When we talk about professional jobs nowadays, it is more complex. Not just hard skills or degrees or knowledge that we had to get a nice job, but we also need soft skills. But why soft skills? And what is soft skill actually is? So, let’s begin with the definition of soft skill as a self attribute that defines the characteristics of a person. The soft skill itself includes effective communication, time management, managing change, team-working, leadership, and many more. Soft skills become important since it is a critical issue that will affect somebody’s work ethic. With good soft skills, the job could be done faster, more effective, and bring more profit to the company, of course not just material profit but more than that. So how can we learn soft skills? The soft skills couldn’t be learned just by reading an article or lecture from university. But, the soft skills could be learned by implementing them with discipline and the right environment or community.
Today, soft skill is an important requirement for a company when they opening a recruitment for career. There are also a lot of articles on the internet that talk about top ten soft skill that we have to learn or top ten soft skill that company seek. That kind of things has prove that nowadays soft skill is a must to millenials if they want to get a good job.
After those explanations, I can say that soft skills can help you to reach your life goals and mission effectively but still, you have to keep in balance with your hard skill. Because when you have a good soft skill, people tend to easily impress with you, but without the hard skill, of course, it is just a word. Otherwise, if you are good at hard skills but bad at soft skills, you will be hard to work in a team and it will cost you extra pain to reach your goals. For me, privately soft skill has brought me closer to my goals by more structural driven life. It makes me easier to manage my life, be a more critical and versatile person with a strong analytical mind.
But why it can be hard to be learned? it will be hard if you are in the wrong place, it will be hard if you are in the wrong community, and it will be hard if you don’t meet the right people to learn it. Lucky me, I have found a right place to learned soft skill, with very kind teammates that always make me learn and sharp mentor that always remind me of my blindspot. The community was known as XL Axiata Future Leaders. In this community, I am not just learning about soft skills but also implement them in my daily life. Honestly, it is very hard to adapt with the team at the very first time was chosen to join this community. But now, I just call them home and families.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
Albert Einstein
From Albert Einstein’s word, we must be brave to face the world. To learn much about soft skill, we have to implemented it little by little day by day. But as soon as possible we will always deal with mistake, either it is our mistake or the other mistake. But from there we can learn something new to not repeat the mistake we have done. I can say that XL Axiata Future Leaders is the safest place for me to make mistake, because i have a very supportive people around me. And that also make me learn faster about soft skill.
Beside that, from XL Axiata Future Leaders, I have learned about a life lesson that will be hard to forget since it has shaped me to be a better person. I realize that a good soft skill could help me out easily when I am stuck and keep calm when figuring out problems. Moreover, after I start to implement the lesson from XLFL in my daily life, I feel like I just change a lot. Change to be a better version of my life with open eyes.
“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” -Alan Watts
I can say that because of Xl Future Leaders, now I am brave enough to dream, I am not afraid anymore because I know the capacity of myself and the tasks that I need to do to catch my life goals. More importantly, after this, I will be graduated from university, but I am not just a graduate student, but a prepared graduate student. Because if we want to prepared our future, first thing that we have to make sure is we have prepared from now, like what Alan Watts said.
Lastly, I would say that every person needs to learn about soft skills at the right time and in the right place. Have a good day and start learning now!
Cheers, Ewen.