Six essential soft skills every manager should have

No matter where you are in your management journey, one thing remains constant—your ability to lead people matters more than just technical expertise. In fact, research shows that 89% of hiring managers believe a lack of soft skills leads to poor hires, yet many managers focus more on hard skills like technical knowledge and strategy. (Source: LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report)

Soft skills—like communication, adaptability, and emotional intelligence—allow managers to lead effectively, resolve conflicts, and keep teams motivated. After all, you’re managing people, not just projects. Without strong interpersonal abilities, even the most knowledgeable leader will struggle to build a cohesive, high-performing team.

In this post, we’ll explain what soft skills are and highlight six key abilities you need to be a successful leader.

• What are soft skills?
• The soft skills every leader must have
• • Interpersonal communication
  • Time management
  • Self-awareness
  • Adaptability and flexibility
  • Optimism
  • Emotional intelligence

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are a set of personal traits that allow you to relate and interact harmoniously with other people. Some of these skills include communication, problem-solving, adaptability, emotional intelligence, the list goes on. But why is this important in the workplace? Simple. You’re managing people, not robots. Soft skills enable workers at all levels to interact with one another and conduct effective job tasks at work.

Now that we’ve defined soft skills, let’s explore the six essential ones every manager should develop.

The soft skills every leader must have

1. Interpersonal communication

For success in the workplace, you should be adaptable and positive and have the ability to listen to your teammates and communicate effectively. But effective communication goes beyond speaking clearly—it’s about actively listening, understanding emotions, and adapting your message to different audiences. When thinking of communication skills, you’ll want to consider these examples:

• Verbal and nonverbal communication
• Dispute resolution
• Teamwork
• Empathy
• Listening
• Good attitude

For example, imagine a manager, Lisa, who notices growing tension between two team members due to misaligned expectations on a project. Instead of ignoring the issue, she sets up a one-on-one conversation with each person to understand their concerns, then facilitates a discussion where they clarify misunderstandings. By using active listening and mediation skills, Lisa prevents the conflict from escalating, ensuring both employees feel heard and motivated to collaborate again.

These skills help managers build trust, navigate workplace conflicts, and maintain a positive work environment.

2. Time management

Time management is a skill that brings structure to your team and reduces stress significantly. Have you ever been a victim of last-minute requests? Or maybe you’ve found yourself running around to finish a task? Unfortunately, these common scenarios likely take place due to poor time management.

Beyond that, effective time management will give you insight as to the amount of time an activity requires, helping you prioritize accordingly.

Time management solutions

Today, there are many time management tools available to help managers manage tasks, set deadlines, or see how much time a particular task is consuming, such as:

• ProofHub
• ClickUp
• Wrike
• Asana

For example, imagine Sarah, a department head juggling multiple deadlines. Without a clear time management system, she constantly finds herself overwhelmed, missing key project milestones. By implementing a tool like ProofHub and prioritizing tasks based on urgency and importance, she transforms her workflow—reducing stress while improving team efficiency.

With a time management software, you can add timesheets, make time estimates, and monitor the time it takes to complete a project. Moreover, you can export timesheets, archive them, produce time reports, and collect all of your time data into one centralized location.

Prioritization solutions

Managing your time is one component, and prioritizing your tasks is an equally as important one. For working on more of the right things, a tool like Bloom Growth™ helps you prioritize larger business goals, which you can break up into smaller tasks in the platforms mentioned above.

In addition, leveraging tools like a clinic appointment management system can streamline time management for client meetings, appointments, and task scheduling. These platforms not only help managers coordinate effectively but also enhance customer engagement by simplifying the booking process.

3. Self-awareness

Self-awareness is one of the most crucial leadership traits, influencing how you interact with your team, make decisions, and handle stress. A self-aware leader recognizes their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to improve their leadership style and build stronger relationships.

One effective way to strengthen self-awareness is through the Johari Window, a psychological tool that helps leaders uncover blind spots in their leadership style. By comparing how you see yourself with how your team perceives you, you can gain valuable insights into strengths you may be underutilizing—and weaknesses you may not even realize exist.

Try this: Download our Johari Window Assessment to gain insights into your leadership style and start refining your soft skills today.

If you have the skill of self-awareness, then you will be more sensitive and can accomplish your personal and professional objectives faster. At the same time, you also become aware of all the stakeholders’ opinions as well as promote the wants and needs of your employees.

4. Adaptability and flexibility

During the pandemic, businesses that didn’t have flexible leaders came apart or experienced losses. Those who weren’t continually learning new methods to remain current and flexible amid unanticipated developments, stayed behind, with the significant rise of technical improvements in the commercial sector.

Adaptability is considered one of the key competitive advantages for leaders, encompassing the ability to ask timely and unique questions regarding how existing systems are operating and how they will continue to evolve in today’s dynamic business environment. Leaders who embrace skills-based learning are often better equipped to adapt, as they continuously develop the competencies needed to navigate change. Those that are adaptive are fast to react when change is first detected.

5. Optimism

Another soft skill that helps people adopt encouraging mindsets in their personal and professional lives is optimism. Optimism is an essential soft skill for leaders since they are responsible for creating a positive working atmosphere in their organizations.

Their capacity to maintain a good attitude, even in the face of overwhelming odds, can assist employees in also maintaining a positive attitude. Staying optimistic also assists managers in creating a favorable work atmosphere, which can lead to increased employee productivity as well as employee satisfaction.

6. Emotional intelligence

Finally, emotional intelligence. This is a skill that allows you to navigate moments of crisis with ease, enabling you to recognize, acknowledge, and solve issues that surface in times like these.
Possessing a high level of emotional intelligence is being capable of understanding complicated emotions in yourself and others.

It assists leaders in motivating their teams, supporting them in both challenging and positive situations, and guiding team members to make decisions that protect their health and wellness.

It might be difficult to develop emotional intelligence, but one approach to get started is to start defining the feelings you experience on a regular basis. After that, you can work on identifying other people’s feelings and placing yourself in their position during a conflict.

Closing thoughts

You can be the greatest in the world in terms of your work’s technical aspects. However, if you don’t know how to lead well, you’ll be restricted to what you can do on your own. To work as a team, you’ll need soft skills. These intangible assets are invaluable, and organizations can fall apart without them when individuals struggle to work together and comprehend the purpose of their positions as a result. For these reasons, developing the right soft skills has become crucial so that leaders can deal with various individuals in diverse capacities effectively.

Nandini Sharma
Marketing Manager at ProofHub

Nandini Sharma is a seasoned Marketing Manager at ProofHub, a leading project management and team collaboration software company.  With 13+ years of B2B SaaS experience, she specializes in project management tools, marketing, and teamwork. Nandini excels in identifying impactful digital productivity and collaboration tools, and regularly testing and analyzing project management services. She communicates complex tech concepts in accessible guides, listicles, and comparison blogs, helping readers choose the best fit for their requirements. She has also been featured in CEOWORLD magazine and has contributed to Business2Community, HackerEarth, Connecteam, Quora, and more. Beyond her professional role, she often indulges her creative side in art and craft projects.