On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your soft skills? Do you value having good connections with people? Are you aware of the impact you have on others and the impression you leave? There are so many ways to be successful and everyone has their own definition of what success looks like. No matter how you define success, you need other people to help you achieve it. These people can come in all sorts of forms based on what your success is. They could be family, customers, mentors, co-workers, collaborators, teachers, students, investors, gurus, people who drive you crazy. You get the point. In order to reach our goals, we need to be good with people. Enter soft skills. These are the right-brained type of connections we make with people. And, you guessed it, the dyslexic brain is hard-wired for these skills because of their high functioning right brain.
Technology and the way we use it is changing so rapidly. Anything that can be automated eventually will be. Think self-ordering kiosks, self-driving cars, and virtual assistants. There has never been a time where creativity, communication skills, and right-brained thinking were needed more. Often the reason one person is promoted over another is based on their interpersonal qualities. I think/hope in the not too distant future, we are going to see a huge overhaul in how information is distributed. Already, we are seeing online courses after online courses pop up for anything imaginable. For one, it makes smart business sense. For two, it works because people are more willing to learn from someone who is “in the trenches” and “been there done that”. For three, it is specifically targeted information all figured out for you, saving people so much time and frustration. If we continue to move in this direction where we can choose who to learn from, what to learn, and when we’d like to do it, it’s going to make soft skills even more important. How we communicate, connect, and empathize with people can make or break our success.
These soft skills are where we can really highlight success and build confidence for dyslexic students. Compared to their peers they might naturally do these better. At a young age, you can start seeing dyslexic children using soft skills to help adapt to the environment and work around their literacy deficits. They start using visual information to fill in the blanks. They become hyper-aware of what other people are doing in an attempt to fit in or figure it out. You see humor starting to be used as a deflection method. Or to the total opposite, they withdraw and become an observer of people. All of this practice, along with their natural brain connections, make them ahead of their peers for many important soft skills. Obviously, those who aren’t dyslexic can be great at these soft skills too. They just may have to work on developing them, like a dyslexic child has to work on developing their literacy.
Communication Skills
No surprise here that good communication skills are important to success. How we get our ideas out into the world and impart our knowledge is fundamental to the human experience. Dyslexic children end up being great communicators because they have to advocate for themselves early on. They learn what is most effective in getting their point across and their needs met. Writing, spelling, and reading are a struggle, but typically dyslexics are great orators and storytellers. Because they are connection based learners, they find it easy to connect abstract ideas and explain to the person they are talking to. People with dyslexia can be very emotive making them very interesting to listen to and keeping the receiver engaged.
Empathy
We all want to be seen and heard. Being able to empathize with someone helps them feel this way. When you empathize with someone you are saying their experience is valid. It’s my thought that dyslexic students are great empathizers because they’ve had to work through more than most students, giving them a higher sense of compassion for other’s struggles. I think they see the value in making someone feel understood because they are desperate to understand and be understood themselves. Being connected to their own emotions helps them to connect and empathize with others.
Big Picture Thinking
Dyslexic students may not hone in on the details all that well, but they sure make up for it in their ability to see all the parts fitting together. Big picture thinking requires you to be creative, adaptive, and visionary. It’s about seeing the end result and not getting caught up in the details of how it will happen. Sometimes, that can come as a detriment if there is no one to help you break the vision down into manageable chunks. Thinking from an overview framework helps you see there are various ways the vision can be achieved. Because you aren’t attached to the details or any one way of it working out, you can pivot directions as needed to reach the end goal. In my opinion, big picture thinking is one of the most powerful skills people with dyslexia have. I also don’t think they understand what a gift it is and that it’s much harder for neuro-typical people to think in this way. This is an area that parents can help build confidence around for their children.
Reading People
It’s the subtle things people do, and how you pick up on them, that can give you an insight into what they may be thinking or feeling. Sometimes it’s just energy exchange that is communicated. People with dyslexia are often very aware of their environment and remember spatial details. I think this helps them to pick up on the body language and the subtle shifts of facial muscles. Intuition lives in the right brain. It can be an overlooked skill but makes a big impact connecting with people naturally. Intuition is really just your subconscious mind relaying on barely perceivable voice inflections, body movements, and energy exchanges. It’s learning to trust those impulses that make intuition effective.
Think Outside the Box
Thinking outside the box is going to keep a person employed in the future, just saying. Companies, including solo-preneurs, have to innovate to stay relevant. The ability to think outside of the norm is how innovation happens. It takes one brave person to see something in a totally different way to revolutionize how we do things. Inventions are made and societies are changed by people who are able to think beyond what we already know. It’s stunning seeing all the inventors that researchers now believe were unidentified dyslexics or had “word blindness” as it was called back then. Partially, I think this skill gets more refinement because so many processes don’t become automatic for them. They have to think through all the steps each time they work through something. Because they re-think the process over and over, it allows them to see it in a fresh light and gives them the motivation to create an easier way to do it. Again, I think this is a skill that is taken for granted by people with dyslexia. They have no idea how valuable this skill will be for them. It is their natural way of thinking. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard my son ask, “Have you ever thought what it would be like if…” and then it’s some radical idea that actually makes a lot of sense. And no, I had never thought what it would be like until then.
Soft skills are the differentiator between people who have the same technical knowledge. To be clear, there are several other types of soft skills than just the ones I mentioned in this post. Also, because we are all different, we know that every person will have varying degrees of these skills innately. We can all be working to improve how we connect with others and thinking more creatively. Having our children continue to develop these skills will help them have confidence and power in the workforce.
