# Ten Soft Skills That Matter Most at Work, and How to Build Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/ten-soft-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/ten-soft-skills.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 Ten soft skills that matter most at work, sorted into two families: what each looks like day to day, which ones employers rank highest, and how to build them. ## Key facts - Title: Ten Soft Skills That Matter Most at Work, and How to Build Them - Category: What Are Soft Skills - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: ten soft skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/ten-soft-skills/ ## What this page covers - Ten soft skills that matter most at work, sorted into two families: what each looks like day to day, which ones employers rank highest, and how to build them. - Practical guidance for ten soft skills - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation The ten soft skills that matter most at work are communication, teamwork, professional behaviors, working with your manager, influence, time management, self-awareness, confidence, resilience and decision-making. They fall into two families: how you work with others and how you manage yourself. All ten are behaviors you can learn. Knowing the names is the easy part. A word like "teamwork" is simple to [put on a résumé](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/how-to-list-soft-skills-on-resume/) and much harder to show, and on its own it says nothing about what the skill looks like on an ordinary workday. Each of the ten below comes with exactly that. But first, it helps to know that employers do not weigh all ten equally. ## What employers rank highest There is no official top ten. Which soft skills make the cut depends on who is asked (hiring managers, senior executives or employees) and on the country, the year and the exact question. What stays remarkably stable is a small core: communication, teamwork, time management and plain dependability. Communication tends to lead. In BNG's 2023 Future of Soft Skills research, it was the skill chosen most often as the most important for a new recruit, by around a quarter of respondents, ahead of problem-solving (21%) and time management (19%). The reason is simple: almost every other part of a job runs through it. Dependability is the other constant, under different names. A CareerBuilder survey of 2,138 hiring managers and HR professionals found that a strong work ethic was the soft skill companies most often said they looked for, named by 73%, and most of the companies surveyed said soft skills were just as important as [hard skills](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/hard-soft-skills-definition/). In a 2022 Harris Poll of Canadian hiring managers for Express Employment Professionals, willingness to learn (85%) and dependability (84%) were rated important more often than any other soft skill, with communication (77%) and initiative (76%) close behind. Figures that close together say something useful: hiring managers are looking for a cluster of reliable behaviors, not one star skill. Senior executives point in the same direction, with more weight on conduct. A working paper by Deepa Sethi at IIM Kozhikode ranked the top ten soft skills as judged by business executives: communication, teamwork and leadership, positive attitude, integrity, responsibility, interpersonal skills, time and stress management, flexibility, and professionalism with courtesy. Several of those, such as integrity, courtesy, a positive attitude and professionalism, describe how you behave toward other people rather than an ability you hold. A TimesJobs survey of 750 respondents in India added listening, confidence and persuasion as skills in their own right. The practical takeaway is that communication, teamwork, time management and dependability are the part of any top ten worth acting on first. The other skills on the list are what keep that core working when the job gets harder. ## The ten soft skills, sorted by what they govern Soft skills are commonly divided into two families: interpersonal skills, which govern how you work with others, and intrapersonal or self-regulatory skills, which govern how you manage yourself. A National Academies report, Education for Life and Work, places competencies in three domains (cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal) and notes that interpersonal skills depend on self-regulation. That link is the practical point. Listening calmly to criticism in a meeting is an interpersonal act, but it rests on managing your own reaction first. The ten below are sorted the same way, with the thinking side covered at the end. ### Interpersonal skills: how you work with others These five show up in your interactions, so colleagues experience them directly, usually long before they can judge the quality of your individual work. 1. **Communication** — Put your main point first, keep it brief, and listen to the end before you answer. Choose a conversation over an email when a topic is sensitive, complicated or likely to need back-and-forth, and choose writing when the other person needs time to take it in or a record will help later. Listening is the half of communication most people practice least, and the half colleagues notice most. 2. **Teamwork** — Put the team's common purpose ahead of your own credit, share what you know freely, and do what you commit to, when you said you would. When you disagree, say so during the discussion, stay on the issue rather than the person, and then [commit to the decision](/knowledge/teamwork/disagree-and-commit/) the team makes. Trust on a team is built from many small promises kept. 3. **Professional behaviors** — Treat everyone with the same respect, be on time, speak about colleagues as if they were in the room, handle confidential information carefully, and steer clear of gossip and constant complaining. This is where the integrity, courtesy and positive attitude executives ask for become visible. A [positive attitude at work](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/positive-attitude-at-work/) looks like finding the workable part of a problem and thanking people for their help, not like permanent cheerfulness. 4. **Working with your manager** — Treat the relationship as a partnership with a common purpose. Meet one-on-one regularly and come prepared, agree early on what good results look like and which decisions are yours to make, and when something goes wrong, raise it promptly with at least one proposed solution. 5. **Influence** — Influence at work starts with a reputation for delivering and grows through initiative: asking for the assignment you want, volunteering to draft the plan or organize the meeting, and presenting an idea in terms of what the other person gains from it. That is the initiative and persuasion employers ask for, with nothing manipulative in it. It is possible to be strong on your own tasks and still miss this whole family of skills. > I think I became so focused on getting the work done and making sure everything kept moving that I gradually separated myself from the rest of the team. > > I was constantly thinking about the next task and what needed to be delivered, rather than paying attention to the relationships around me. Looking back, I think that made it much harder for me to really become part of the group. > > I regret that now, because eventually work became so much about pushing through and getting things done that I neglected the human relationships that are also essential to making a workplace function well. > > That is something I really want to learn from. I don't want to end up being the person who sits alone in a corner, focused only on the work, and eventually burns out. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, looking back on a student job. His point is not that delivering matters less. It is that the work also runs through the people around you, and that side of it can be learned as deliberately as the tasks. ### Self-regulatory skills: how you manage yourself These four work from the inside out. Nobody sees them directly, but they decide whether the interpersonal skills hold up on a hard day. 6. **Time management** — Before saying yes to a task, clarify who is asking, what exactly is wanted, when it is due and what a finished result looks like. Put the important ahead of the merely urgent, and once you have built some credibility, say no clearly, with a reason. Much of what hiring managers call dependability is time management in practice: a deadline you estimated honestly is a deadline you can keep. 7. **Self-awareness** — Know what you are genuinely good at, notice how you react when you are corrected, and ask for feedback that is specific and points forward, such as what would make your next report more useful. This is what the willingness to learn that hiring managers rate so highly looks like from day to day. 8. **Confidence** — Confidence at work is built by doing, not by thinking positively first. Break a daunting task into smaller steps, act while the nerves are still there, and count each finished step as evidence. Speaking up once in a meeting, and then again in the next one, is how the belief that you can do it actually forms. 9. **Resilience** — Separate what you can control from what you cannot, and put your energy into the first. When one bad meeting turns into "I'm not cut out for this," check whether that automatic thought really holds up, and talk setbacks through with someone you trust. ### Where thinking skills fit Employers also ask for thinking skills such as problem-solving, which 78% of the hiring managers in the Harris Poll rated important. The National Academies framing places them in a third, cognitive domain. At work, though, most of that thinking ends in a choice, which is why the tenth skill is about deciding well. 10. **Decision-making** — Know which calls are yours to make, get a second opinion on the important ones (ideally from someone likely to see it differently), slow down when you are rushed or upset, and accept "good enough" when perfect is not on offer. Watch for the common traps: looking only for information that confirms what you already think, and sticking with a bad decision because of what you have already put into it. ## How to build the ten soft skills Every item on this list is a behavior, not a trait. Nobody can see "a positive attitude," but anyone can see a colleague thank someone for their help or look for the workable part of a weak plan. That difference matters, because behaviors can be practiced. It turns a list of ten from a verdict on who you are into a plan for what to do next. Three principles keep that plan manageable. First, do not take on all ten at once. Start with the core employers keep returning to (communication, teamwork and time management, plus the plain reliability that runs through all three), then add the one skill that feels furthest away. Second, practice where you already are. A part-time job, a group project or a student organization offers daily chances to state a point first, keep a commitment or ask for specific feedback; you do not need a full-time role to begin. Third, collect evidence as you go. For each skill you want to claim, note one specific moment: the situation, what you did and what changed as a result. That moment is what turns "strong communicator" from a label into an answer an interviewer believes. Before any of these goes on your résumé, it helps to check which ones you can [back up with evidence](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) today. The ones you cannot back up yet are not a dead end. They are simply the next ones to practice. ## The three skills that hold the rest of the list together Look back at the core employers return to, and three skills do most of the carrying: how you get a point across, how you share a result with other people, and how you conduct yourself while doing both. **Communication** is the skill every other item on the list travels through, which is why it leads so many rankings. Making it credible comes down to a few habits you can show rather than claim: putting the main point first, listening to the end before answering, and choosing a conversation over an email when a topic is sensitive. It is not about being the most polished speaker in the room. Plenty of strong communicators are quiet ones. **Teamwork** is easy to write on a résumé and only proven in how you handle a shared result. The behaviors behind it are specific: doing what you said you would, when you said you would; sharing what you know rather than guarding it; and arguing your case in the discussion, then backing the team's decision once it is made. It is not the same as keeping everyone happy. A team that never disagrees rarely reaches its best answer. **Professional Behaviors** is where the vaguer words on the list, such as integrity, courtesy, a positive attitude and work ethic, turn into things people can see: arriving on time and prepared, treating the newest intern and the department head with the same respect, and finishing the administrative tasks without complaint. None of it calls for a sunny personality or a different self. It calls for knowing the norms, which nobody tends to spell out. None of the three works on its own, and the free **Job Skills Test** treats them that way: it rates them alongside the rest of this page and the two skills that complete a set of **twelve skills**, so you can see [which skills to prioritize](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). Each one can be learned, so a weak result simply tells you where to begin. ## Where you already stand on the ten Some of the ten probably describe things you already do without calling them skills. If you have ever covered a colleague's shift at short notice, you practiced teamwork and reliability in a single move. If you have rehearsed a question before raising it in a team meeting and then asked it anyway, you were building confidence the way it is actually built. The skills that feel further away are simply the ones you have not had a reason to practice yet, and building them does not require becoming someone else. They also tend to count for more each time your work depends on other people, from a first project of your own to a first promotion, so knowing your starting point early gives you time to build. That leaves one practical question: which of the ten are already yours, and which come next. ## See which soft skills you can already claim The only step left is to find out. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes, it shows where you stand across all twelve skills behind the ten on this page, and which ones will make the biggest difference for your résumé, your interviews and your first years at work. ## 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? Ten soft skills that matter most at work, sorted into two families: what each looks like day to day, which ones employers rank highest, and how to build them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Professional Behaviors. ### 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/professional-behaviors.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/ten-soft-skills/ Preferred summary: "Ten soft skills that matter most at work, sorted into two families: what each looks like day to day, which ones employers rank highest, and how to build them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.