Soft Skills

Soft Skills Pyramid

Groundbreaking SS

 

Basic Soft Skills

The minimalist set required to qualify for a job

Vadim Kotelnikov

Vadim Kotelnikov, founder of 1000ventures - personal logo Vadim Kotelnikov

Founder

   

 

 

Vadim Kotelnikov advice quotes

Hard Skills make you eligible.

Soft skills make you desirable.

Vadim Kotelnikov

Vadim Kotelnikov, founder of 1000ventures - personal logo    Business e-Coach    Innompic Games icon

 

 

 Advanced Soft Skills

First Impressionism

First Impressionism is a new vital art & science introduced by and taught at the Innompic University.

Knowing how to make a great first impression is a key to lasting positive social interactions. First Impression contests pioneered by Innompic Games (see best examples and videos) help people − adults (examples: female; male), kids (example), teams (example) − master this highly important social skill.

 

 

  

 

 

   

Definition of Soft Skills

Soft skills are a cluster of productive capabilities that characterize one's relationships in a social environment. It is an umbrella term for skills under three key functional elements: achievement know-how, people skills, and social skills.

Soft skills are a synergistic combination of common sense, creativity, decision making skills, problem solving skills, empowering attitudes, the ability to make a desired first impression and to be charismatic, people skills, social skills, communication skills, the ability to build rapport, the ability to lead, teamwork, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and empathy among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform efficiently, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.

Importance of Soft Skills

As business is people, soft skills are more important than hard skills because they are the foundation of thinking, cooperation, management, innovation, marketing, etc. The influence of soft skills on the outcome of business activities depends on the circumstances in which the business activity takes place.

Development of Soft Skills

The development of soft skills is much more difficult than the development of hard skills. While hard skills can be learned studying from a book or from trainings, development of soft skills needs a combination of environment and other people to be mastered. It requires addressing multi-dimensional challenges, actively interacting with others on an ongoing basis and being willing to learn from all sorts of feedback both verbal and situational.

Social Skills

"A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socialization."

Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through worlds, gestures, body language, our personal appearance, images, behavior, and other means.

Creativity

In the digital economy where the large majority of the work can be done by computers, artificial intelligence systems and smart machines, the primary role of human beings is to use their imagination and creativity to invent new things and to solve problems in outside-the-box ways.

Intuition

Intuitive anticipation and decision making are highly important soft skills. There are two levels of intuition − subconscious and divine. Subconscious intuition can be developed through practice of engaging your fast-thinking subconscious mind and turning it into a habit.

Leadership

Soft skills form the basis of successful leadership and are, therefore, highly important for those in leading positions. Leaders are to inspire, to provide a strategic direction, to align, motivate and energize people in order to achieve desired goals. Leadership is a process of influence through a series of interactions between a leader and their followers. In order to be effective in these roles, the leader has to possess relevant soft skills.

Communication

Effective communication inside the company is the foundation of successful business activities. Communication allows employees at all levels to coordinate their actions to achieve a common objective.

Decision Making

Although strategic plans are developed by a top management team, due to the scope and complexity of business operations, top managers have to rely on their staff to assist them in the decision-making process. Staff members can broaden the understanding of current business activities by developing situational awareness and assisting top managers in building their situational understanding by providing relevant information and recommendations regarding business activities.

Cross-Cultural Competency

A globally connected world is a key driver of structural change for the global workforce.

The diversity of stakeholders is an important point to consider. Employee, customers, partners, competitors are all made up of people of different ethnical backgrounds, who have different views, perceptions, beliefs, and values.

Innovation became a systemic phenomenon. It is achieved through synergizing diversities and is increasingly more dependent on the collaboration between actors from different cultural backgrounds who combine their own perceptions, thinking habits and expertise to create something new. This happens on all levels − individual, team, institutional. Diversity of thought increases creativity and, with it, the innovation potential of individuals, teams, corporations and joint ventures.

Business activities that take place abroad emphasize the importance of cultural intelligence and effective cross-cultural communication between the business and local people. Unless company representatives have good understanding of the local traditions and values, they might behave in such a way that is considered offensive or inappropriate in another culture and facilitate conflict, putting the whole local business at risk. In order to effectively perform business activities in a different cultural setting, company representatives must possess such soft skills, as sociocultural competence and empathy.

 

Groundbreaking Soft Skills empower you to create remarkable positive change in yourself, your organization and its business.