Soft Skills you didn't know you needed!

In the 13 years I’ve worked as a facilitator, I’ve realised that soft skills are as important as chocolate cake. If not done right, it can leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Whipping up a delicious chocolate cake comes down to precision and balance, and that’s exactly how soft skills can transform your interactions with people. It also helps that both chocolate and soft skills leave you with feel-good vibes, and sometimes, even better focus!

Impressive soft skills can motivate others, help in decision-making, create healthy team dynamics, transform leadership… the list is endless. The best part? Everyone then wants a bit of that chocolate cake.

So, what are soft skills and how can you use them in your day-to-day life? Soft skills are personal attributes or skills you use in interactions with other people, abilities that help you think through situations and apply yourself with determination, focus and clarity. Some of you are using them right now. Should I continue reading this or is it just a waste of my time?!

Let’s break down two of the most indispensable soft skills. (There are more, of course. Stay tuned for the update.)

Communication

Humans are champions at communication. You’ve been doing it since you were a baby. But…

• Is all communication good communication?

• And is communication risk-free?

  
  

Let’s first understand what communication is. Any time a message is shared and there is a sender and a receiver, it’s communication. How the message is sent also matters – the channel of communication. In the 1800s, no one would have dreamed of a telegraph as a mode of communication. In the 1900s, no one would have imagined there might be cellular phones. In the 2000s, no one would have been prepared for the boom in streaming services. As the channels of communication have diversified, the way a message reaches its audience has evolved.

Now, when it comes to one-to-one or team communication in 2025, chances are you can’t always see each other (think Whatsapp messages, Slack channels) or don’t want to see each other (all those meetings where you’re the only one with their video on!). It becomes harder to understand context and read non-verbal cues. Remember Ursula in The Little Mermaid who famously declares, “Don’t underestimate the power of body language!”

So, what’s left of communication? A series of messages hanging in space. And I’m not talking about holograms. (Sorry, Star Wars fans!) It’s often left up to you to decode messages. And even in-person meetings and conversations can leave the best of you struggling. Why?

Because thrown into the mix is a special little fiend called noise who loves to disrupt communication! Just like the popular 31 flavours of Baskin Robbins, you can have innumerable types of noise… okay, maybe not 31.

External or physical noise can be a real limitation to communication. (Those of you living or working near railway stations or construction sites know what I’m talking about.) It not just interferes with communicating a message, it impacts the emotional state of the sender and the receiver. End result, you could be irritable, stressed or ready to give up!

Digital noise  is another critter. Video and audio interruptions don’t help with the clarity of messages. And any other interferences that may halt a message coming through, only add to communication barriers. (There are even all sorts of coloured noise– white, pink, violet– with research demonstrating some of their positive impacts.)

And let’s not forget the power of semantic noise. How words themselves can turn into hurdles in communication.

-          Too much jargon

-          Ambiguous or vague phrases

-          Cultural contexts

-          Language barriers

All of these can result in incomplete, unclear or mixed messages.

Jackie Chan, of Rush Hour and The Karate Kid fame (and of course, who can forget Police Story, Armour of God… the list goes on), has openly shared his struggles with understanding American references while shooting Hollywood movies. He’s not alone. Many of us experience communication gaps because of semantic noise.

But there is one major interference in communication that you need to be aware of, and that is internal noise! The voice inside your head telling you, Hey! You missed a deadline, or You need to catch the last train, or Why did they eat my last piece of chocolate? (See, everything comes round back to chocolate.) But seriously, the number of things going on in your life, plus any stressors at the workplace, any doubts you may harbour, even biases you may have (nope, not the K-Pop ones) are enough to interfere with communication.  

And this means that noise can mess up the way you send/create/write a message, and the way you receive/perceive/read a message! What can you do about it?

Always check that you’re clear in how you frame your message.

• Have you included necessary details?

• Is it easy to understand or is there too much jargon?

• Are your expectations or commitments clearly outlined?

Now check that everything is right.

• Have you missed out anything crucial?

• Did you by chance get anything wrong? Spell check. Fact check. Cross check.

Check your tone and your feelings.

• Does your language make you seem impolite? Or worse, make you seem like you’re angry?

• Are you speaking or writing with highly charged emotions? Pause. Reset.

• Are you focussing on your feelings or the situation at hand?

That’s your checklist. (Every pun intended.)

Now you have a great place to start if you want your communication to go smoothly. There are no guarantees that you will avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations. Communication is never risk-free. But awareness of these factors can turn your communication into something meaningful. Whether it is interpersonal interactions, team-based projects or even tasks on your to-do list.

I promised two essential soft skills that you need. So, here’s the other one.

Perspective Taking

The ability to consider different points of view falls more under the umbrella of emotional intelligence. But it’s something that many people don’t talk about. Perspective taking is a crucial area in development psychology – over time, children understand that everyone has different thoughts, everyone has a distinct point of view. Think about it. You may have believed that cotton comes from the clouds, until it was pointed out that cotton comes from a plant (okay, that was only me). Or you may have thought that watermelon is the most phenomenal fruit, until you met someone who disagreed with this.

Perspective building starts when you are a child but it continues into your adulthood. It is a core skill that helps

• Build interpersonal relationships

• Navigate group dynamics

• Aid decision-making

• Unlock creative ideation

• Identify and resolve conflict

• Understand client and customer journeys

• Foster intercultural understanding

  
  

When it comes to taking on others’ perspectives, you might be your biggest obstacle. Resistance to perspectives can stem from the need to have a defence mechanism. “This is comfortable, this is where I’ll stay.” “How can I be wrong?”

Resistance also happens when it is tied into self-worth. A lack of self-belief, stress about an outcome or the long road ahead can stop us from taking others’ perspectives into consideration. “I’m no good at this.” “How will I manage the new way?”

Being open to new perspectives & understanding people’s thoughts and reasoning go a long way in both your personal and professional life. Just like Evelyn discovers in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

So, how do you cultivate perspective?

Practise taking on different perspectives.

Like most higher order thinking skills, perspective taking is carried out within specific locations in the human brain. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has unearthed some interesting work, pointing out that engaging socially helps activate ideation, innovation and perspective taking. The more you engage in perspective-building exercises, the better you get at accepting and considering perspectives.

Activities could range from role plays to understand workplace dynamics (a team working on a high-pressure deadline project),

to reverse brainstorming (make the problem worse to arrive at solutions – “How can we be less productive?”),

to even perspective-taking debates (debating on a theme with views opposite to your own).

Build active listening into your process.

Simply hearing what others say doesn’t translate into active listening. (Remember all the times you were scrolling your feed and said yes to something before you realised what it was!) You are processing sounds in your environment, background voices, multiple conversations, and even the voice in your head. Your mind often wanders during a conversation. When will I finish that report? Why are they disregarding what I’m saying? Any minute now, I can share my perspective!

Practise active listening by doing exactly that.

No interruptions, no sharing your opinion, just listening.

Minimise your distractions, even if that means putting a task on hold.

Paraphrase what a person says to ensure you have understood what they are speaking about.

While solutions are important, rushing to fix a problem without thorough understanding can do more harm than good. Active listening works best when you are listening with the intention to gather information, learn what is being communicated and understand rather than respond.

Develop empathy as a core tool for interactions.

Having the ability to know another’s thoughts and feelings can seem like a superpower you wish you had! Just think of Professor X.

But if you work on developing your empathy, it can help reduce your cognitive bias. This means you can shift the focus from yourself to the world around you. (It’s not always what you want or what you need, but what the situation requires.) Empathy also improves conflict resolution as you can identify underlying needs or fears. (Was your partner upset that you missed dinner or upset that you weren’t keeping them in the loop about your work life? Sometimes, yes, it is about that dinner though.)

Empathy at the workplace allows you to be a better leader who can support and motivate your team, understand stakeholders, and build trust with people you work with on a short and long-term basis.

Practising emotion recognition (silently recognising what someone is feeling during a workplace interaction),

The 3 second pause (allowing thoughtful responses rather than reactions in challenging situations),

And empathy interviews (asking open-ended questions with the intention to understand) are powerful tools to develop empathy.

Like all things, perspective taking requires practice and patience, but it deeply enriches how you see the world and how you interact with those around you. And it’s a soft skill that can be applied across any aspect of your life. Reflective and critical thinking emerge as an added bonus.

So, there you have it. Two top soft skills which when deftly applied are as good as that chocolate cake your mum baked, or the one you order every year for your birthday!

That chocolate cake my mum baked

Stay tuned for more soft skills, learning bites, and a dose of humour. And if you want to explore and hone your soft skills, then my programme Amplify might just be what you need.

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