Essential new soft skills

We know what soft skills are.

But the list we think of is decades old.

Here are some new ones to add to the list of essential soft skills:

Asynchronous communication skills: It’s not enough to be able to attend calls. If you and I must wait for the stars (and our schedules) to align each time things must progress, things don’t progress. Learning to work asynchronously (independently of the other’s availability) is a must-have skill for where we’re all going.

Not being a knee-jerk: This is a term coined by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, suggesting that knee-jerk reactions make you a knee-jerk. They’re right. Why set people up to be knee-jerks with internal presentations and unveils when you could gift them the opportunity to first digest ideas before being asked to share their guidance.

Mic-check punctuality: It’s not enough to connect to the audio conferencing room on the hour, so everyone else must then listen to you wrestle with headphones or microphone settings. Being ahead of time with tech checked and ready to go is the new “on time”.

They might not seem like much, and they may not be critical to your work today.

But they’re critical in my companies today.

And they’ll probably be critical in yours tomorrow.

Are you developing your “new soft skills”?