Skills That Change Your Life

You can be a strong specialist and still hit a ceiling because of your character. Why soft skills matter more than hard ones today — and why kindness is a superpower.

The skills and the attitude that change a person’s life.

I think most people have heard of soft skills and hard skills.

Soft skills are what we develop in ourselves as a personality: an easy character, the ability to negotiate, emotional intelligence, punctuality, attentiveness and so on.

Hard skills are the ability to write code, to design, to sell, to lay tiles or to drive a car.

You can be a very “hard” specialist in terms of hard skills, and still find that your soft skills won’t let you take the position you want in a company or reach the income level you’re aiming for.

The way I see it, soft skills matter more than hard ones today. Because first of all we’re a personality, and only after that a specialist in something.

I once worked with a videographer who was an extra-class specialist. The best in his field when it came to shooting and editing. But the way he talked to clients forced me to end our collaboration.

As a counterargument you might say that “being a good person isn’t a profession.” I’d agree with you. But when a socially adequate person with an easy character also happens to be a specialist, that’s a golden ticket. Someone like that moves up the career ladder fast and hits their business goals.

And even if you’re not building a career or a business, simply starting to treat people well will only work in your favour.

I believe kindness is a superpower. There isn’t a single reason to be harsh and angry with the people you work with. When we show care and attention to our colleagues and clients, that approach gives us a hundred times more than demands, pressure and aggression.

Maybe you don’t consider yourself a people person. I understand you. For a very long stretch of my life I didn’t like people either. But if you decide to at least try treating others well, the results might surprise you.

If this approach works well in the business world, imagine how much more powerful it is in family life. How much happier our families would be if we learned to master our emotions and answer aggression with kindness, shouting with a calm tone, anger with love, and a loved one’s outbursts with patience…

Some of you might say: “Why should I be the one showing all these good qualities and demonstrating love and understanding? Let him do it!” You may expect that, fairly speaking, he should be doing exactly what you do. But in reality that often doesn’t happen.

Fairness kills everything in a family, whereas love covers a multitude of mistakes and forgives.

So it doesn’t matter who steps into the process first, the man or the woman. What matters is that at least one of them starts, and the other, feeling that warmth and love, will sooner or later join in too.

A drop of warmth does more than a whole bucket of ice water.

So which skills are you developing in yourself? And what approach to life do you consider wise?

Continued in 10 Universal Skills.