While each career path has its unique hard skills and expectations, recruiters and employers alike rank certain soft skills at the top of their list during hiring. One soft skill that transcends industries and roles is a person’s people skills.
People skills are the glue that holds professional relationships together. They help professionals communicate effectively, build trust, and collaborate smoothly with colleagues, clients, and superiors. “Trust-building has been paramount in my relationships with team members, direct reports, and client partners,” Alex Suggs, cofounder and partner of Different, says. “Without trust, I wouldn’t have been able to get the best out of my teams or help client partners work through complex and often difficult challenges with their culture change initiatives.”
With the right people skills, navigating different personalities and work styles doesn’t have to be daunting. Being able to fully embrace these skills can help take a career to the next level. “Curiosity has guided me to incorporate user feedback and insights to constantly improve our product and industry reputation; it also allows me to lead with empathy and resilience, which makes the journey more enjoyable and the outcome more impactful,” says Sarah Lux-Lee, CEO of Mindr.
People skills are invaluable for any workplace.
To identify the most important people skills, we sought advice from diversity leaders, business coaches, and top executives. From developing cultural competence to excelling in negotiation tactics, these people skills can significantly enhance your career.
Cultural competence
Cultural competence is essential for every employee, as it significantly contributes to career success. It involves understanding, respecting, and valuing diverse backgrounds and perspectives, fostering an inclusive work environment.
For example, I encountered team members from various cultural backgrounds while working on an international project. By actively learning about their culture, communication styles, and work ethics, I built a strong rapport and trust within the team.
This cultural competence allowed us to collaborate more effectively, leading to innovative solutions and successful project outcomes.
My manager recognized my ability to navigate and appreciate cultural differences, resulting in a promotion to a leadership position, where I now mentor others on the importance of inclusivity and cultural awareness.
This experience enhanced my career path and underscored the value of cultural competence in achieving personal and organizational goals.
Vivian Acquah CDE, certified diversity executive, Amplify DEI
Active listening
Active listening is one of the most crucial relational skills for career success. Active listening is not just about hearing the words your colleagues say. It’s about truly understanding them as people. This skill makes you a better communicator, collaborator, and negotiator.
I teach my clients to run through the “Four P’s” when trying to understand a workplace situation: People, Priorities, Preferences, and Problems.
People: Who are the key individuals in this situation, and what is their relationship to it? Are they decision-makers, influencers, or doers?
Priorities: What are they focused on in their roles or in the situation? What outcomes are they driving towards?
Preferences: How do they like to communicate? Are there any work-related or personal interests relevant to the situation?
Problems: What challenges do they face in their roles or the situation?
A key ingredient in active listening is humility. You don’t have all the answers, and there’s always something to learn from or about others. Never let your ego take over your relationships.
In my career, active listening has allowed me to connect deeply with my clients and colleagues, driving mutual success and growth. It’s a skill that, when practiced diligently, can lead to profound professional and personal development.
Phoebe Gavin, career and leadership coach, Better With Phoebe
Trust-building
Whether you’re a leader leading an organization or an employee executing day-to-day responsibilities, the ability to cultivate and maintain trust in working relationships is instrumental for finding success in one’s career.
Trust in the workplace involves following through and doing what you say you’ll do, consistently performing at a high caliber, making thoughtful decisions from a place of integrity, maintaining confidentiality and discretion when needed, and trusting others on your team by delegating work appropriately. Without the relational skill of trust-building, an employee will face greater resistance from others and be given less responsibility and autonomy in their work—key factors that inform one’s ability to climb the corporate ladder.
As a culture and DEI consultant, trust-building has been paramount in my relationships with team members, direct reports, and client partners. Without trust, I wouldn’t have been able to get the best out of my teams or help client partners work through complex and often difficult challenges with their culture change initiatives.
Alex Suggs, cofounder and partner, Different
Curiosity
Curiosity is an often-overlooked but essential relational skill that today’s employees need for career success. Asking thoughtful questions is central to this, but curiosity in the workplace should go even further. Having a curious mindset means listening as if you’re wrong, and assuming everyone has something to teach you. It means seeking guidance from unlikely advisors, even (especially) if they are outside your direct line of reporting. It also means requesting feedback proactively and pausing to reflect on how best to implement it to truly grow.
Employing curiosity as a skill has directly enhanced my own career path as a startup CEO, enabling me to foster meaningful relationships with stakeholders, clients, and advocates—all of whom have powered the journey of my company and myself as a leader in unexpected ways. Curiosity has guided me to incorporate user feedback and insights to constantly improve our product and industry reputation.
It also allows me to lead with empathy and resilience, which makes the journey more enjoyable and the outcome more impactful. These actions demonstrate that I operate with a growth-oriented and action-oriented mindset, so I’m taken more seriously as a leader. And, by modeling this behavior for my team, I’ve extended a culture of curiosity across my organization, inspiring others to cultivate the same skills.
Sarah Lux-Lee, CEO, Mindr
Delegation skills
This may be controversial, but I see employees with the strongest ability to delegate as workplace heroes.
These folks keep their eyes on the prize—business outcomes—and keep the work in their “highest and best use.” Then, they utilize their blended teams— employees and non-employees—to distribute work most efficiently. This system ensures a broader set of voices contributes to an inclusive way of work, builds in redundancy, and mitigates risk.
As I’ve watched leaders ascend in their careers, the tone has changed from being the hardest worker to a leader who builds sustainable work models using proper leverage. Today, I am most inspired by leaders who measure impact over hours.
Brea Starmer, CEO and founder, Lions & Tigers
Empathy
Empathy will be something that many will list, and for good reason; but there is a deeper, more scientific and psychological understanding that deepens the impact and ability for empathy to support career success.
And that’s the understanding of the neurochemical impact on people. For me, this is key, and it has been one that has absolutely helped my career path and my authentic empathy and understanding.
While empathy is about sharing and understanding the feelings of others, neurochemical empathy is about understanding how the feelings of others came about and the context in which that happened. Often, the reactions, behaviors, and decisions of others are made without their understanding of the reasons behind them. And so, empathy doesn’t go far enough.
An example is that during times of stress, cortisol levels increase—which has an impact on a person’s risk tolerance. Greater risk avoidance happens, and so more frustration might be felt if a leader avoids risk or makes different decisions. The same is true after periods of success and elevated status—where serotonin spikes, the opposite happens, and more risks are taken.
There are many journals, papers, and books on the subject by many authors—and the skill of being able to understand the cause, effect, impact, and nature of behaviors is a vital skill in high-performing leadership at all levels.
It is a skill that can be honed to enhance a career, and in a way that is ethical, authentic, and impressive.
Jason Perelson, partner, ThinkPlace
Emotional intelligence
The most important relational skill for career success is using your Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, to act intentionally and listen actively—to yourself and others. The best leaders use this skill to get to the heart of a challenge or issue when their team struggles. It helps them separate from their biases or emotions and get curious about the facts—and how to respond productively rather than instinctively out of frustration.
These are the questions I encourage my clients to consider to improve this skill:
- “What outcome do I want in this situation?”
- “How does the other person view the situation?”
- “What open-ended questions should I ask to problem-solve?”
- “What support would I want or need if our roles were reversed?”
Learning this approach was a career accelerator for me—and opened many doors that otherwise would have been closed.
Doug Brown, The Law Firm Leadership Coach, Summit Success LLC
Learn-from-failure mindset
We all benefit from adopting a learn-from-failure mindset. It can be so easy to discount our missteps or choose to ignore them outright. But so much value comes from acknowledging professional failure, asking the “why,” and implementing lessons learned as we move forward. We learn far more from what went wrong than from getting it right the first time. But we have to embrace the fail, recognizing it isn’t a character flaw and instead is an opportunity to grow stronger and more effective. You make the Hall of Fame if you succeed once every three at-bats. We need to adopt that same mindset in our organizations. Learning from failure is enormously powerful, but it requires the cognitive ability to focus on the learning and not dwell on the fail.
Patrick Riccards, CEO, Driving Force Institute
Transactional analysis
One critical relational skill that employees need for career success is the ability to manage conflict effectively through transactional analysis, first developed by Eric Berne.
This skill involves recognizing and adapting to different ego states—Parent, Adult, and Child—to ensure smooth and constructive communication. Using this approach, employees can transform their approach to conflict resolution. Instead of reacting emotionally (Parent or Child state), they learn instead to engage from the Adult state, which is rational and balanced, leading to more productive and harmonious interactions.
In practice, this means approaching disagreements with a mindset focused on understanding and resolution rather than blame. For instance, if a project didn’t go as planned, instead of a defensive reaction (Child state) or a critical one (Parent state), addressing the issue from an Adult state with statements like, “Let’s review what happened and find ways to improve,” fosters a collaborative environment. This approach resolves the immediate issue and builds stronger, trust-based relationships.
In my experience, applying transactional analysis has significantly enhanced my leadership style. It has allowed me to build strong working relationships, manage emotions effectively, and better understand my team’s needs. By fostering an environment of unconditional positive curiosity, where the focus is on truly understanding and supporting each other, I have seen improved job satisfaction, increased productivity, and a more cohesive team dynamic.
This people skill can lead to a more confident and autonomous workforce, equipped to tackle challenges and committed to ongoing personal and professional development.
Gemma Bullivant, HR coach and consultant, Gemma Bullivant HR & Coaching
Negotiation skills
Most of us greatly undervalue negotiation. This is especially true in the workplace. Every request opens a negotiation, but most people don’t view it that way.
As a new partner in a consulting firm, whenever my senior partner asked me for something, I stopped what I was doing to fulfill his request. One day, he asked for something, and I was so slammed that I accidentally revealed my frustration. He addressed it, pointing out I could always counter-offer with a later day or a different approach. That had never occurred to me.
Between email, Slack, and texts, it’s easy to get sucked into non-stop reacting and replying. But that’s optional. Instead, you can view every request as an opening salvo. You can’t always decline, but you can counter-offer. Suggest a better time or an order of tasks. If the request is from your boss and you’re slammed, discuss the relative priorities and timelines—just as you would discuss the cost and speed of a home project. There is nothing combative about negotiation. It is a critical skill for achieving anything that involves other people.
Amie Devero, president, Beyond Better Strategy and Coaching
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