Those who participated in the workshop of Chantal Joie La Marle and Fatou NDiaye during the EVE seminar already know it: before developing new soft-skills, it is good to be aware of the ones you have and to know how to highlight them. For the others, here are our tips and tricks to make the most of your soft skills. As the annual appraisal interviews approach, it can be useful !

Map your interpersonal skills with method

You have soft skills, but you may not indicate them on your CV. And that's a shame. But, maybe you could do your soft curriculum ? Take a list of soft-skills and identify what your strengths are, your areas to strengthen and your dead points. You will know what you can already put forward as soft-skills and what you should develop on (insofar as it seems that these are qualities expected in your job or in the next one you are aiming for?).

Training exercise

At the end of each project in which you participate, give your self-feedback on the learnings or reinforcements acquired during the mission. In front of each reinforced " hard " skill (writing, budget management, group leadership, etc.), identify the " soft " skills you have implemented (assertiveness, conflict management, creativity, etc.).

Estimate the added value attributable to the implementation of your soft skills

Does a project demonstrate equivalent value creation if it is led by a robot (or a human who would behave more or less like a robot) or by a human using his or her soft skills? On a certain number of indicators (accuracy, speed of execution, etc.), there is a chance that the robot will always win the match.

But as soon as an objective involves taking into account the medium and long term, requires situational, relational and/or emotional intelligence, the human has every chance of taking revenge. Except that if the robot can deliver an account of its efficient operations in a few moments, the human will have difficulty quantifying the contribution of its soft skills. And yet, if not finding indicators of the same order as those with which we evaluate the performance of machines, you will have to objectify the value created by the use of your soft skills.

Training exercise

Refer to the strategic expectations of your company and/or entity to identify what is considered essential for the proper conduct of the business. For example, you are asked to keep costs under control. You will be able to put together a whole series of soft-skills necessary to achieve this objective not only in the short term (negotiation skills, assertiveness, rigor, etc.), but also in the medium term (creativity to imagine new forms of fair " deals " with your suppliers ; strength of conviction to get teams to adhere to a change in habits to the benefit of a reduction in current expenses, etc.) and in the long term (potential for implementation). the scale of the initiatives carried out by your creativity, the increased commitment of the teams in connection with the quality of the professional experience at your side...).

Communicate about your soft skills in professional grammar

You now know what you are worth in terms of soft-skills and you intend to value your level of skills as well as your potential to increase maturity in this area. You will therefore have to communicate with your superiors, for example during evaluation interviews, about this dimension of your value. The challenge will be to professionalize a conversation that is often reduced to the personal qualities, temperament, state of mind and even goodwill of individuals. You will therefore have to position your interpersonal skills as skills that produce added value.

Training exercise

Explore the semantic field of each soft-skill you have identified acquired. This 360° perspective of the lexicon will help you to synthesize the contributions of competence to projects, so as to then put it into perspective in individual and collective successes.

For example : you have identified curiosity among your soft skills. This brings together ideas of open-mindedness, interest in novelty, quality of listening, enthusiasm, diversity of interests, general culture... And all this contributes to the fact that you are an ace of transversality and synergies. Moreover, didn't this contribute to the success of a project that took on a whole new dimension when you associated several areas of expertise and trades ?