10 Soft Skills Examples

Discover soft skills examples that you can develop to ensure that you are well-rounded for any new or existing role, no matter what your seniority level is. Among employees with similar backgrounds and technical skills, having excellent soft skills will help you stay ahead of the competition, perform significantly better, and improve relationships with your colleagues. Here we'll explore a list of soft skills relevant to every employee across all industries.

1. Effective Communication

Effective communication is a written and verbal skill that enables you to clearly relay the right message while also considering the tone and delivery. This soft skill example is especially important for industries like sales and customer service that involve constant communication with customers. Being well-versed in communicating in a simple and easy-to-understand manner allows you to effectively address customer needs and avoid further misunderstandings. Similarly, being able to effectively communicate ideas and opinions with colleagues is also crucial in keeping a constructive but positive culture within your team, no what industry you’re in. 

EdApp’s course on Effective Communication is created to help you improve your communication skills in the workplace, especially with regard to speaking directly, publicly, or virtually. You can take this course from EdApp’s free course library and complete it at your own convenience. 

2. Time Management

Another essential soft skill example is time management, which is the ability to use your time efficiently and productively. This can be done by learning how to plan and prioritize tasks or activities accordingly. In a fast-paced industry, having time management skills will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed and get things done despite the pressure and tight deadlines. This allows you to eliminate distractions and procrastination that can be barriers to progress. Aside from better prioritization and organization of tasks, time management also entails using tools that will help speed up the workflow. 

Through EdApp’s course on The Ultimate Guide to Personal Productivity, you’ll be able to recognize your own personal work style and habits. You’ll also learn different techniques on time management and attention to detail so you can perform more work. 

3. Problem-Solving 

Problem-solving is a soft skill example that ensures that you can identify an issue and resolve them with logical, timely, and relevant solutions. With this skill, you’ll be able to handle different challenges or difficult situations in the business or even among colleagues. Recognizing the common issues in your industry is the first step toward planning and selecting the best strategies to resolve them. Being able to evaluate whether they’re working or not is also a part of this skill, ensuring a holistic approach to problem-solving. 

EdApp provides the Problem Solver course to train you in solving problems with a systematic and logical approach. This course highlights creative problem solving and its importance. It also covers the different principles and types of creative problem solving, and types of decision-making for any situation. 

4. Creative Thinking

Creative thinking varies depending on the industry, but in essence, it is the ability to generate distinctive and innovative ideas and strategies from a new perspective. Being creative means that you are a step ahead in solving complex problems compared to sticking with traditional methods. This way, it becomes easier to find unique opportunities in certain situations, enabling you to approach your tasks in interesting ways. 

5. Adaptability

Having adaptability skills means that you can adjust to any changes or unexpected situations with ease. As any business or industry can be unpredictable, being adaptable allows you to remain open to other or better ideas, strategies, and approaches. Aside from being flexible to changes, another key aspect of adaptability is being able to unlearn certain techniques and processes to explore new possibilities. This soft skill example is especially useful when dealing with unfamiliar situations, especially when you’re working in an ever-changing industry. 

To learn this skill, you can take EdApp’s Adaptability course where you’ll learn what adaptability means for your businesses and how it can be applied to organizational situations like merging, restructuring, and changing technologies.

6. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to think rationally and systematically to create the best possible solutions. This skill allows you to analyze the whole picture of a situation and clearly recognize the main problem/s instead of simply making assumptions. This means that you rely on facts and constantly question ideas so you can identify and consider all possible solutions. It’s not enough to simply solve problems in a quick way. With critical thinking, you can effectively solve them with the most relevant solution. It is especially helpful for employees involved in making decisions and solving problems. 

7. Negotiation Skills

Negotiation skills enable you to be appropriately assertive in selling or closing deals, all while considering mutual expectations and benefits for the business and for the customer. Being a good negotiator means you won’t easily concede to client objections because you’re prepared with compelling alternative proposals or solutions. Having this skill will help you effectively encourage customers to reconsider your offers.                                 

If you want to learn this skill, you can start by studying the basics of negotiation with EdApp’s Negotiation Fundamentals course. To further master the art of negotiation, discover the different strategies and tactics to be a successful negotiator with Advanced Negotiation. You can also make sure you’re properly informed of your product and services during negotiations by taking product owner training courses. 

8. Empathy 

Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand problems and pain points from the customer’s perspective. Giving importance to soft skills like these enables you to tune in to the verbal and non-verbal cues of your customers, and validate their feelings, concerns, and frustrations. This way, you can be more compassionate and responsive in dealing with the problems of customers. As a result, you’ll be able to work on providing assistance and solutions that will satisfy the customers. Having empathy also serves as a way to build better relationships with customers.

Contrary to common misconception, empathy is not a fixed skill but rather, can be learned. Develop and strengthen this skill with courses like EdApp’s Operating with Empathy course. This course highlights the importance of empathy and provides techniques for developing this skill.

9. Active Listening

Active listening is a soft skill for customer service that enables you to fully pay attention to a customer without interrupting before thoughtfully responding. By developing this skill, the problems and needs of your customers can be clearly heard and understood. People who seek assistance need to feel validated about their concerns, which is why it’s especially important for an industry like customer service to foster active listening. This helps improve customer satisfaction, resulting in a deeper sense of trust and connection. 

To learn this skill, you can take EdApp’s Active Listening course, which highlights the main principles and barriers of active listening. It also provides other techniques for improving communication with customers. 

10. Positive Thinking

Having positive thinking skills means that you have an optimistic approach to dealing with situations, even when they can get challenging. Being a positive thinker enables you to remain motivated when handling stressful situations. Instead of immediately feeling defeated, you rather get even more determined to resolve issues or problems. Overall, it gives you the confidence to conquer any situation while remaining calm and productive. 

EdApp’s Personal and Team Resilience course equips you with the necessary basic skills in handling whatever life and work throw your way and emerge wiser, stronger, and more positive. It covers topics such as defining resilience, coping with adversity, the role of resilience in the workplace, how to build workplace resilience, and how to form cohesive and high-performance teams.