# Soft Skills Examples: 12 Skills, the Behaviors Behind Them, and How to Prove Yours Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-examples/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-examples.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Soft skills examples like communication, teamwork and time management, broken into everyday behaviors, plus how to back each one up in a résumé or interview. ## Key facts - Title: Soft Skills Examples: 12 Skills, the Behaviors Behind Them, and How to Prove Yours - Category: What Are Soft Skills - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness - Primary keyword: soft skills examples - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-examples/ ## What this page covers - Soft skills examples like communication, teamwork and time management, broken into everyday behaviors, plus how to back each one up in a résumé or interview. - Practical guidance for soft skills examples - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation Soft skills examples include communication, teamwork, time management, professional behaviors, decision-making and building confidence. These are the [nontechnical](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/hard-soft-skills-definition/) skills that shape how you work with other people and how you manage yourself at work. A soft skill only becomes a real example when you can point to the behavior behind it: what you actually did, and in which situation. That second part is where most people get stuck. Writing "strong communicator" on an application is easy. Saying what it looks like on an ordinary Tuesday is much harder. Once each skill is broken into the behaviors that make it up, though, the list stops being a set of buzzwords and becomes something you can check yourself against. ## Soft skills examples, grouped by what they help you do Soft skills come in two broad kinds. Interpersonal skills govern how you work with others, and self-management skills govern how you handle yourself. Between them sits a third group: the everyday professional conduct that shows in how you handle the work itself. The twelve examples below fall into those three groups. None of them is a personality trait. Each one is a set of behaviors you can learn, practice and visibly improve. NACE, the US association of college career services and employers, deliberately uses the word "competencies" rather than "soft skills" for exactly that reason: a competency is something you can measure and develop, not something you either have or lack. ### Interpersonal skills: how you work with other people These are the skills colleagues notice first, because they show up in every conversation, email and meeting. The University of Bern's career service counts communicative ability, persuasiveness and the ability to resolve conflicts among them. At work, five examples cover most of the ground: - Communication: stating your main point first, listening until the other person has actually finished, writing an email a busy reader can act on, and disagreeing without making it personal. Purdue Global describes what employers want in the same behavioral terms: speaking to a group, sharing ideas without creating conflict, and writing clearly. - Teamwork: doing what you said you would do, sharing knowledge and credit, arguing about the problem rather than the person, and then committing to what the team decided, even if you argued for something else. - Working with Your Manager: preparing for one-on-ones, bringing a proposed solution along with the problem, and agreeing early on what a good result looks like. - Networking: staying in touch with former classmates and colleagues, being useful before you need anything, and following up within a day after meeting someone new. - Getting and Applying Influence: building a reputation for delivering, volunteering to draft the agenda or the first version of a document, and making a case by starting with what the other person gains from it. These skills are often the part of a new job that takes the most effort, precisely because experienced colleagues use them without thinking. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described it like this: > One of the things that has surprised me is just how much the difficult parts of working life can take up mentally. > > For me, a lot of those difficulties are actually social rather than purely professional. I'm thinking about things like collaborating with colleagues and communicating with clients. > > Because I'm the only relatively recent graduate in my workplace, many of these things come very naturally to the people around me. They have so much experience that they may not even realize that something can be difficult in the first place. > > That can make you feel quite alone with it. You can find yourself sitting there thinking, 'Why can't I even figure out how to write this damn email? This should be incredibly easy.' The email she wrestled with is a communication task. Like every skill on this list, it can be learned on purpose instead of absorbed slowly by trial and error. ### Self-management skills: how you handle yourself This group is less visible, but it decides how reliably you perform when things get uncomfortable. It covers knowing yourself, regulating your reactions and choosing a direction: - Building Self-Awareness: knowing which tasks you are naturally good at, asking for specific feedback rather than general praise, and noticing when perfectionism or people-pleasing is driving your reaction. - Setting Goals: planning a year or so ahead instead of locking in a rigid five-year plan, and choosing roles that fit your strengths and work values rather than someone else's expectations. - Building Confidence: volunteering for the presentation, breaking a daunting task into small steps, and starting before you feel fully ready. - Building Resilience: focusing on what you can control after a project is cancelled, questioning your first harsh conclusion after criticism, and talking a setback through with someone you trust. ### Professionalism: how you handle the work itself According to the University of Georgia's career center, drawing on NACE, professionalism and work ethic is the soft skill employers most often assess in candidates. It is described in plain terms: punctuality, managing your time, taking responsibility and learning from mistakes. Three examples cover that ground: - Professional Behaviors: being on time, treating everyone with the same respect regardless of rank, handling confidential information carefully, and speaking about absent colleagues as if they were in the room. - Time Management: clarifying what is being asked and when it is due before you start, putting important work ahead of [merely urgent work](/knowledge/time-management/time-management-urgent-important/), and saying no clearly when you cannot take something on. - Decision-Making: knowing which calls are yours to make, asking someone experienced for a second opinion, and accepting "good enough" when perfect would cost more than it is worth. ## How to turn a soft skills example into evidence A named skill proves nothing on its own. Anyone can write "team player." What makes an example credible is a specific situation: what you did, who was involved and what happened as a result. "After our group missed its first deadline, I set up a short weekly check-in and we delivered the rest on time" says more about teamwork than any adjective could. That matters more than it used to. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, about two-thirds of employers said they use [skills-based hiring](/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-based-approach/) for new entry-level hires, which means they screen on what candidates can show they do rather than on a degree alone. For a student or recent graduate, group projects, part-time jobs and volunteer roles stop being filler and become your raw material. A simple way to build that evidence: 1. Choose three or four examples from the twelve above that you genuinely recognize in yourself. 2. For each one, find a concrete situation from your studies, a job or volunteering. 3. Describe the behavior, not the trait: what you did, step by step. 4. Finish with the result, even a modest one. ## Which soft skills examples to lead with NACE's [career readiness competencies](/knowledge/employability/career-readiness-skills/), the closest thing to an employer-backed reference list, name communication, teamwork and professionalism explicitly. If you have to choose which examples to put forward first, those three are a solid core. But leading with a skill you cannot back up does more harm than leaving it out. The stronger move is to lead with the examples where your evidence is real and to treat the rest as your next steps. Those gaps are not fixed. They are skills you have not built yet, and if you are unsure which side of the line a skill falls on, it is worth [checking which skills hold up](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you write the list. ## What makes your examples convincing Look back over the list and three of the twelve turn up in a second role. Beyond being examples themselves, they are what let you describe and prove the others. **Communication** is how any example reaches another person. Picking a situation that fits the question, stating the main point first and keeping it brief is the skill at work, so an interview answer about teamwork is also a live demonstration of how you communicate. This is about everyday clarity, not charisma or polished speeches. **Teamwork** supplies most of the evidence an early-career person actually has. Group projects, shared shifts and team assignments are where reliability, credit-sharing and constructive disagreement either happened or didn't. Being a good teammate is not the same as always agreeing: raising a concern and then backing the group's decision is part of the skill. **Building Self-Awareness** keeps the list honest. Knowing your natural strengths, and asking someone you have worked with for specific feedback, tells you which examples you can stand behind and which are still gaps. A gap is not a fixed part of who you are. It is something you have not learned yet. One practical way to decide where to begin is to [get your skill scores](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) first and build from there. The **free Job Skills Test** rates you on these three **and on the other nine examples above**, then points to the ones that would pay off most with practice. ## Where your own examples start Some of this may already sound like you. Maybe you are the one who sends the summary after a group meeting, or who noticed a teammate going quiet and asked what was wrong. That is communication and teamwork in action, and it already counts as evidence. The examples you cannot back up yet are not a verdict. They are the next things to build, and you can build them without becoming someone else. These skills carry more weight as your responsibilities grow, so knowing where you stand now lets you choose what to work on while the stakes are still low. ## Find your strongest soft skills examples The only step left is to see your own starting point. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills. It rates you across all twelve skills in this article and shows which ones would make the biggest difference for you right now. It takes 7 minutes. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Soft skills examples like communication, teamwork and time management, broken into everyday behaviors, plus how to back each one up in a résumé or interview. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Building Self-Awareness. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-examples/ Preferred summary: "Soft skills examples like communication, teamwork and time management, broken into everyday behaviors, plus how to back each one up in a résumé or interview." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.