List of 28 Soft Skills – Business Professionals
Posted on | June 2, 2011
I saw a list of 60 soft skills that was ranked #1 organically by Google (search = list of soft skills.) The article was pretty good, but the actual list of 60 soft skills is quite confusing. Here is what I mean. The list included:
- Ridiculous examples like Drivers’ License (#16), Being Drug Free (#21), Work Experience (#24), Understanding what the world is all about. (#53).
- Hard Skills examples: Math (#1), Grammar (#5), Advanced Math (#18), Ability to Measure (#25), Knowledge of Fraction (#36). How are these “soft skills”? See my recent post on the difference of Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
- Basic Professionalism examples: Courtesy (#3), Good Attendance (#22), Reporting to work on time (#37), Good personal appearance (#39)
- Work Attitude examples: Willing to work second or third shifts (#51), Good attitude (#14), Wanting to do a good job (#40), Willingness to be a good worker and go beyond the traditional eight-hour day (#59)
- Only a few were actually Soft Skills examples: - Communication skills with public, fellow employees, supervisors, and customers (#60), Interpersonal skills (#29), Motivational skills (#30) and a few more
Given my recent article, what are soft skills, I want to offer my own list of 28 soft skills that are essential to develop for business professionals.
Soft Skills – Self Management Skills
- Self awareness – knowing what drives, angers, motivates, embarrasses, frustrates, inspires you
- Emotion management – being able to control unexpected emotions like anger and frustration so you can think clearly and at your optimum.
- Self-confidence – those who believe in themselves have access to “unlimited power” (wisdom from KungFu Panda)
- Stress management – Being able to stay calm and balanced in stressful, overwhelming situations
- Resilience – Ability to bounce back from a misstep in your job or career
- Skills to forgive and forget - Ability to move on without baggage from a past mistake or something in your career that wronged you
- Persistence and Perseverance – Ability to overcome challenging situations and obstacles and maintain the same energy
- Patience – ability to step back in an emergency to think clearly or the ability to pause and wait when you are in a rush or want to rush others.
Soft Skills – People Skills
- Communication skills - skills to listen and articulate your ideas in writing and verbally to any audience in a way where you are heard and you achieve the goals you intended with that communication. This is also known as interpersonal communication skills
- Presentation skills – ability to maintain attention and achieve your desired outcome from presenting to an audience
- Facilitating skills - ability to coordinate and solicit well represented opinions and feedback from a group with diverse perspectives to reach a common, best solution.
- Interviewing skills – ability to sell your skills as an interviewee or accurately assess other’s ability or extract the needed information as an interviewer
- Selling skills – this is not just for people in sales. This is the ability to build buy-in to an idea, a decision, an action, a product, or a service
- Meeting management skills – at least 50% of meetings today in corporate america are a waste of time. This is the skill to efficiently and effectively reach productive results from leading a meeting
- Influence / persuasion skills - ability to influence perspective or decision making but still have the people you influence think they made up their own mind.
- Team work skills - ability to work effectively with anyone with different skill sets, personalities, work styles, or motivation level
- Management skills – ability to motivate and create a high performing team with people of varied skills, personalities, motivations, and work styles.
- Leadership skills – ability to create and communicate vision and ideas that inspires others to follow with commitment and dedication.
- Skills in dealing with difficult personalities – Ability to work well or manage someone whom you find difficult
- Skills in dealing with difficult situations – Ability to stay calm and still be effective when faced with an unexpected difficult situation.
- Ability to think / communicate on your feet (under pressure) – ability to articulate thoughts in an organized manner even when you are not prepared for the question or situation you are in
- Networking skills – ability to be interesting and interested in business conversations that motivates people to want to be in your network.
- Interpersonal relationship skills – ability to build trust, find common ground, have empathy, and ultimately build good relationships with people you like or in positions of power/influence.
- Negotiation skills – ability to understand the other side and reach a win-win resolution that you find favorably, satisfies both sides, and maintains relationships for future dealings
- Mentoring / coaching skills – ability to provide constructive wisdom, guidance, and/or feedback that can help others further their career development
- Organizing skills – ability to organize business gatherings to facilitate learning, networking, or business transactions
- Self-promotion skills - ability to subtly promote your skills and work results to people of power or influence in your organization. This will build your reputation and influence.
- Savvy in handling office politics - office politics is a fact of life in corporate america. This is the ability to understand and deal with office politics so you can protect yourself from unfairness as well as further your career.
This is a daunting list. Don’t worry if you don’ t have all of them. The important thing is to understand why they are important to your career success and then ask yourself – what soft skills do you already possess and which ones do you want to develop next?
Like this post? Then subscribe to my newsletter - How to Succeed Like an Executive – in-depth tips (not published on the blog) on how to develop each of these soft skills. Also please help me out and share this post on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and elsewhere.
Your Comments - Which of these soft skills do you think are the most important to your career success? Is there a soft skill I missed in this list? Do you think problem solving skills is a soft skill?
I look forward to your comments. I am always in your corner.
- Lei
Category: Soft Skills
Tags: business soft skills > communication skills > people skills > portable skills > soft skills in the workplace > soft skills list
Tags: business soft skills > communication skills > people skills > portable skills > soft skills in the workplace > soft skills list
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37 Responses to “List of 28 Soft Skills – Business Professionals”
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Lei Han - Career Coach
Stanford engineer and Wharton MBA | Business / marketing executive with 15 years of corporate experience | Mentored 100+ professionals | Screened / interviewed hundreds of candidates | Connect with me 
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August 9th, 2011 @ 5:27 am
I too saw the same list you referenced at the start of this page and thought to myself that it is such an arbitrary list that can certainly give a person the wrong idea as to what a soft skill is. Thanks for posting this to clarify for people!
August 30th, 2011 @ 5:31 am
i have learned a lot of soft skills from this part of view
November 22nd, 2011 @ 6:57 pm
Fantastic article. Thanks a lot for your work
December 12th, 2011 @ 4:04 pm
I am currently a student for medical assisting, and taking career development. We have to list a number of soft skills for this class. This page has absolutly made soft skills completely clear for me. Thank you!!
December 12th, 2011 @ 4:58 pm
So glad to hear this article helped. Let me know if you have any questions.
December 29th, 2011 @ 4:51 am
These skills may help me to improve alot.
January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:33 am
I learned a lot from this.
February 23rd, 2012 @ 6:57 pm
I doubt some of them are fully qualified as ‘skills’. Perhaps partly. I saw them both in the 60-skill list and this one e.g. Patience, Self Confidence, Resilience, etc. These are rather ‘Qualities’ we look for in a job candidate.
Great list by the way, especially the latter 20 ppl skills.
March 7th, 2012 @ 5:24 am
Thank you so very much for this beautiful clarification!It makes soft skills so much easier to understand and grasp.
March 7th, 2012 @ 11:38 am
Nicole, glad I can help.
March 28th, 2012 @ 9:02 pm
I can not get over how wonderful your website is! Everything is laid out in such a clear and concise manner. Definitely bookmarking this page…
March 29th, 2012 @ 11:51 pm
Ukie, thanks for your support. Glad I can help
March 30th, 2012 @ 10:28 pm
I appreciate your teaching here abut management.
May 28th, 2012 @ 9:21 am
You’ve done a great job in developing this list, particularly in splitting the self-management skills out from the people skills. I’ve had the list open on my desktop now for a week and keep coming back to it. The sad thing is that these are very difficult skills to develop and most companies lack a structured approach to helping employees develop them. These are not skills that can be learned in a classroom but only through conscious development.
May 31st, 2012 @ 8:47 am
Thanks for your comment and support. These are definitely difficult skills to develop. I am constantly brainstorming on what else to do to help people develop these skills. My newsletter goes into some depth on how to improve these skills. I am also working on an e-book, so stay tuned
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:17 am
Great work.I have learnt alot from your list of skills and would like to work on attaining some of those skills.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:49 am
thanks. glad to hear this helped. best wishes in improving these skills
July 5th, 2012 @ 5:18 pm
That is a great list, I’ll use it for my next meeting with my mentor
July 19th, 2012 @ 7:33 am
Your list is very helpful; thank you for sharing it! Even though I have been training for many years, it’s good to review these skills as a refresher!
July 25th, 2012 @ 11:32 pm
thank you for your list . it is very useful in my study.
August 22nd, 2012 @ 2:55 am
today i wanted to differentiate hard skills and soft skills and i’ve got it from your website..thanks.
September 25th, 2012 @ 12:49 am
thank to help me,i like this site Hartley .i aware with Hard skill and soft skill’s
October 15th, 2012 @ 3:35 am
I was kept oblivious to the fact that skills could actually be categorised in this manner but i am grateful i came into contact with this site that has enlightened me. Thanks a million.
October 23rd, 2012 @ 6:22 am
good list of soft skills.We can go on adding to the list depending on our experiences
October 23rd, 2012 @ 8:08 am
it is a good lisrt of thing
keep it comeing
October 28th, 2012 @ 4:41 am
thank to help me,you have done a great job in developing this list,i like this site
October 29th, 2012 @ 5:02 am
Very good and useful list to keep in mind and refer back to. Thank you for putting together.
January 30th, 2013 @ 9:52 pm
Reliance
Traditional, life long, professional, and natural
Son of Zeno of Citium
Who loves family, being part of a team, and learning
Who submissive to natural law, unmoved, and indifferent
Who needs a song, youthfulness to be wise, and dance
Who gives dreams, friendship, and innocence
Who fears old age, the worst, and the lack of
Who would like to see upheaval, every purpose, and another world
Resident of Liberty Island
Clemons
After completing your bio-poem, read it over. Then reflect on how this soft skill will help you in your new career after graduation. 100 word minimum
Reliance is being a part of a tradition which is the part of everyone’s life. It shows that you value a customary pattern which helps to enjoy your work schedule. Reliance is a duty and shows that “I can”. Reliance will take care of the minutes for making good judgments on or about the unexpected so the hours will take care of themselves. Your reliance to yourself will succeed and fail but with it you can do more and you will deserve it. The ability to be reliable will show a pattern of consistency which will aid in lifetime of learning and achievement.
February 20th, 2013 @ 10:32 pm
[...] determining one’s success or failure. Instead, these are often characterized as personality traits and any effort to improve personal competencies is classified as self-help. Ignore any such [...]
March 7th, 2013 @ 3:25 pm
Some of what you list are indeed “soft-skills”: but soft-skills by definition should also refer to the rudimentary skills, such as; abilty to communicate by speaking and writing coherently / telephone etiquette / commom sense. Emotional Intelligence is arguably NOT a soft skill-it is not learnt or aquired easily and not all young workers would be expected to demonstrate this trait, which is usually aquired over time with the benefit of experience.
March 12th, 2013 @ 11:08 pm
Thanks for your effort in making it more informative and useful.
March 16th, 2013 @ 2:01 pm
Hi,
This was a great list. I just spent 3 hours going through and writing down my competencies for each one. (don’t worry they’re not listed here)
To comment on your idea of problem solving as a skill, the engineer in me says that problem solving is a skill in itself. There are particular steps to being efficient in solving problems (being logical and rational helps) and not everyone is good at it. Think De Bono Six Hat vs Governmental Debate.
How this fits into your two categories is not so clear because it’s broader than both. But I’ll try anyway:
Problem solving for self comes after self-awareness. Knowing why you don’t do something doesn’t help if you don’t have the skills to fix it. The problem solving part comes into play where you identify the issue, then find the info/tools/person to fix it. The realm of life coaching I guess.
The people category is the realm of every manager out there fighting people fires every day. Someone isn’t doing something right, someone is having a bad day, someone didn’t show up, or deeper, I have a difficult report that I can’t shift or fire (which is on your list). What you have to do to make them effective or to sideline them is a problem solving skill.
Which brings me to a missing skill.
Observation. And beyond observation, what I call ‘dot joining’ (if you have a better word other than causality I’m all ears). Noticing changes in people’s behaviour, noticing when/how people do, say things then also working out how that affects their actions, what that means and how to use it if need be are all very powerful tools. They link in with a lot of your items. ‘influence, coaching, management’ etc etc.
You might say that it’s implicit in each of these things, and I agree, but for a lot of people it’s not.
Some people might think they’re not a good manager, just a good communicator, but maybe they just aren’t that observant. Going from “this is what I think about this (because I’m guessing)” to “this is what I think about this because I noticed this this and this” is a basis of a good manager.
Same with influence. Maybe you don’t think you’re good at influencing people, but are you observant enough to know HOW particular people can be influenced?
Not great at selling even though you’re a
great communicator? Maybe you’re not observing your buyer enough?
Anyhow, food for thought. Women tend to be naturally more observant than men (studies back this) and I guess most people don’t think about being observant (or joining dots) much, but these are developable skills. Ask a poker player if they can get better at reading people.
Lastly becoming good at observing people’s behaviour and good problem solving skills aren’t easy to develop, but they are very valuable and can put you ahead of the rest.
Oh one other thing I just realised in this rant. Especially in this financial time and especially in the US (I’m in Australia). It’s resourcefulness.
Being able to do the same things, get the same results without needing more of something is a great skill. Something I think we’re losing a bit.
How many phone numbers can you remember off the top of your head?
You have a problem but no one’s around to talk to, no internet, can you work it out in your own head?
You’re a manager with a fixed head count. Who in your team can be pushed to put in more? Who wants to step up to up skill?
Thinking to do more with less is again I think in that problem solving category. And in the position the global economy is in, people who are resourceful problem solvers should not have any issues getting a job. =)
March 16th, 2013 @ 2:16 pm
I hope I’m not spamming comments here but I just realised my example of De Bono Six Hat vs Governmental Debate would be classed as a hard skill. Something you can learn at school or in a book.
But still, I think problem solving is a soft skill because how you approach a problem changes depending on a situation.
Are the type of person to clear the paper jam from the photocopier, get an intern to do clear it or just kick it until it works for your one copy? =)
March 19th, 2013 @ 1:24 pm
Thank you for this list, it’s very useful. I’m going to borrow some skills for my resume ))
April 29th, 2013 @ 9:00 am
this is a good resource
April 30th, 2013 @ 8:16 am
This is a good list.
May 1st, 2013 @ 9:34 am
great list!! im gunna use some of this in my future days..