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Soft Skills

Soft skills is a broad term that covers personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

These are a cluster of productive personality traits that characterise one's relationships. These skills can include social graces, communication abilities, language skills, personal habits, cognitive or emotional empathy, time management, teamwork and leadership traits.

I will explain each of the attributes separately.

Social Graces
Social graces is the ability to be approachable and being able to strike up a conversation or engage in small talk. This is really a skill one must possess and own fully because it is very important when networking. For you to build networks you have to engage and communicate with other people. It is of paramount importance that you listen attentively and pay attention. If you show that you're listening to the other party, that will make them talk more and they will definitely listen to your story when you start speaking.

Being sociable and easy to talk make your life generally easier in any new setting. Of course it will be awkward for most people but the trick is to smile a lot and not sheepishly shy.

Communication Abilities
To effectively communicate it needs two parties where one talks and the other listens. You give each other ample time to talk as you listen and make a sensible conversation.

Remember to listen and speak very audibly as communication is a two way process. Be confident when you speak and speak as a matter of fact. Speak with conviction as this will remove any doubt from you and to the listener. A good way to practice how to speak naturally is to give small random speeches to yourself. These will help you with your speech fluency and pronunciation of words. Do this repeatedly.

Language Skills

Language skills and proficiency is a very good trait because it helps one and creates conversation in most places allover the word. To improve your language skillset, read and watch tv content.

When you read you learn new words and how to use them in sentences. This you can apply in written words and in spoken languages. When you watch tv you learn new words and phrases and also how to use them in the present tense when speaking. The content that you watch and read edifies your brain and language skillset.

Be willing to learn other languages before and when you travel. Apply what is called "ultra learning" which is an intense learning environment that cultures the brain to learn and store new words from new languages. This will help strike conversations and make new connections.

Personal Habits
These are the things that you do habitually everyday. These maybe good or bad so there is need to be very conscious of these. Habits are things that can affect your social life without intent and without your knowledge. Be careful of how you do things and treat other peoples belongings surrounding you.

An easy example is how you use other peoples personal utensils. It may be out of habit that you do not clean after yourself at home and you have someone who does it for you. If you use the utensils and dump them in the sink for the owner to wash you will have problems. Treat other peoples belongings with respect.

Other personal habits vary it can be the way you talk or write. Just be careful and aware of the surroundings and just make sure you do not step on many toes whilst at it.

Emotional Intelligence
EI is the ability to discern the other peoples reaction towards yourself and others. This is a very important soft skillset.

You can be able to tell whether you're engaged in a good or bad conversation by reading a person's body language, voice tone and the answers you are given. The ability to interpret these visual and not so visual communication will tell you what the other party may not be purporting.

Time Management
Time is of essence and termed to be very expensive as time lost is never regained. Doing your things timeously and also keeping and maintaining it is very commendable.

The ability to keep time and appointments speaks volumes and it is very respectable. You show and earn respect by being timeous.

Teamwork
Teamwork is an effort that comes from each and every individual that is in a team. The combined efforts are termed teamwork. The spirit of teamwork is needed in each team member.

The result is often better when more people give an input rather than one person's work. Teamwork is seriously needed and you work towards one goal and get it done. Every individuals effort is collectively important. You need to take part and participate in teamwork duties as well as combining all the efforts.

Leadership Traits
This is a prerequisite to every individual. The ability to lead others and successfully executing your duties.

Leadership is often perfected by participating in leading roles and volunteering to steer or lead any group activities. Be willing to do the extra work and learn serve others selflessly.