Improve your Soft Skills at UX Australia

I’ll be in Melbourne next month as part of UX Australia, leading my
Soft Skills Are Hard workshop. I’ve been iterating this workshop for the past 18 months and have been very impressed with the people who have come and worked hard to assess their own goals and to work together to design processes, tools and habits for themselves and each other in order to improve those soft skills. I see that people have found it to be a profound experience that has made a difference in how they think about their work and their careers.

We’ve looked at literally hundreds of soft skills, such as

  • Collaboration
  • Permission to fail
  • Communication
  • Pattern recognition
  • Thinking broadly
  • Critical thinking
  • Listening
  • Focus
  • Respect
  • Coping with ambiguity
  • Visual thinking
  • Managing stress

For the areas that people find most relevant, they’ve developed a set of best practices to help improve that skill. For example,
Be More Patient

  • Give another person benefit of the doubt
  • Practice being patient at home or with friends
  • Listening – give others a chance to speak regardless of if you think they’re right or wrong
  • Breathe, pause mentally before offering your own point of view
  • Acknowledge that there are many ways to do one thing
  • Remember that people need/want to be heard
  • Reference past experiences when having patience has worked in your favor

If you’re around Melbourne at the end of next month, please sign up for the workshop!

Bonus: here’s some more examples from past workshops
Be Patient

Time Management

Compassion

Networking

Series

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