#  > General Zone >  > Self Improvement >  >  >  Top 5 Must-Have Soft Skills for Professional Engineers

## magdyharby1

Technical skills alone are insufficient for engineering professional engineers career success. Soft skills play very important role in differentiating engineers during employment and during career development.

In the daily work of engineers and technical specialists, soft skills are as important as technical skills. These skills, or emotional intelligence, are often not learned in school and enable professionals to navigate smoothly and effectively through a wide variety of social and professional situations with a wide variety of people. Such skills include communication, cooperation, creativity, leadership, and organization.

A lot of studies discussed the must have soft skills for employers, with 98 percent of them saying communication skills are essential and 92 percent teamwork skills. Following are five key soft skills that engineers and other professionals should develop for career success.

Soft Skill 1: Communication

In everyday actions of speaking, writing, and listening, many professionals underestimate the importance of communication skills. Engineers tend to prioritize technical skills over communication skills, not realizing that they cannot be fully effective in their jobs if they are inadequate speakers, writers, and listeners. Yet it is particularly in the engineering fields that effective communication skills are crucial to success.

The interaction between stakeholders, whether it is internal in an organization or external with partners or clients, is fraught with opportunities for misunderstanding. That is why effective communication also involves listening, which is itself an essential soft skill. Without actively listening to customers, clients, or project partners, problem-solving becomes much more difficult and time-consuming.


Soft Skill 2: Creativity

Creativity is the driving force behind innovation and therefore increasingly gaining recognition in uncertain and challenging economic times. Innovation thrives on breakthrough thinking, nimbleness, and empowerment. Organizations often depend on big ideas and creative employees to develop innovative products and services.

Every engineers core mission is to try to improve the utility of things, to design products or processes that will solve problems better, faster and cheaper. This mission would rarely be achieved if not for engineers ways of thinking, which often lead to problem-solving opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden.

In the engineering fields, creativity can be as valuable to solving a problem as the technical skills to identify and troubleshoot the source of the problem. As such, creative thinking is a soft skill that engineers, scientists, and others should cultivate in order to become invaluable members of their organizations.

Soft Skill 3: Adaptability

There is no shortage of challenges and issues that arise on any given workday. Having the ability to identify solutions to unforeseen problems requires being able to modify and adjust accordingly to the environment and situation.

This flexibility is one of the soft skills that increasingly more employers look for in employees. The way professionals demonstrate their adaptability is by showing they are able to think on their feet, assess problems, and find solutions. The ability to develop a well-thought-out solution within a given time is a skill that employers value greatly.

At the same time, todays tech frontier is rapidly reshaping industries, which means that organizations often must implement change internally to keep up. Here, adaptability also means a willingness to face the unexpected.





Soft Skill 4: Collaboration

Whether you call it cooperation, collaboration, or teamwork, an engineers ability to work with other people from different backgrounds is essential.

You can ask yourself the following questions and think about the answers

What would be the likelihood of success if team members could not communicate together?, What if they could not share responsibilities and accountability in working as a team?, What if there was no leadership present in the project?





Soft Skill 5: Leadership

Leadership, in and of itself, is not one skill but the blending and integration of a variety of skills. By its very nature, leading people is about successfully interacting with them and convincing them to follow. This makes leadership a key soft skill for professionals who intend to make a difference.

In an engineering context, leadership incorporates a number of capabilities which are critical in order to function at a professional level, those capabilities include the ability to assess risk and take initiative, the willingness to make decisions in the face of uncertainty, a sense of urgency and the will to deliver on time in the face of constraints or obstacles, resourcefulness and flexibility, trust and loyalty in a team setting, and the ability to relate to others.

While much of leadership is character-based, engineers can develop or hone certain leadership skills or attributes to foster personal and professional success.

At the end I believe that career success and the passion of adding value need a specific inner personal values as being agile, innovative, efficient, value driven and cooperative person. This will result in a working culture that brings the energy, embraces team work, seeks for excellence and exceeds expectations.

For that purpose I decided to create this blog (**[link Point to another website Only the registered members can access]
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<![CDATA[[Only Registered And Activated Users Can See Links] ) to introduce the 360 Proactive engineer concept to all engineers who wish to develop their career and become all rounded engineers who has a passion to add value to their community, organizations and themselves by utilizing technical Competences, communication skills and leadership skills.

In order to understand the 360 Proactive engineer concept the following points can be clarified:

The 360 number reflects the capability to have a holistic all rounded view to approach any problem.
The proactive reflects the capability of being ahead of the game and being pioneer to treat any problem or develop any opportunity rather being reactive after the problem already started.
The blog posts will provide a simplified understanding to all the required soft skills and selected important technical skills that can help different engineering sectors in the following areas:

Soft skillsHow to develop your Engineering career.


How to be Agile, innovative, efficient, collaborative, reliable and value driven Engineer.
How to be a person who can bring the energy, embrace teamwork, seek excellence, deliver results and exceed expectation.
Professional soft skills (mind mapping skills, how to search skills, presentation skills, email etiquette, team working skills and leadership skills.)
Required business skills as how to make a business case, supply chain management and others.


Selected Technical skills

Providing the required energy management knowledge to be a proactive energy manager (PEM) in your organization.
Learning process equipments trouble shooting techniques to be a Proactive equipments trouble-shooter (PET).
So, if you have the same passion to add value and develop your career, join us today and lets start the momentum and success journey together. Also I appreciate receiving your feedback, opinions and ideas to develop this initiative.

Thanks in advance and best regards

Magdy Aly

Blog: **[link Point to another website Only the registered members can access]
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<![CDATA[[Only Registered And Activated Users Can See Links]See More: Top 5 Must-Have Soft Skills for Professional Engineers

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## iloveHeatex

Everyone knows these....stop promoting your channel & fb page....
be informative about engineering

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## rfharris

Soft skills are getting more and more importance with every passing day

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