“High performers” stand out not only for the ability to complete the stated functions of their roles, but for their ability to fulfill a whole range of other functions not necessarily written down anywhere. Often, their supervisors find this second ability more important than the first, and they hire and promote employees accordingly.
Being able to do more than what’s strictly required in your job description is an important career skill to have. This skill often rests on a foundation of more fundamental “soft skills,” such as empathy and strong written and verbal communication capabilities. Some claim that these skills are innate and can’t easily be taught, but that’s generally not the case: With effort, you can acquire and refine any soft skill you’d need in the workplace.
Let’s take a look at nine that are particularly helpful in advancing your career.
1. Empathy and Care for Others’ Well-being
One of the most important soft skills is empathy. Successful people tend to exhibit genuine care for others (and for their well-being) while still holding them to the same high standards to which they hold themselves. Visionaries like David Miscavige, leader of the Scientology religion, understand the importance of caring for others as we care for ourselves. Perhaps it’s wise to emulate this position, as we do for other facets of leadership.
2. Verbal Communication
Few of us are exceptional public speakers. Many of us shrink at the thought of standing in front of dozens, let alone hundreds or thousands, and speaking coherently on some matter or another.
Fortunately, one needn’t enjoy public speaking, nor be particularly good at it, to exhibit strong verbal communication skills. Far more important for one’s personal and professional success is the ability to engage cogently and persuasively in individual and small-group discussions. If you can make your views known in a team meeting or in a one-on-one conversation with your boss, you’ll find doors open to you that may be closed to your less eloquent peers.
3. Written Communication
More so even than verbal communication, written communication stands alone as a critical soft skill in the modern workplace, says Martin Yate, a career coach and former human resources professional.
“Job postings have cited effective communication as a sought-after skill 35 times more frequently than other soft skills,” Yate says.
Just as you needn’t be a gifted public speaker to benefit from strong verbal communication skills, you needn’t be a professional novelist, poet, or even magazine-feature writer to use the power of the pen (or keyboard). Brevity, coherence, and grammatical accuracy are your aims, here.
4. Personal Organization
Ask five people to describe how they organize and prioritize their work on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and you’ll most likely receive five different responses. All will be interesting on some level, but few will “make sense” to any significant degree.
In other words, personal organization is just that: highly personal. It doesn’t matter how you choose to organize your work, only that you do so in a way that enables you to be responsive, productive, and effective in your duties. Find a system that works for you, then implement it and stick with it, making refinements as needed to improve its performance.
5. A Strong Work Ethic and Internal Motivation
Successful professionals exhibit “passion and perseverance for long-term goals,” says psychologist Angela Duckworth. In popular terms, they are “driven” and “internally motivated.” Another way to say this is that they have a strong work ethic.
Of all the soft skills described here, a strong work ethic may take the longest to show itself. It is also one of the most important capabilities for career advancement. Good leaders know that employees who go the extra mile while producing excellent work are in short supply, and they make sure to reward them for their efforts.
6. An Ability to Plan Ahead and Prioritize Tasks Effectively
Planning ability builds on effective personal organization. Without the latter, the former is difficult or impossible to sustain.
Like one’s system of organization, one’s planning scheme is likely to be unique, or at least different from others in notable ways. This does not mean it’s “better” or worse,” just that it works well for the individual utilizing it.
7. Conflict Resolution
Successful professionals are often skilled at managing conflict. This skill takes on greater importance as one advances in their career and devotes more of their time to hearing and adjudicating issues that arise within their teams and between their teams and external stakeholders. It is not realistic to expect any individual to have a perfect record of conflict resolution, but those adept at managing competing (even hostile) interests tend to prove their worth sooner or later.
8. An Ability to Motivate Others
Competent professionals are all internally motivated to a greater or lesser degree. What separates them from their exceptional peers is a facility for external motivation; that is, for getting more out of those around them.
This skill takes so many different forms that it can be challenging to recognize in isolation. Often, the first giveaway is a clear, quantifiable improvement in team performance.
9. Humility
No one enjoys admitting that they were wrong, or that they failed to meet another’s expectations. Error and failure may have real-world consequences that can’t be outdone. However, the ability to acknowledge when we’ve fallen short remains a vital soft skill, if only because it’s a question that inevitably comes up during the hiring process. Those hoping to advance in their careers must be ready to own up to their shortcomings.
Never Stop Working on Yourself
Every one of us is a work in progress. Those of us who find some measure of professional success also tend to be those of us who remain grateful for what we’ve achieved so far without being truly satisfied by how far we’ve come. A commitment to never stop working on oneself correlates closely with professional and personal success.
Are you ready to make such a commitment? It’s a lifelong journey you’ll be signing up for, to be sure, but one with the promise of incredible rewards as it unfolds.
