who did his duty on earth.

-Mark

Reach Remarkable

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Oh no, the first post!  I think the best strategy is to just get on with it, so deep breath, here goes…

Reach Remarkable has been a long time coming. To be launching a new business and, clichéd as it might be, following a dream, feels quite remarkable.  From what I can make of the Office for National Statistics information about ‘business births’ as they describe it, about 250,000 new business are created in the UK each year.  So in the grand scheme of things, one more doesn’t move the needle very much.

But, I can’t think of it on the grand scale.  This is a new business and career for me and so affects my little world quite a lot.  It’s aim is both simple and grand:

Help us (people) to be remarkable!

Easy to say, a little harder to achieve.  Not in any way because of our individual capacity to be remarkable; and entirely because finding the right approach and support to achieve that as a speaker, trainer and coach will be a driving challenge.

We are not all destined to be Ghandi, but then one of the keys to being remarkable is that we must do it in a way that works for us, is authentic for us – and understanding what is authentically ‘me’ is a good place to start… and for this starting post, a good place to end.

Be remarkable,
-Mark