My Strongest Soft Skill (Ecency Star Contest)

@ecency-star released a prompt the other day, asking us to describe our strongest soft skills.

Here's A Link To The Prompt If You'd Like To Check It Out.

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Source

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Team Work
Working as part of a team is a pretty crucial skill to know, and hone; it can be used in so many areas of life, especially in the working world. Even here on Hive, I think teamwork can be important, for example, recently there was a writing contest being run, where one person would write the first half of a story, and the second person would take that story and expand on it to complete it as one solid narrative.

In this way, it's a really good soft skill to possess, and I've managed to hone it from an early age by playing in bands and doing music.

When on stage, whether working on learning songs, or writing your own, it's so important to have an idea and understanding of what every other member is doing, so you can gel with them and make a song sound as good as it possibly can.

Even musicians who are doing their solo stuff with a backing band would sound terrible if they weren't paying attention to what everyone else is doing, and working together it can make the whole thing come together really smoothly.

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Early Bands
Back when I first started learning an instrument in my teens, me and some friends and got together and worked on songs, and when one person wanted to do their own thing and wasn't paying attention to everyone else, it was so noticeable and was enough to make everyone lose their momentum and in a way, it could also make you question yourself if you couldn't identify the issue.

I've had my moments, especially in the early days, where I would be too focused on what I was playing, to take note of everyone else, but since training my ears over the years, I think simple jam sessions have become a lot more enjoyable.

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Ways of Honing This Skill
One of the best ways to hone it is by doing sports, as it is the kind of activity that really takes a team to achieve some good games. Music, and playing live is another way to hone it, as playing live kind of has everyone on edge to a certain extent, and the last thing you want to do is let everyone down by not being as tight as you can be, I've had my fair share of terrible gigs, but after something like that, I really upped my game so to speak, to make sure that I didn't make any serious mistakes in the future.

While playing original music, it's a bit easier to get away with messing up a few songs, as no one knows them, but I've noticed that playing covers live is a bit more nerve-racking, because everyone knows how it should sound.

Another way to hone team-building skills - and it's one that I assume, not many people think of - is playing online competitive games. It's probably a good way for kids to learn how to play as part of a team if they aren't into sports and music, the old Call of Duty lobbies could get pretty chaotic back in the day when someone wasn't pulling their weight. It's funny to think about now, but back then it was a big deal, to the point that me and some friends would do some practice games in a private lobby if we were on a bit of a losing streak.

Speaking of that actually, a friend of mine is coming over this coming week for my birthday, who I met playing Xbox when we were 13 or 14, it'll be the 3rd time meeting him in person, and it's been a couple of years since I've seen him, so it should be a lot of fun.