4 Effective Ways to Ensure Your Team’s Soft Skills Keep Improving

Many people just assume that soft skills relate to being a good communicator, and maybe a team player. But this is wide of the mark.  Many companies are starting to prioritize skills like critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and flexibility more than ever.



According to the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report,” analytical thinking holds a position as the most valued skill among employers. 70% of companies consider it vital, although skills like resilience, flexibility, and agility feature strongly.

With this in mind, it makes sense for any line manager to thank about how to improve the soft skills of their team members. In this article, we’ll look at four simple strategies that can help you with the process.

#1. Make Soft Skills a Continuous Learning Priority

Too often, the mistake that companies make when trying to improve soft skills is the lack of permanency. Too many organizations treat improvement as if it’s some kind of supplementary, side program rather than a critical aspect that lies at the core of their business.



But of course, there are industries that recognize the importance of continuous learning.  Take fields like public service. Here, the wide range of scenarios makes the skill ceiling incredibly high. Some cases might involve getting a wife and her children away from a violent husband. Other cases might involve trying to keep a young woman from relapsing into her addictions. Thus, the learning never stops.

Sometimes, the best learning outcomes are achieved by a combination of conventional education and real-world experience. This is why you’ll find many people in this field opting for a Master of Social Work online degree so they can continue studying while working in the field.

As Cleveland State University explains, despite the coursework being 100% online, students get to undergo around 900 experiential learning hours. Take a good, hard look at your company and see if you can push for even a fraction of that. They don’t have to take up doctoral courses, but every additional certification and workshop matters.

#2. Ensure Feedback is a Routine Thing

If you were to read the annual reports from large companies, you might see many references to improvements or new training programs for employees. However, do these reports actually reflect the on-the-ground reality?

Data from the Pew Research Center showed that the number of workers who were either ‘extremely’ or ‘very satisfied’ with training opportunities is actually decreasing at the rate of 5% to 10% a year.  This shouldn’t continue!

One big reason for this is that training opportunities lack any sort of follow-through guidance. You can’t expect to offer training in assertiveness or negotiation and then never bring it up again after the training phase. As a manager or a leader within your company, you need to ensure that a mirror is being held up and constructive feedback is given liberally.

There are several ways to make it feel natural and not forced.

• Normalize quick check-ins
• Document any recurring themes
• Don’t focus only on the negative

Likewise, rather than holding feedback-only sessions, which can get awkward quickly, you could provide feedback in an existing framework. The first idea that might come to mind would be to include it as part of regular meetings. However, do consider the implications of giving out feedback in a group setting. It might be better to only provide feedback in one-on-one situations.

#3. Ensure Skills Match Your Future Business Needs

It’s important to understand which skills you encourage or facilitate your team to develop. You have to actually assess whether these skills matter for your company. If client dealings and meetings aren’t focus areas, then a skill like negotiation isn’t really relevant.

The best way to determine what skills to prioritize would be on the basis of your future requirements. Aneesh Raman, a LinkedIn expert on workforce, tells Business Insider that the economy is resetting skills on the basis of AI. This implies that being adaptable to the changing world is the most important skill, which is definitely food for thought...

In fact, a recent LinkedIn report claimed that 50% of jobs held by its members would be disrupted by AI, and that’s something of a concern. So, perhaps skills like adaptability are indeed what your team should be focusing on.



Likewise, many companies are running programs to check for skill gaps in their employees. Once identified, HR guides the employee toward the appropriate training resource. Of course, it’s crucial that these efforts don’t feel like a punishment. Because the last thing anyone needs is for a skills gap to be treated in a negative way … worse still if their coworkers know about it.

#4. Ensure Improvements are Actually Rewarded

As a manager, you probably already understand the power of recognition in encouraging behavior. Yet, despite this awareness, it’s easy to forget to apply this principle with soft skills training. Remembering to reward your team, whether that be via recognition or perks, for improvement in soft skills is vital.

After all, many employees might feel like skilling up with software tools will give them a raise, but being a ‘better communicator’ won't. This reflects a failing in leadership, as they treat soft skills in an abstract manner. Here are some good options you could try:

• Create a peer-nomination system
• Link soft-skill improvement to new work opportunities
• Connect their improvements to how it has helped the company

Another fantastic way to show your team that their efforts are being noticed is to talk about it in performance reviews.

You could start with how they’re about to get a 3.5/5, but then point out how their soft skills have improved. As a result, their score rises to 4/5. In this manner, if you can tie soft skills to career advancement, it can make a big difference in how seriously employees approach learning.

Wrap Up

At the end of the day, developing soft skills in your team is always going to be a continuous process, but a necessary one. While technical skills will achieve a great many things, it’s actually a team with soft skills that gives your company that bit of extra edge.

Don't you think that the sooner you create a culture that treats these skills with the same respect as hard or technical skills, the better?