I still remember like it were today how I had an intensive conversation with the dean of the Academy for Advertising Graphics Printing in the early 2000s. I asked him what skills or tools he thought would be state of the art in the future. He replied with a smug smile:
“Everything that matters in professional life are soft skills. You inevitably learn the hard skills when you do your job.”
I was not sure if it was meant to be a joke and this statement left me wondering. Over time, however, I gained many experiences that made me agree with him more than I would have thought.
But how did he arrive at this thesis? At school and during our higher education, we are encouraged to learn as much content as possible, in order to graduate with a good grade. There is less focus on personal development and social skills. But in professional life, which is changing rapidly due to digitalization, it is our soft skills that drive us to learn new things and develop ourselves further. And they help us to network and use group dynamics to achieve common goals.
In my career, I recognized the need to constantly reinvent myself. I see my experiences as a basis for meeting the challenges of the future. With some of my character traits I had a solid foundation, others I had to painstakingly learn. These experiences also taught me to look at my social environment differently. Today, I am very grateful for an incredible number of great encounters with people who brought different life experiences and mindsets into my life. I was able to learn a lot about myself from each of them.
The complexity of life circumstances, environmental influnece, human emotions, interpersonal relationships is fascinating. Let's take a closer look.
Soft Skills that Shape our Professional Life
According to research, there are core soft skills that are particularly important in our professional lives: Resilience, communication skills, social skills, the ability to learn, self-organization & ownership, the ability to work in a team and much more. Different soft skills are rather expected for management positions than for operational jobs. The working environment and corporate culture also play a role. Together with my co-authors, I would like to share our thoughts and experiences on the different soft skills with you.
We have conducted conversations with each other in interview mode to provide different perspectives. The interviews always focus on a specific soft skill topic and will be published successively on this blog: from resilience and communication to leadership and many more skills. They are intended for reading, browsing and discussing. We look forward to your comments and feedback!
Theses are our currently published topics: