And what you learned…by Justine Longford

Soft skills refer to both character traits and interpersonal skills that will influence how well a person can work or interact with others.

As part of the Involvement Team, you have a wide range of skills that help you with the work you do, including: complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity and emotional intelligence.

The importance of these soft skills are often undervalued, and there is far less training provided for them than hard skills.

What are soft skills? Soft skills are personal attributes that influence how well you can work or interact with others. These skills make it easier to form relationships with people, create trust and dependability.

In essence, they are essential.

Most interactions with other people require some level of soft skills. For example, you might be negotiating, presenting or networking, or mentoring a new Ambassador.

Skills such as active listening, collaboration, presenting ideas and communicating with others are all highly valued. Strong soft skills create a productive, collaborative and healthy environment, all crucial attributes for the council in the work you produce.

These days we have a huge number of choices bought about by the internet and smartphones. For customers, convenience is easy to come by, so customer service is often what influences the choice to use a particular services.

The ability to communicate at a human level with others is therefore a vital factor in our service area's success.

As IT progresses, soft skills such as emotional intelligence are hard to automate and unlikely to become automated anytime soon. This means they're expected to become more desirable in the near future.

According to Linkedin, the soft skills in highest demand are:

· Communication

· Organisation

· Teamwork

· Critical thinking

· Social skills

· Creativity

· Interpersonal communication

· Adaptability

All the skills that all of us who work with Tenant Involvement probably take for granted!

So, in conclusion…the reason for me writing about this today is that we MUST continue to offer our soft skill sessions to potential recruits as these are a powerful marketing and communications tool for us to have, even in the current climate.

I am currently working on a new way in which these can be delivered to our customers. They will be exciting and have the same personal approach as before, just virtually!

To quote Nina Simone “It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, and I'm feeling good”.

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