Question
What are soft skills in the workplace?
Answer
We can be great clinicians, the best doctor, and the best respiratory therapist in the world, but we can have all this drama around us because we have not worked on our soft skills. Consistent studies show that companies report a soft skills gap, 59% of hiring managers and 89% of executives say they have difficulty recruiting candidates with an adequate demonstration of communication, teamwork, and leadership. We have all these people with doctorate degrees and master's degrees. We go on to get certifications in a particular new strategy. We are becoming some of the most efficient, intelligent respiratory and occupational therapists. Still, we have this vast cataclysmic gap in soft skills. As we build up our skill set, we need to ensure that we are not leaving behind these soft skills that make working in departments either great or awful.
Examples of soft skills include communication, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork, adaptability, creativity, time management, emotional intelligence, empathy, and flexibility. These are things that you should ask, "Why are we even talking about this?" You look into these boxes, and you could probably put a coworker's name in each box with a gap in one of these soft skills. To be honest, we could probably write our names in some of these boxes. We must commit to working on these skills ourselves to know how to navigate other people who have these gaps.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Effective Conflict Management Between Multidisciplinary Teams, presented by Mira Rollins, OTR/L..
