Communication, compassion, time management – what do these terms have in common?

Aside from being indispensable soft skills for managers and leaders, they’re also skills that can’t be learned in a university undergrad course.

Soft skills for managers are developed in the workplace, and they’re more important than ever for creating a supportive work environment.

Over the past couple of years, with the world in crisis and chaos, people who felt supported at work found some semblance of stability and comfort. In essence, support at work became a source of employees’ overall well-being.

While only 44% of employees think they can consistently bounce back from difficulties, 59% of workers who strongly feel that their employers care about their well-being believe they can recover from those same setbacks. 

In short, personal resilience benefits greatly when employers show support.

Although plenty of uncertainty remains as the pandemic rages on, people are beginning to channel that resilience once again. 

And just as managers had to support their employees through the initial upheavals of the pandemic, they have to continue supporting them as it continues.

The benefits of being supportive aren’t limited to employees; it allows managers to grow and become indispensable, influential, and happy leaders. 

Below we take a look at seven skills you need to refine and bolster if you want to make “great manager” part of your personal brand.

What Are Soft Skills and How Do You Develop Them?

Soft skills are the non-technical skills and character traits you use at work. Hard to quantify, and sometimes known as ‘interpersonal’ or ‘noncognitive’ skills, soft skills help you interact, manage, and communicate effectively with others.

While hard skills are important for performing specific tasks, soft skills are essential for managing relationships, working in teams, and achieving your career aspirations as a future leader.

They’re so essential that many organizations are now prioritizing soft skills in their management recruitment strategies.

According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report (2019), 92% of HR professionals surveyed said soft skills matter as much, or more, than hard skills.

But if soft skills are unquantifiable, how do you identify and develop them? 

The best place to start is with a dose of self-awareness and feedback from others. Online tools like the 360Reach Personal Brand Survey can help you discover how the people that matter – your colleagues, clients, and superiors – truly perceive you. Others, like the Personal Brand Quiz, help you know exactly clear you are about your personal brand.

This type of insight is invaluable not only from a personal branding perspective, but also to help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, leadership skills, and potential career derailers. 

Armed with this knowledge, you can then design a plan to amplify your most compelling attributes and enhance the soft skills that will make you a better and more supportive manager. 

7 Soft Skills That All Great Managers Share

Let’s further explore some of the soft skills for managers who want to create a safe and supportive working environment, while amping up their own chances for promotion.

1. Compassion

First and foremost, managers must have compassion for their employees—especially considering the hardships and losses folks have faced over the past year. 

So many people are grieving and stressed after everything they’ve seen and gone through, and it’s consequently important that you consider the tangible support you’re offering (or not offering) your employees in the form of mental health resources and bereavement benefits and policies.

2. Communication

Beyond compassion, a significant part of supporting employees involves communicating with them regularly and clearly. 

Effective communication with workers can impact workplace culture, morale, and even productivity. Leaders can use communication to stay connected with team members and ensure their work experience is built on trust.

Communication is also essential to ensure that employees are able to come back from the challenges they face. 

Employees are people first, and they move through difficulties in life that might affect their work performance or engagement—whether those challenges are personal, financial, relational, or work-related. 

Opening transparent, trusted lines of communication with employees and intentionally creating space for conversations about how they’re doing will allow managers to build trust and help their teams feel supported regardless of the obstacle.

3. Delegation

The effective delegation of tasks is also an essential part of employee support. This starts with delegating based on team members’ strengths and weaknesses. 

Good managers know when certain people are best equipped to perform specific tasks—and when to stop overburdening the team’s all-stars. 

This means managers must know when the person taking on a task needs additional training, resources, or support to complete it—and then find a way to provide that support. 

Truly setting employees up for success requires trusting and enabling them to learn and grow, even when it’s easier to just hand off the assignment to the experienced pros.

Managers should guide employees through delegated tasks without micromanaging, offering helpful feedback and critiques along the way. 

A two-way, transparent feedback channel, where team members feel completely comfortable asking for clarification and admitting it when a concept is new to them, fosters the earlier-referenced importance of communication while letting managers learn what works and what doesn’t.

4. Time Management

Time management is essential to completing tasks efficiently and keeping productivity levels high. But it’s also an effective way of ensuring employees feel supported and encouraged to make the most of their time without feeling overwhelmed, particularly in a fast-paced working environment, with external stresses adding to their daily challenges. 

When a team leader displays good time management skills by carefully planning and prioritizing tasks, it helps to reduce overall stress levels and improve morale and engagement across the team. 

Time management isn’t about berating someone for turning up late for a meeting or handing a report after the agreed deadline. 

As a soft management skill, it’s about identifying areas where individuals may be more productive, agreeing on milestones, and teaching employees how to say “no” to tasks that will only distract them from achieving their goals. 

Great managers know that by taking the time to plan and prioritize, their team will have the clarity, grit, and confidence at work to stay focused and on track, even when things are moving quickly.

5. Adaptability

The future of work is changing, and adaptability as a soft skill has never been more important.

Adaptability means being able to quickly adopt new competencies or the flexibility to take a different approach in response to changing circumstances. 

Great managers roll with the punches and work with an open mind, whether that means making last-minute changes to a project or dealing with a sudden shift in company policy – all of which can significantly unsettle employees. 

An adaptable manager must be responsive to employees’ concerns and needs, be able to solve problems in demanding circumstances, and trust their judgment when they have to make tough decisions. 

Unplanned circumstances seldom come with an easy-to-follow set of instructions, and it’s precisely at these challenging moments when employees look to their team leaders for reassurance. 

They need to know they’ll be guided through the choppy waters with their jobs intact and their futures secure.

6. Creativity

According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report (2019), creativity is the most in-demand soft skill in short supply. 

Creativity and adaptability go hand-in-hand. Creative leaders think outside the box, approach problems from a different angle, and find solutions that others hadn’t thought of.

They show their team they are invested in their success by helping them find alternative answers and working to solve problems together.

But creativity at work isn’t confined to problem-solving. Great managers know how to nurture creative environments and processes that enable learning and improvement of the whole team. 

They create and sustain an organizational culture that encourages innovation, celebrates and incentivizes the ideas of others, and supports a collaborative environment where everyone feels valued and appreciated.

7. Relationship-Building

Finally, one of the most critical elements of being a supportive manager is building relationships with employees. 

Collaboration in business is key—75% of employers rank it as “very important”—but doing it effectively requires strong relationships between leaders and their teams. 

The previous three qualities set managers apart as good leaders, but they mean nothing if managers don’t form strong bonds with their team members.

Building relationships at work requires time, devotion, and effort. Leaders should carve out intentional time to talk with employees about who they are—both personally and professionally—and use what they learn to understand team members’ goals, hopes, and passions. 

Managers can use that knowledge to foster collaborative goal-setting and pursuit, inviting employees to create policies, take on projects, and make decisions. This is the ultimate expression of the trust all managers should strive to achieve.

Great managers grow with their teams and contribute to the success of their business overall. They set themselves apart by becoming valuable assets to their teams and their company as a whole—and finding even more happiness in leadership.

As the world tries to find a way to move forward in the face of uncertainty, employees and managers everywhere need stability. 

When managers ensure they lead with compassion, communicate, delegate and time manage tasks effectively, focus on adaptability and creativity, and build relationships with the team members they lead, they set themselves up for whatever the future might hold.

Are You Ready To Develop Your Managerial Soft Skills? 

If you want to support your team on their path to productivity and success, one of the best places to start is by uncovering your own personal brand.

BrandBoost is an AI-enhanced digital coach that will help you increase your soft skills by discovering and powering-up what makes you unique.