Soft Skills for the Workplace is a nontraditional approach to learning basic employability skills needed in today's workplace. Well-developed soft skills help an individual find a job, perform well in the workplace, and gain personal success in life and career. By studying this text, you will learn the soft skills that employers recommend, and require, of employees. Learning how to interact professionally with customers, coworkers, and employers is one sure way to prepare for your future. In today's workplace, it is necessary to have job-specific skills to perform on the job as well as know-how to interact with coworkers and customers. You may be the most qualified person in your field in terms of hard skills, but if you lack soft skills, you may have a challenge finding and retaining employment. No matter your career choice, Soft Skills for the Workplace will help you help you jump-start your future. In today's competitive work environment, well-developed employability skills can help you stand out in the crowd Soft skills are the new hard skills for the 21st century.

This book is targeted to office professionals whether they are new, mid-career or late-career employees. What most new employees lack today are soft skills. Soft skills are not like hard skills, such as typing, writing, or how to use software programs which are more commonly taught. Often overlooked, soft skills such as fostering good interoffice relationships, implementing good communication strategies, practicing effective email communication, being aware of your nonverbal communication, developing a thorough work plan, and perfecting your time management skills are just as vital for career success. Mid-career and late-career employees, although successful in their careers, may have never learned more advanced soft skills such as developing meaningful relationships at work, maintaining a work life balance, being a leader in the workplace, and leaving a legacy. Readers of this book will gain a new understanding of not only the importance of soft skills in the workplace, but they will learn about effective strategies and practical examples that they can implement in their own workplace, to empower them to be successful in their job and develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with their colleagues.

What's the hard truth? Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career. Master your soft skills and really get ahead at work! Fortune 500 coach Peggy Klaus encounters individuals every day who excel at their jobs but aren't getting where they want to go. It's rarely a shortfall in technical expertise that limits their careers, but rather a shortcoming in their social, communication, and self-management behaviors. In The Hard Truth About Soft Skills Klaus delivers practical tools and techniques for mastering soft skills across the career spectrum. She shows how to: manage your workload handle the critics develop and promote your personal brand navigate office politics lead the troops and much more! Klaus reveals why soft skills are often ignored, while bringing their importance to life in her trademark style—straightforward, humorous, and motivating. Perfect for readers at all professional stages—from those who are just starting out to seasoned executives—this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to take his or her career to the next level.

Solve the number one problem with today's young workforce—the soft skills gap The number one challenge with today's young talent is a problem hiding in plain sight: the ever-widening soft skills gap. Today's new, young workforce has so much to offer—new technical skills, new ideas, new perspective, new energy. Yet too many of them are held back because of their weak soft skills. Soft skills may be harder to define and measure than hard skills, but they are just as critical. People get hired because of their hard skills but get fired because of their soft skills. Setting a good example or simply telling young workers they need to improve isn't enough, nor is scolding them or pointing out their failings in an annual review. However you can teach the missing basics to today's young talent. Based on more than twenty years of research, Bruce Tulgan, renowned expert on the millennial workforce, offers concrete solutions to help managers teach the missing basics of professionalism, critical thinking, and followership—complete with ninety-two step-by-step lesson plans designed to be highly flexible and easy to use. Tulgan's research and proven approach has show that the key to teaching young people the missing soft skills lies in breaking down critical soft skills into their component parts, concentrating on one small component at a time, with the help of a teaching-style manager. Almost all of the exercises can be done in less than an hour within a team meeting or an extended one-on-one. The exercises are easily modified and customized and can be used as take-home exercises for any individual or group, to guide one-on-one discussions with direct-reports and in the classroom as written exercises or group discussions. Managers—and their young employees—will find themselves returning to their favorite exercises over and over again. One exercise at a time, managers will build up the most important soft skills of their new, young talent. These critical soft skills can make the difference between mediocre and good, between good and great, between great and one of a kind.

I was hired by a major university to teach recently released offenders how to become employed. I walked into my first class intending to follow the lead of all the other job training programs in the city, which was teaching the students to properly fill out applications, write resumes, facilitate mock interviews, and locate employment opportunities. After the first couple of classes, most of the students were either not paying attention or sleeping. I quickly realized my presentation needed to be interesting, challenging, beneficial, and actually guide the participants on how to remain employed. However, I was unable to find any published material for teaching new hires the soft skills necessary to keep a job. This workbook is a compilation of the soft skills class material I have developed over an eighteen year period. I have used this material with great success and have taught soft skills in schools, inner-city church programs, nonprofits, and government funded job training programs. It is a unique collection of essays, exercises, quotes, and maxims that will give students a realistic perspective on work-related expectations and the expectations of the supervisors who hire them. It will help students develop their problem solving skills, guide them in making appropriate decisions, and create a desire to plan out goals and achieve them. The workbook style is challenging and playful, serious and engaging and a stepping stone to developing the cognitive skills necessary to quash unproductive thinking and self-defeating emotional behaviors.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Showing the Value of Soft Skill Programs As organizations rise to meet the challenges of technological innovation, globalization, changing customer needs and perspectives, demographic shifts, and new work arrangements, their mastery of soft skills will likely be the defining difference between thriving and merely surviving. Yet few executives champion the expenditure of resources to develop these critical skills. Why is that and what can be done to change this thinking? For years, managers convinced executives that soft skills could not be measured and that the value of these programs should be taken on faith. Executives no longer buy that argument but demand the same financial impact and accountability from these functions as they do from all other areas of the organization. In Proving the Value of Soft Skills, measurement and evaluation experts Patti Phillips, Jack Phillips, and Rebecca Ray contend that efforts can and should be made to demonstrate the effect of soft skills. They also claim that a proven methodology exists to help practitioners articulate those effects so that stakeholders’ hearts and minds are shifted toward securing support for future efforts. This book reveals how to use the ROI Methodology to clearly show the impact and ROI of soft skills programs. The authors guide readers through an easy-to-apply process that includes: business alignment design evaluation data collection isolation of the program effects cost capture ROI calculations results communication. Use this book to align your programs with organizational strategy, justify or enhance budgets, and build productive business partnerships. Included are job aids, sample plans, and detailed case studies.

This accessible text looks at the range of soft skills sought after by employers and provides a practical guide to developing and effectively demonstrating these skills. Soft skills -- including communication, customer service, teamwork, problem solving, and personal management -- represent a major component of any worker's professional identity. This book analyzes major soft skills, including both inward-facing soft skills (how workers manage themselves to effectively perform their work) and outward-facing skills (how workers effectively interact with others and in groups). It explores how these skills are rooted in fundamental areas of liberal arts including interpersonal communication, psychology, and ethics. It provides an active learning pedagogy, including creative exercises and case studies through which students can assess their understanding of underlying concepts and their application in real-world situations. The book can be used as a supplement for communication, business, and career-oriented courses, and it will be of interest to individual students and junior professionals as well as career counselors, postsecondary instructors across the curriculum, and professionals in human resources and learning and development.