This article comes from Entrepreneur.

4 Soft Skills You Need to Improve Your Career

If you want to grow professionally, get a promotion, or land a new job this year, here are four soft skills you need to possess.

1. Creativity

Creativity is one of the top soft skills employers are looking for. And creativity isn’t just important for professionals in graphic design and content marketing; creativity is beneficial in all roles within an organization, from human resources to software engineering to customer service. Creative people are able to develop new ideas and apply new solutions to address existing problems, which will allow businesses to discover new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Luckily, creativity isn’t only a skill that people are born with, you can actually learn to be more creative. There are a number of ways to boost your creativity like collaborating with others, asking for feedback, writing down your ideas, solving a puzzle or even going to an escape room.

2. Social intelligence

Being “street smart” is just as important as being “book smart” in the workforce. Social intelligence, commonly referred to as street smarts, is the ability to get along with others, build relationships and navigate social environments. As you can imagine, social intelligence is necessary if you want to build meaningful and successful relationships with people in an organization.

What exactly is social intelligence? According to Psychology Today, the key elements of social intelligence include:

• Verbal fluency and conversational skills
• Knowledge of social roles, rules, and scripts
• Effective listening skills
• Understanding what makes other people tick
• Role-playing and social self-efficacy
• Impression management skills

3. Digital literacy

Gone are the days when knowing how to use Microsoft Office Suite was enough to land a job. Today, technology has taken over the workplace and it’s constantly evolving, which makes digital literacy an essential soft skill to have in 2020 and beyond. The American Library Association (ALA) defines digital literacy as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” In simpler terms, digital literacy involves knowing how to use digital tools effectively in order to solve problems, be productive, work collaboratively, create content, etc.

You can develop your own digital literacy skills by doing a little research online. Read articles or take online courses about the basics like online safety, email etiquette and creating slideshow presentations, for instance. Then, you can begin to learn more about advanced computer and tech skills like email marketing or basic coding. Be sure to take advantage of any learning opportunities provided by your employer as well.

4. Virtual collaboration

Remote work is on the rise. According to GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, regular work-at-home, among the non-self-employed population, has grown by 173 percent since 2005. That’s 11 percent faster than the rest of the workforce and nearly 47x faster than the self-employed population. So, whether you’re working remotely yourself or you’ll be working with other remote team members within a company, virtual collaboration skills are necessary for today’s workforce.

Virtual collaboration is the method of collaboration between team members regardless of their location that is carried out via digital tools. To boost your virtual collaboration skills, familiarize yourself with popular virtual collaboration tools like video conferencing software, time tracking tools, project management software, instant messaging tools and so on. It’s also important to increase your cross-cultural awareness. Remote companies typically have international teams so you need to be able to effectively interact and work with team members of various cultural backgrounds.

Click here to view the original article.