Soft Skills: Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence
You’ve heard the term soft skills but just what does it mean? According to career coach Lei Han, soft skills are those which (my paraphrase):
- Don’t have black-and-white rules for mastering
- Are portable and valuable to any job/career
- Will be constantly tested in new situations
Han goes on to list 28 skills that she believes are critical for managers to master. I suggest you look at the entire list but I would like to focus on two of them here: Self-awareness and Emotion regulation. Let’s take a look.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is not something that just happens. No one wakes up one day and says “I know exactly what I am all about”. To be truly self-aware you have to do the work. It means looking deep into who you are, who you were, how you think and then planning how you will react to situations. It means being in the present in all situations and at the same time anticipating what might happen. When you are self-aware, you acknowledge that people can push your buttons – in fact it means admitting that you have buttons to be pushed which is in direct contradiction to the calm, composed image of the successful manager. To be self-aware is to have control over your emotions instead of the other way around. In short, self-awareness means developing filters and then using them appropriately
Emotional Intelligence
That leads to Han’s other soft skill – Emotion regulation. If you cannot control your emotions, understand that you cannot succeed. Period. How you show up emotionally impacts how others see you. Are you confident or insecure? Are you in control of situations or are you controlled by them? Make no mistake, you can be the most self-aware person in the world but if you can’t control your emotions it won’t matter.
So how do you work on developing these two critical soft skills? Believe it or not, working on one area can help you with the other. My advice is to start working on your emotional intelligence. Many colleges and adult education centers offer introductory classes. You can also find great self-help books in your local libraries and book stores, and talk with your HR manager about ways to develop your skills. And of course don’t forget about personal coaching.