According to research, 85% of a person's success at work depends on soft skills, called agile skills. Here's how to develop them.

How to understand which skills to develop?

An International Economic Forum article identifies ten agile skills that will be most in demand by 2025. These skills include:

• Analytical thinking
• The ability to learn continuously
• An integrated problem-solving approach
• Critical thinking
• Creativity and initiative
• Leadership
• Technological proficiency
• Stress tolerance
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Reasoning skills

Developing all of these skills at once is useful, but not essential. The skill set can be individual and depends on the nature of your work.

To understand what you need to improve, answer the following questions:

1. What type of work do you engage in?
2. How quickly is your field of work changing, e.g., new technologies, approaches, methodologies?
3. What are the particularities of your job? For example, do you work in-house or freelance, do you spend most of your time communicating with people or dealing with documents?
4. What are your career aspirations? What skills do you need in order to achieve these goals?

How to assess your agile skills?

Take psychological tests.

They will help you understand the level of your soft-skills.

Ask for feedback.

Ask your colleagues and friends about your progress in soft skills development. This way you can get an outsider's perspective and learn a lot about yourself.

How to develop flexible skills?

Practice makes perfect

The most effective way is to learn by acting. Let's take  some skills as an example and see how you can develop them in practice.

Critical thinking: it is based on questioning and scrutinizing facts. Fact-checking - verifying information for accuracy - can help you develop these skills.

Next time you come across some information on the Internet, before jumping to conclusions or making a decision, do a fact-check.

For example, any news or facts always have a primary source: an official website, an authoritative expert, a document, a study. If there is no link to the source, the written information may be questioned.

Even if there is a link, it doesn’t guarantee reliability. For instance, an article mentions a fact with a reference to a famous scientist. However, by checking the source, it turns out that this fact is just a personal opinion of the scientist from the interview, rather than the result of the research conducted.

Through books and courses

Reading books and taking courses helps you learn the techniques and tools you need to develop your agile skills. For example, to manage time effectively, you need to know planning techniques.

Useful Resources for Soft Skills

Time Management

 Books:

• "Getting Things Done" by David Allen
• "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" by Cal Newport
•  "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" by Stephen Covey
• "The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less" by Richard Koch

Course:

• Work Smarter, Not Harder, Coursera

Critical Thinking

Books:

• "Brain Power: Learn to Improve Your Thinking Skills" by Karl Albrecht
• "Wait, What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions" by James E. Ryan
• "Critical Thinking" by Tom Chatfield

Courses:

• Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking Specialization, Coursera
• Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success, Coursera

Business communication and negotiation

Books:

• "Negotiating Without Losing" by Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton
• "Say No First" by Jim Camp
• "How to Talk to Anyone" by Mark Rhodes

Course:

• Working in Teams, A Practical Guide, edX