If you Google “soft skills every employee needs,” you’ll get a dozen lists with a dozen different answers, half of them padded just to hit a target number (or to try to boost SEO specifically). In my experience actually training teams, three skills matter more than the rest, and they work together in a way most lists never explain.
The Big Three
1. Communication
This is the most important soft skill for a reason. It’s not about whether you can talk or carry on a conversation (although that is important). It’s about whether you can communicate clearly, professionally, confidently and in a way that gets your message across in the way you intended it to be received.
I’m not just saying this because it’s what I spend most of my time coaching. This is how your work gets recognized, how you are seen as a leader with a vision and how you make real impact at work.
2. Problem Solving
You have to be able to actually think through a situation and make a decision before you have anything worth communicating in the first place. Problem-solving is where the substance comes from. The other ones rounding out my Top 3 are how you do something useful with it. If you can’t problem solve, you won’t have much worth communicating about.
I’ll be upfront: problem-solving training isn’t something I personally teach. But it belongs on this list, because it’s genuinely foundational, and I’d rather give you the full picture than a self-serving one.
3. The Ability To Work With Others (aka Teamwork)
Working well with other people – professionally- is another essential soft skill. I think it’s often taken for granted that anyone who passes the interview process is able to work well with others. Sometimes it comes naturally to an employee. Other times it doesn’t and causes friction. It can sometimes erode at a culture or cut into productivity slowly over time. It is a skill that can be learned and/or improved upon.
The Rest of the List
Communication, problem-solving, and teamwork are my big three, but they’re not the only soft skills that make a difference in the workplace. Adaptability, emotional intelligence, and time management all matter too, and a genuinely well-rounded employee has some measure of all of them. I’ve focused this post on the three I see make the biggest difference, and the three where training tends to move the needle fastest.
When a Great Team Gets a Little Too Comfortable
I worked with a group that had grown so close as coworkers that they’d started to lose some professionalism without realizing it. They certainly were getting along quite well, but weren’t exactly working together well. The CEO noticed it in their interactions with each other. Communication was starting to be dominated by short text messages and delayed email response times. It becaome a bigger problem when it started leaking into the way they were interacting with their clients and customers. That’s when he called me.
After a series of three 90-minute trainings, things changed. The CEO told me he started seeing more professional behavior including some that started to dress more professionally. That shift didn’t stay confined to what they were wearing. It carried over into how they showed up and interacted with people outside the organization too. One training series, and the ripple effect touched both how the team communicated and worked together as a unit as well as how well they worked with their clients and customers.
Where to Start
If you’re reading this and thinking your team could use some work in one or more of these areas, the best first step is to book a free consultation to get started. We’ll talk through what’s actually happening on your team and what you want to see change. From there, I can put together a program built around your actual goals, not a generic one-size-fits-all workshop.
Want to build communication skills on your own in the meantime? Explore my coaching programs or subscribe to my free Substack newsletter for a public speaking challenge delivered to your inbox every week.
