Soft Skills List – 28 Skills to Working Smart

I originally published this soft skills list in June 2011.  I am honored to discover that more than 500,000 of you have since read my soft skills list and found it helpful.

There are 28 soft skills essential to your career success.  I wished I knew about many of these earlier in my career.   I want to share them so I can empower you to work smart and achieve more.  I look forward to your comments. ...  read more

What are Soft Skills?

I must admit I had no idea what are soft skills when I graduated from college.   I quickly realized on my first job at McKinsey how my lack of some soft skills were affecting my performance reviews.  Here are some of the soft skills I lacked at that time.

  • Stress Management and People Management Skills – At 22 years old, I was assigned an assistant at McKinsey.  I treated her horribly when I was stressed out and I was immature to think I have the right to since she worked for me.   Needless to say, she was NOT jumping to help me all the time.
  • Confidence and Communication Skills – I was book smart and had great ideas on projects, but sometimes I was afraid to speak up when there were senior people in the room.  I had no idea how to structure my comments and I didn’t have the confidence to think they would care what I think.  McKinsey expects Analysts to voice their opinions.
  • Resilience / Office politics skills – I was blamed for something I didn’t do on a project.  It took me a few years to move on from this one.  My manager succeeded in blaming me because he knew how to play office politics better than me.  I had no close support from any partners.

After working 15 years in consulting with 20+ Fortune 500 companies dealing with all kinds of people, personalities, and unexpected situations, I have a much greater appreciation for how important soft skills are to achieve business success.   So I would like to offer my own definition of “what are soft skills” in practical terms (see below). ...  read more