Top Soft Skills for Success in 2025 and Beyond

What are soft skills?

Soft skills (also known as interpersonal or people skills) are non-technical abilities related to how individuals interact, communicate, and work effectively with others. 

They include traits like empathy, adaptability, teamwork, and problem-solving, which are essential for building relationships and achieving success in the workplace.

For instance, good communication is an essential soft skill. It helps individuals convey their message effectively. 

Top soft skills to develop in your organization

1) Storytelling

Storytelling is an increasingly important skill in the workplace of 2025 and beyond. It’s considered:

• A powerful means for leaders to influence, teach, and inspire
• A way to build trust when raw data isn’t enough
• A method for translating complex figures into understandable narratives
• A way to illustrate potential outcomes from projects, inspiring people to put in effort to succeed

Being able to tell a story means you can break down barriers between groups and persuade others to take action. According to one storytelling report,

“Stories help us make sense of what’s happening around us, transfer knowledge, develop skills, unite behind a shared vision, and adapt to change.”

It could also be a great skill when navigating the transition to Gen AI. Instead of impressing colleagues with your technical achievements with AI, you can show them where you were and where you got to with a good story about a new tool.

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2) Communication

The second obvious choice on the list is communication—the ability to effectively convey ideas, thoughts, or information.  But even though it sounds like an evident skill to refine, organizations aren’t there yet. 

In fact, one in five business leaders say they have lost business or deals due to poor communication.

Miscommunication often happens at the leadership level when leaders:

1. Fail to set clear expectations
2. Avoiding difficult conversations (such as underperformance or compensation conversations)
3. Mishandle conflicts

Miscommunication also happens at the ground level, where employees struggle to communicate their message to team members or stakeholders.

It’s easy to say “communication is key,” but it’s so fundamental to everyday life that people don’t always think they can be trained.

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3) Leadership

The next building block of a great workplace is strong leadership: the capability to lead employees or team members to achieve organizational goals. 

A current industry trend is that as soon as employees move up the ladder, it’s assumed they are ready to take up a leadership role. But it’s far from the truth. Gallup’s research reveals that only one in ten people possess the talent to manage.

Experience alone is not enough. Leadership training transforms an individual contributor into a leader.

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4) Teamwork

Good leadership alone does not create high-performance teams. You will find enough individual employees who are star performers but not team players. They lack teamwork skills.  Teamwork is the ability to collaborate effectively in a team, build relationships, and contribute to a positive team dynamic.

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5) Problem-solving

At the core, businesses are about solving problems. A great work culture or strong leadership won’t get results if employees don’t have problem-solving skills or the analytical ability to analyze the issues and implement effective solutions. 

In a recent survey of UK CEOs, problem-solving was highlighted as the most valuable skill for 2024 among all soft skills. Leaders have already started to highlight the need for this training.

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6) Flexibility and resilience

With the fast-changing economy and evolving consumer preferences, flexibility—or the ability to re-prioritize and pivot— improves organizations’ performance drastically. For instance, it’s no secret how many businesses were on the verge of closing at the start of the 2020 pandemic. The ones who pivoted on time are the ones who survived.

Likewise, employees who can respond to changing customer, business needs, competition, economy, and leadership changes are an asset to the organization. 

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, says the top reasons people resist change are:

• Fearing a loss of control
• Having concerns about their competencies with the change of work
• Seeing change as a failure and not accepting it

Training equips employees to handle such situations better. 

Resilience training is also an excellent way to improve worker flexibility. By developing resilience, employees learn to adapt to change, manage stress, and bounce back from setbacks more effectively.

As a result, they will be able to: 

• Cope with evolving workplace demands
• Respond to new challenges
• Remain productive in the face of uncertainty, ultimately enhancing their overall flexibility

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7) Time management

Time management at work is the proficiency to:

• Prioritize tasks.
• Set and meet deadlines. 
• Dividing time efficiently. 

A 2024 study shows that 34% of employees have to guess their priorities at work – meaning they need help from managers to figure out how to manage their time.

It also reveals that “A majority of employees (64%) say they lose at least one or two productive hours a day when they don’t have deadlines, with 22% of employees saying that they lose three to four hours each day.”

Learning to manage time and priorities can be a tough nut to crack. Some guidance will boost productivity at the workplace right away.

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8) Building work relationships

Employees with the skills to build relationships at work collaborate well with team members, resulting in positive team dynamics. But making good work relationships is easier said than done. An employee has to: 

• Understand changing work dynamics
• Communicate with diverse groups effectively
• Nurture trust
• Handle tough conversations
• Deal with difficult colleagues and more

It matters for leadership, too. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) emphasizes that relationship-building skills are among the top leadership competencies that leaders need. They state that “Research has consistently found that leaders who lack strong relationship skills and who have weak interpersonal skills are at high risk of derailing in their careers.”

With training, employees and leaders learn how to tackle all the above situations.

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9) Persuasion

Persuasion is the art of influencing someone’s actions or beliefs. It is a skill that matters for multiple roles:

1. Leaders persuade team members toward organizational goals
2. The sales team is persuading potential customers
3. The marketing team is persuading buyers, etc.

Despite its importance, persuasion is not a skill taught in schools. However, you can train employees to use the skills to get business results. 

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10) Ability to work virtually

Michelle Parry-Slater, Learning & Development Director at Kairos Modern Learning, says: 

“At the moment, the challenges organizations are facing are in building skills of managing remote workers, understanding how to hold hybrid meetings, grappling with wellbeing and diversity agendas.”

Working remotely from home or any location other than the office is a skill most employees rushed to gain over the pandemic. Now, it’s time to polish them for the best results.

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11) Ability to work in a diverse environment

Every individual has biases, i.e., preconceived notions they believe to be true. For example, one common bias is that older people are not tech-savvy. 

When you have a diverse workforce with employees from different backgrounds, genders, and cultures, the only way to tackle these biases is to bring awareness through diversity training. 

Diversity skills make employees more accepting of colleagues from different backgrounds. It also helps them understand others’ needs and accept different viewpoints. Exposure to varied cultures, ideas, and perspectives significantly contributes to employees’ personal and professional growth.

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12) Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) is consistently mentioned as a crucial soft skill for 2024 and beyond.

The ability to “recognize, understand and effectively manage your emotions and those of others” EQ is a sort of meta-skill that affects most of the other skills we’ve listed. A sense of empathy, self-awareness, and psychosocial aptitude are high on the wish list of employers. In fact, one survey found it to be the most in-demand skill for people managers looking to hire new talent.

While it might seem some charismatic folks are just born with it, it’s actually something that can be systematically studied and learnt.

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Your 7-step plan for launching a soft skill training program

Get the current skill status

A critical thing about soft skills or competency development is not to assume someone already holds a skill, as assessing these skills is difficult. 

Instead, start with the mindset that every employee can learn something new through training. So, first, create a list of training currently done by employees or that is already in progress. 

Tip: Use a training matrix for this task.

Compile a list of priorities

The next step is to find the list of priorities. Knowing what matters most to your organization right now should also be a consideration.

For example, if you’re getting poor ratings for your customer service calls, then communication training could be your priority right now. If you have a major product release coming up, then leadership and teamwork training can be helpful.

Take the pulse of your employees

The next step is to understand what your employees want. 

Where are they struggling? Are managers struggling with giving feedback? Is the sales team struggling to negotiate? 

You can conduct a skills gap analysis to get their requirements. Also, training is not a one-time initiative. You can encourage employees to create growth plans and define their learning paths regularly.

Start creating a training plan

You have all the inputs now: current status, priorities, and employee needs. The next step is to create a training plan based on these details. To accommodate different learning styles, keep a mix of social learning, coaching, on-demand video, cohorts, instructor-led, and on-the-job training, like coaching or mentoring. 

Thinking about how to get started? Download a free training plan template for individual learners, and you’re good to go.

Promote the training

You might have a number of excellent courses in your corporate library, but hardly ten employees know they exist. And out of those ten employees, five do not know the benefit of training specific skills. 

Don’t repeat the mistake. Before launching any training or course, educate employees about the training and how it helps them. 

Assign and track progress

Once the employees know the benefits of training, it’s time to assign it. No need to spend hours on excel to track training. 

Use a learning management system (LMS) to assign or track training seamlessly.

Track the effectiveness of your initiatives

Finally, are employees finding the training initiatives helpful, or are you wasting the budget on the wrong programs? Get their thoughts by sending out a simple survey. 

Tips to make soft skills training programs successful: 3 Experts weigh in

Incorporate real-life scenarios

Marla J. Albertie, an executive coach, suggests incorporating real-life scenarios into the training program and not limiting training to a fixed curriculum. 

As a result, you will: 

• Give participants ample opportunities to practice their skills during the training program
• Enable facilitators to provide constructive feedback to help trainees improve

Diversify training for different groups

Different groups at work can have different issues. Understanding the problems and assigning training to address the specific needs of each group will bring true inclusion.

Don’t train in isolation

Soft skills are a huge part of company culture: 

• How you communicate. 
• How you give feedback.
• How you try to be inclusive.

So training only a selective group won’t bring a considerable difference. 

Top reasons why soft skills training will add a competitive edge to your organization

Strengthen team dynamics

The collective of all the soft skills or competencies you’re training employees on, like effective communication, collaboration, and the ability to work virtually or in a diverse environment, will improve team dynamics and help team members collaborate better. 

Tip: To get started, assess your team’s current skills with a training needs assessment to pinpoint priority areas.

Improved employee engagement

Investing in employees and showing potential for career development and growth are top drivers of employee engagement. This is a good sign for both overall productivity and talent retention.

Better leadership

Leadership is a critical competency that needs an extensive training framework. By training leaders, you help them set better expectations, provide feedback, and lead the team effectively.

Leaders can check out our guide on how to give feedback effectively to improve communication and the effectiveness of their opinions. Leaders often benefit from setting well-thought-out development goals for their team members that can be tracked and reviewed. These nurture continuous improvement and align with broader company objectives.

Increased creativity and innovation 

Training gives employees new tools to experiment with, increasing innovation in the workplace.  

Offering diverse training methods, from social learning to workshops, can help address different learning styles and boost engagement.

Hard skills are incomplete without soft skills

Most jobs need a mix of multiple skills (hard or job-related skills and soft skills).

For example, an engineer with excellent technical knowledge who can’t collaborate well with a team won’t get you the expected results. 

Nor a salesperson who is an expert at Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools but can’t negotiate with customers.

Track down a list of essential competencies from our competency database to build a world-class team. Also, get ways to assess and develop each competency.

Drive high ROI through training

The business impact of well-executed soft skills training is impressive—a study by MIT Sloan found that a 12-month soft skills training trial in five factories yielded a 250% ROI in just eight months.

With improved leadership, smooth collaboration, and clear communication, these benefits ultimately translate to more revenue.

Improve overall performance through integration with reviews and assessments

Finally, integrating your soft skills training with performance management processes ensures that learning is ongoing and aligned with organizational goals. Regular assessments and feedback sessions help keep skill development on track while linking training with performance management helps build a culture of continuous improvement.

Build your people’s skillsets with Deel Engage

Where most L&D experts struggle with designing successful soft skills training programs are:

• Creating a holistic program at the organizational level
• Providing enough variety of courses to address all needs
• Having multiple course formats to address different learning styles
• Fitting training into the entire ecosystem and tying it with performance reviews

Deel Engage addresses all your concerns. Deel Engage supports your L&D goals by providing the tools and resources to design a holistic soft skills program that addresses your team’s diverse needs and learning styles. With our performance management module, you can easily integrate training with ongoing reviews, ensuring that skill-building remains connected to individual growth and team performance.

Deel’s employee training module offers various course formats—from on-demand video to microlearning delivered to Slack—allowing you to cater to different learning preferences and team needs. Additionally, the included career management module makes it easy to guide talent progression, helping your people develop the skillsets essential for growth and long-term success in your organization.

Finally, Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free. 

Request a demo today.