Soft Skills Rule of 7: No 1. Personal
Wrapping up our theme of soft skills, we come back to the beginning (and the end), to the primary component or the Rule of 7—without the ability to harness it’s potential, you will never be able to master the others—Yourself.
Personal soft skills like confidence, self-awareness, humility, proactivity, all await in a dormant state unless you invest the time and energy to mine your capabilities through self-discovery. It requires ongoing effort—the mammoth undertaking of striving for perfection frustratingly never seems to lessen with time... the more you learn, the more you find you don’t know. Building these skill sets will serve you best if you are able to embrace the idea that you are a student—for life. You’re not alone. Plenty of people attack their jobs in this way.
Professors—for instance—have sabbatical gap years, expected to refresh and renew their energy, focus, and skill in their particular fields by undertaking self-improvement and academic refreshers as part of their term responsibilities. They have to practice. “Practice” means to perform a task—repeatedly—but it’s taken on an extra layer of meaning over time. Because what happens when we perform task repeatedly? We learn how to do it better.
Doctors, have “practices.” So do lawyers. They may have gone to school more than twice as long as an average accountant, but their diploma and board passing gives them licence to “practice” medicine and law. Why? So they can perform an important and delicate task repeatedly and (hopefully; expectedly) continue to grow in it. Would you want the same treatment as 20 years ago if a better one was invented in the last 5? New drugs come out annually, and new side effects right along with them. A doctor must constantly keep their eye on the newest treatments, procedures, and ongoing medical discoveries to continue to perform their work at the highest level. In the same manner for lawyers: laws are ever changing, the applications shifting, and the “facts” are often open to interpretation. Lawyers don’t win trials by simply by personality, facts, and swagger; they must also use a collection of case precedents, science, theory, and investigation—all of which are also ever changing and growing fields in their own rights, which also require constant study to maintain fluency.
It’s with this same application and dedication that we look at acquiring soft skills in our personal lives. We continue to partake in active working processes, study the missing elements, and bring our expertise to the table. Being a curious, active learner willing to say, “I don’t know,” or “teach me” is anything but a sign of weakness. Being a leader willing to lead by example—through trial and error—will bring an extraordinary opportunity for teaching. Being a manager recognizes their own gaps and who passes tasks to the team members most qualified to head them up, will bring a shot of enthusiasm to the team. Being a worker who has empathy for others, will build close working relationships of trust. These skills are the pliable tools you have to multiply what you have to give in the workforce, help you climb the career ladder, and grow in opportunities.
As with each of the Soft Skills Rules that come after it, there’s no “quick fix” to be found in the Personal Soft Skill set. But don’t let that discourage you. After all—Einstein might have come up with the theory of relativity in 1905. But it took 103 years and a few supercomputers that hadn’t been invented yet to prove it. That’s a long-game “win,” of a practiced “practitioner,” if ever I’ve heard one.