What Are Soft Skills and
Skills
are needed to succeed at any job you can imagine.
Different jobs require different skills. Professional baseball
players need good batting and catching skills. Brain surgeons
need steady hands and lots of practice with a scalpel. These
are examples of
hard skills
necessary to do specific jobs.
Everyone needs “
soft skills
” to succeed in life. Soft skills get
personal. They are about how you behave and treat people.
Soft skills are the skills you need to be the very best
you
at
home, work, and school.
“Sounds good,” you say. “But I don’t have a job. Why do I need
to worry about soft skills?”
Ahh, but you do have a job. In fact, you have a very important
job. You are a student, and your job is to learn as much as you
can. Learning soft skills makes you a better student now. It also
gets you ready to succeed in any career you choose later.
Leadership
is a highly prized soft skill. Leadership is the ability
to motivate people to work together to achieve a common goal.
It is needed in schools and sports teams as well as in business and
politics. Becoming a good leader isn’t easy. It is something that
can be learned with practice and by following good examples.
In this book, you get to be a soft skills
sleuth
. You will track down
clues about what good (and not so good!) leadership looks like.
You will
investigate
four soft skills every good leader needs:
•
Savvy
•
Integrity
•
Inclusivity
•
Influence
SOFT SKILLS SLEUTHS: Investigating Life Skills Success
4
