10 Methods You Should Use to Develop Your Soft Skills in 2022

« Back to Articles
 
Soft skills are becoming increasingly essential for companies during the selection processes. Over the last few years, the significance of soft skills has meant that if you are preparing for an interview and want to stand out, in the current job market, soft skills are something you need to work on. Nonetheless, enhancing skills is just as important for already successful professionals, and should be something we all seek to improve.

In a recent study, the Forbes Human Resources Council discovered 10 scientifically proven strategies that organisations should implement, to help their employees develop their soft skills. These strategies, however, are not only beneficial within the workplace and can be utilized throughout our daily lives. You can check out these methods below:

1. Make an immersive environment

When developing your soft skills, it's important to immerse yourself in an environment that challenges you and helps you develop specific skills. For example, you want to improve your public speaking. More than likely, you use this skill every day, although you need to look for ways to improve through movies, websites, and applications.

2. Performance management

Performance management is essential for both professional and personal development. For example, seeking weekly coaching or mentoring sessions to help overcome any hurdles, regularly reviewing your performance within the workplace and keeping track of your progress and achievements.

3. Set realistic goals for yourself

Whilst it's important to set goals, it’s also important that they are realistic. Are you really going to take 10 courses this year? When setting goals we need to ensure they are S.M.A.R.T, after 2 years of uncertainty, it’s important to focus on practical goals that will make you feel a sense of accomplishment when completed.

4. Celebrate your achievements

Celebrate, celebrate and then celebrate some more. Nothing is too small to celebrate, and sometimes it gives us that drive we need to keep on moving forward. Although this doesn't mean throwing a party every time you get a piece of work done, it’s important and recommended by psychologists to celebrate our achievements to maintain motivation to complete future goals.

5. Seek feedback

Soft skills are like muscles, the more you practice, the more you develop and strengthen. Feedback is crucial to success, and therefore, continuous feedback allows us to gain insight into our strengths, weaknesses and how we can improve.

6. Soft skill training

Soft skills are socio-emotional skills, but that doesn't mean they are not trainable! There are plenty of courses and training available online or in-person to help individuals work on their soft skills. From teamwork communication to presentation skills, there's training out there for everyone.

7. Be an example

Lead as an example to your peers. However, still, keep in mind that you are still learning and developing, so don’t overexert yourself. Keeping on track with your mentors, programs, training etc. will allow you to continuously improve and make others feel motivated to do so.

8. Identify obstacles

When it comes to developing soft skills, it’s as important to make a list of goals as it is to identify any obstacles you may face during the process. By recognising the barriers that have prevented you from achieving your goals in the past, you’re able to gain a better understanding of how you can resolve these challenges in the future. By acknowledging challenges, you’re able to strategically come up with solutions to tackle them.

9. Seek a mentor

Seeking a mentor is a great opportunity to fully immerse yourself in mentoring culture. Mentoring time and time again has proven to be highly beneficial for individuals, with the constant contact with an individual willing to share their knowledge, experiences, and wisdom allows you to feel more motivated in pursuing your purpose and goals.

10. Re-visit your dreams

We must review and revisit our dreams, taking a look into our past and seeing what we’ve already achieved. By doing this, we’re able to have a better insight and clarity into what we look to accomplish in the future. Our goals and visions for our future need to be reviewed regularly, updating them in accordance with each step in our career and life journey.

Whatever career path you choose or currently work in, there are always ways we can improve our soft skills and development. Working on ourselves should be an exciting journey, taking a step at a time to reach our goals. If you’re looking to find more about mentoring and how it can help you on your career path, you can sign up for free to PushFar - the world’s leading career development and mentoring platform.

This article was guest-written by Letícia Miranda.