“You had a soft power about you as you interacted…”

“Soft power? Me?” you may ask yourself.

Quite honestly, before actively engaging with the concept, I thought I didn’t check any of the boxes on the list for such attributes! When someone suggested soft power about me, I basked in it because it sounded nice and didn’t think much of it.

Later I realised that it was worth an interrogation especially that the person that said that of me was not in the habit of “buttering up” things.

What perhaps confused me was using the word soft and power in the same space. Power is almost always associated with force, until I discovered that there was much more for me to learn!

According to my cursory research, as a personal trait, soft power refers to the ability to influence and persuade others through charisma, emotional intelligence, effective communication, empathy and building strong relationships.

It became clearer to me that soft power entails the employment of less forceful means to influence and persuade. There is a kind of elegance, delight and diplomacy in the exercise of soft power (I am still mulling around whether I make the grade here!).

It would be useful for us to check ourselves against the soft power list and gauge the benefits… perhaps we may want to adopt it as part of our professional personal traits.