Last week I hosted a Twitter Space where few developers shared their thoughts on "importance of soft skills in tech". Here's what they said:

What are Soft skills?

Soft skills are CORE skills

Soft skills are personality traits and behaviors that will help candidates get hired and succeed in their work. Unlike technical skills or “hard” skills, soft skills are interpersonal and behavioral skills that help you to work well with other people and develop your career.

Importance of soft skills 📹

Although soft skills may appear to be unimportant skills that no one values, they play a crucial role in the workplace, not only in your day-to-day job performance but also in your future career prospects.

Soft skills are applicable across industries and to any profession.

Soft skills are valuable assets no matter where you are in your professional career. Soft skills provide a strong foundation for establishing yourself as an outstanding employee, colleague.

Benefits:

• Increased productivity
• Improved cooperation
• Increased employee retention
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Improved leadership
• Attracts new customers
• Increased workplace communication

Soft skills employers notice 👀

These nontechnical skills can be the deciding factor between you and another candidate, so hone them as you would any other skill.

• Negation Skills and advance communication
• Empathy and Interpersonal Skills
• Management and Leadership Skills
• Entrepreneurship and Initiative-taking
• Learning Skills and Adaptability
• Training and Teaching Skills

How can you develop soft skills ??

You can improve any soft skill if you make it a practice. Most soft skills are a matter of routine.
Doing so eventually leads to a positive impact on the work, improving results as well as increases productivity.

Here are some ways to develop soft skills:

• Take Feedback:
  Being open to feedbacks plays a vital part to improve soft skills. Taking feedbacks from your superiors, managers, supervisors as well as colleagues can help you enhance your skillsets.

• Communicate:
  Communicating is a part of soft skills that can benefit you in your personal and professional life.
  Whether it is face-to-face communication, via email, or addressing a group during the presentation, whatever the mode of communication is, you must talk and improve. Observe when others are speaking, take tips and techniques from them, and find your own and improved way of communication.

• Learner’s Attitude:
  Developing soft skills is not as easy it sounds, you may encounter setbacks. But these setbacks can lead you to success and you can learn. Positively taking setback or failure shall allow you to experience new things.
  For instance, you are handling a project and leading a team, you can work on your leadership skill and collaboration skills by taking feedbacks from the people you are working with. The people who listen to you and observe you are the ones who can best evaluate you based on their prior experiences.

• Come out of your Comfort Zone:
  Try something new by leaving your comfort zone. To improve anything you do have to come out of the regular safe zone and take new responsibilities.
  Step into unfamiliar territory and show your potential. This reflects how serious you are about the job and allows you to learn some new things.

• Adapt Changes:
  Changes are part and parcel of both personal and professional life. Fluctuations at the workplace as well as in other zones of life are the way you can improve your soft skill to be adaptable. Adaptability can be a solution to various issues that may arise. Be open to knowing new techniques as and when they are released. Assisting someone new in the organization also helps you learn more and adopt changes that come with it.
  
  Soft skills are great to have, identify your soft skill and work to improve them. Figure out your flaws and work on them by following the above guide to developing your soft skills. Doing so will ultimately lead to success in different ventures of your life.

Conclusion 🎁

It’s not just about adapting to the next normal — it’s about revisiting your skill sets and thinking about the hard and soft skills they possess.
We’ve reached a pivotal point in the IT realm where both will play an important role in advancing our careers.

I hope that this piece of the guide will help you know what soft skills are and how you can develop them.

If there is anything that you would like to know or share, comment below.

Thank you for reading :), To learn more, check out my other blogs.
If you liked this article, consider following me on Dev.to for my latest publications. You can reachout to me on Twitter.

Keep learning! Keep coding!! 💛