When you think of upgrading your team’s abilities, what comes to mind first? Assigning them more educational courses to study? Maybe increasing feedback to improve their project performance? Far too often, business leaders think of upgrading their corporate ecosystem with hard skills—those that are quantifiable—instead of soft skills, such as empathy or active listening.
But focusing too much on hard skills may be the wrong approach. As we’ll see below, soft skills are one of the key markers of a team’s success. Some research suggests that as AI usage continues to become more ubiquitous across industries, soft skills will become more in demand. If you’re wondering how to level up soft skills for yourself and your employees, you’ve found the right resource. We’ll cover the importance of soft skills in the workplace, the type of soft skills to cultivate and how to get employees on board.
The Business Case for Soft Skills
Businesses, especially large publicly traded ones, have an eye on increasing the bottom line. They want to increase the number of measurable, quantifiable goals that ultimately contribute to profitability. But soft skills can contribute to that effort, too.
A study facilitated by MIT Sloan, Boston College and the University of Michigan found that a 12-month soft skills training program delivered a whopping 250% return on investment for a garment manufacturing business. Even though the employees completed repetitive, manual tasks for long shifts, honing their soft skills allowed them to become more productive, complete more complex tasks quicker and attend work more often.
Providing soft skill training pays dividends, but what soft skills should you focus on in the first place?
Top Soft Skills for Business Success Today
Deciding on which soft skills to focus on in your business partially depends on the context and current staff issues you face. That said, these are some of the most important soft skills for business success to cultivate.
Communication
Whether through writing, speaking or one-on-one meetings, knowing how to express an idea clearly and thoughtfully improves team functions. Team members who can communicate at a high level can describe what issues executive leadership needs to pay attention to or offer clear advice when inquiring with clients, for example.
Adaptability
Learning to allow the best-laid plans to change is a soft skill that can’t be overstated. Flexibility—or adaptability—propertly cultivated in employees can allow them to pivot strategically to new plans when an idea fails to work.
Emotional Intelligence
Also known as EQ, emotional intelligence is the ability to sense others’ emotions and understand and manage our own. Being able to rein in your emotions or help a co-worker express frustration about a project can bring employees to heightened levels of trust that hard skills can’t achieve.
Why Soft Skills Are Essential in 2025
As counterintuitive as it may sound, the rise of AI, hybrid work and continuous automation is creating a greater need for human relationships in the workplace. Research is beginning to show that businesses are starting to value soft skills as technology advances.
In a survey of nearly 700 business owners, researchers found that many of them relied on generative AI to research and generate ideas. However, the same business owners also reported that “character-based traits such as integrity and soft skills will become more important.”
Jimmy Newson works with small businesses as a consultant and founder of Moving Forward Small Business, a community-based membership company that provides resources to small businesses so they can grow and achieve their goals. In his view, soft skills are critical—especially for companies with hybrid and remote workers.
“Working with businesses that operate virtually and in hybrid setups, I’ve seen firsthand how soft skills become absolutely critical,” he says. “They’re what allow teams to collaborate smoothly, no matter the distance, adjust quickly to new challenges and maintain those vital human connections, which are essential for innovation and resilience.
“These skills ensure everyone communicates clearly, fosters empathy across diverse teams and empowers individuals to manage themselves and solve problems independently. Ultimately, they’re the real bedrock for maintaining a strong culture, solid productivity and continuous innovation in a distributed workforce.”
Newson isn’t alone in his sentiments about soft skills. Lee Baldwin, head of managed services at Pay Check Limited, sees soft skills becoming more valuable as tech becomes more prevalent in corporate structures.
“Whereas technical skills are still required, they’re not enough anymore. With technologies such as ChatGPT, automation platforms like UiPath and cloud-based payroll and HR systems accomplishing more and more of the drudge work or administrative tasks, organizations now place higher premiums on human-only capabilities that include empathy, critical thinking, conflict resolution and collaboration,” he says.
“Within a multinational company where I was working with a global rollout of payroll, we observed that teams who had been pretrained in cross-cultural communication and active listening were far superior at smoothing out issues of time zones than others who were not. They easily managed miscommunications and accommodated for cultural differences, something which is not programmable,” he adds.
It’s clear that soft skills are a key driver in employee relationships with peers, clients and managers. So what’s the best way to cultivate them in your team?
How to Deliver Soft Skills Training for Employees
Training your employees to become more emotionally proficient isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. You can decide what training regimen works best for your organizational structure and the needs of your team. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Offer Workshops
Workshops with team members can provide opportunities for role-playing and working on developing specific soft skills. For example, if you run a hotel business and have some reception staff who struggle to be flexible with indecisive clients, a workshop can help you recreate those situations to prepare them for future interactions.
Baldwin has found workshops to be game-changers in his experience, but only if they’re followed up on and integrated with other processes.
“In a fast-growing SaaS startup, we once had a continuous learning program through which each month employees participated in workshops on different soft skills like giving effective feedback, having diverse meetings or stress management. Those were followed by peer coaching circles where employees practiced the skill in small groups and then reflected on how it impacted their work,” he says.
Promote Mentorship
Mentoring can be an ideal device for delivering soft skill training because it’s done with trustworthy partners that can be open and vulnerable with feedback (a soft skill in itself). In contrast to larger events like workshops or team training sessions, one-on-one mentorship can help integrate soft skills into an employee’s toolbox because they are practiced in the workplace.
Baldwin has seen firsthand how job shadowing, a type of mentorship, has taught employees important soft skill lessons.
“We also included leadership shadowing, where junior staff observed senior managers participate in stressful meetings, observing how they managed difficult discussions or motivated teams,” he says. “Employee engagement rates jumped by 23% within six months, and turnover rates of high-achieving staff plummeted.”
Soft Skills Are a Hard Business Asset
As technology continues to advance across industries, one asset will continue to provide payoffs for years to come: soft skills. Humans aren’t going anywhere, so helping your team communicate clearly, be flexible in challenging situations and hone their emotional intelligence will set your business up for success. Indeed, a study from Deloitte Access Economics found that soft skill-intensive positions are projected to make up two-thirds of all occupations by 2030.
Don’t wait—prioritize helping your team learn soft skills now. Need a bit of a boost? Check out SUCCESS® Coaching to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and increase employee soft skills in your organization.
Photo courtesy of PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
