Behavioral skills: the complete catalog of soft skills of 2025

At present, the behavioral skills, also known as Soft Skills, are particularly popular with recruiters and businesses. Having technical skills is no longer enough; it is essential to master the art of being, acting and interacting effectively with others, thus revealing the crucial sense of Interpersonal trait For everything collaborator.

These behavioral skills encompass a range of human, relational, and emotional qualities that are crucial for adapting to an ever-changing professional environment, for example: managing stress, solving problems effectively, making informed decisions, and stimulating creativity and innovation.

But what exactly are the behavioral skills ? And how do you assess behavioural competencies?

1 - The list of behavioral competencies

In the vast universe of behavioral skills, also known as soft skills, careful classification into different categories is essential to understand their complexity and diverse applicability.

Communication

• Written communication: Express yourself and communicate (ideas, emotions, feelings, facts...) in writing
• Oral communication: Expressing and communicating (ideas, emotions, feelings, facts...) orally in different contexts - environments - situations
• Visual communication: Select and/or build graphic supports to communicate
• Nonverbal communication: Be aware at home & others of the bodily elements accompanying verbal/parverbal communication
• Para-verbal communication: Be aware at home & others of the impact of prosody (rhythm, speech, tone...) in communication
• Digital communication: Ability to use digital tools
• Reformulate: Ensure a good mutual understanding through questioning, obtain accurate information
• Information Management: Producing, managing, storing, archiving, disseminating information
• Structure: Prioritize thinking and communication to ensure effectiveness
• Synthesize: Summarize complex ideas, get to the point
• Select: Sort information to communicate effectively

Team work

• Integration: Ability to find a place in an already formed collective and/or to facilitate the access of a new member
• Coordination: Ability to organize activities and roles within a collective according to skills & constraints to achieve an objective
• Reliability/Rigor: Ability to ensure the quality of one's action and that of others/Take into account rules, framework, methods, commitments
• Empathy: Ability to put yourself in the shoes of others, understand the point of view of others, provide a secure environment
• Listening: Ability to make yourself available to gather communication from others and process it
• Understanding: Ability to integrate the constraints, needs, specificities, requests, ideas of others
• Sharing: Ability to circulate information and knowledge, and to pool material and intangible resources
• Feedback: Ability to provide positive & negative feedback, hear and integrate feedback from others
• Adaptation: Ability to (make) evolve in new or complex environments, to integrate new data
• Trust (produce/grant/inspire): Ability to follow the opinions of others, to delegate, to establish a transparent relationship, to develop autonomy
• Help: Ability to make yourself available to others in order to resolve a situation/ability to ask for support

Conflict Management

• Mediation: Ability to take an intermediate position in order to re-establish positive communication/assist in conflict resolution
• Active listening: Ability to practice caring and attentive listening in order to understand meaning
• Stress management: Control your emotions - ability to identify your stressors (and those of others) in order to neutralize them or take a step back
• Analysis: Ability to identify sources of tension, the nature of a problem
• Suggest solutions: Ability to suggest compromises
• Objectivity/Neutrality: Ability to research & use objectified elements (facts, ideas...) while maintaining a distance from the situation

Negotiation

• Influencing: Ability to get ideas across
• Persuade: Ability to get an interlocutor to adhere through the prism of emotions
• Convincing: Ability to get an interlocutor to agree through the prism of facts
• Listen: Focus on paying attention, receiving & accepting
• Perseverance: Ability to remain constant, firm in the pursuit of a goal
• Compromise (find): Ability to find a satisfactory arrangement for all, in exchange for concessions
• Benevolence: Ability to put yourself in a favorable position and/or to encourage others to have the same posture
• Accepting change: Ability to consider a new way of doing things, a new solution, to see new perspectives
• Diplomacy: Ability to bring about consensus by taking care of the parties involved, demonstrate political sense

Leadership

• Self-confidence: Giving yourself permission, knowing yourself, basing your action on the conviction of your own ability to do
• Responsibility: Ability to feel involved in carrying out a task and/or to take responsibility for failures and claim successes
• Autonomy: Limit supervision needs (self & others), external constraints or interference
• Motivation/Involvement: Capacity to mobilize and invest fuelled by the satisfaction of an individual and/or collective need
• Listening: Ability to make yourself available to gather communication from others and process it
• Trust (grant/create): Ability to follow the opinions of others, to delegate, to establish a transparent relationship, to develop autonomy
• Attention (to others): Ability to give time to others
• Recognition: Valuing the work, investment, efforts, and attitudes of others by the most appropriate means
• Facilitate: Ability to stimulate a rhythm, to facilitate exchanges
• Delegation: Set the collaborative framework and grant autonomy in the conduct of the task
• Mobilizing a network: Ability to maintain lasting relationships with people, to solicit them and/or ability to connect people
• Decide: Know how to make a choice based on criteria and/or take an initiative
• Organize: Coordinate work, allocate resources, set priorities according to constraints, skills, resources...
• Setting goals: Giving purpose, giving meaning
• Federate: Ability to bring together different people around an action, a fact, a symbol, an idea and/or to create a feeling of unity and belonging

Recoil & Self assessment

• Reflexivity: Faculty of introspection, of gaining perspective, of decentralization
• Ethics: Ability to act according to a frame of values and beliefs (own or group)
• Self-control: Ability to manage emotions and impulses on a daily basis or in extraordinary situations
• Set goals: Ability to precisely establish an action plan and goals, to verify that they are being met
• Emotional Management: Ability to rationality in contexts of tension or stress
• Stress management (personal): Ability to recognize and identify the causes of stress, to neutralize them as much as possible, to maintain rationality and effectiveness
• Stepback/recoil ability: Ability to take a step back to observe a situation, a behavior and return to a favorable state
• Self-assessment: Ability to take an objective look at one's behaviors, actions, results
• Objectivity: Ability to make judgments without involving personal preferences

Adaptability

• Stress management: Ability to recognize a situation creating tension, act while maintaining everyone's abilities of action as best as possible
• Self-control: Know how to operate, avoid safe havens, stay in control
• Anticipation: Develop a prospective vision, act in advance, (be) prepared
• Energy/Mobilization capacity: Ability to get moving and to choose subjects for good energy management
• Responsiveness: Ability to react positively to the unexpected and/or to provide a rapid response
• Management of uncertainty: Ability to (make) evolve peacefully in a VUCA environment and/or to make decisions including risk management
• Seeking change: Ability to favor changing, dynamic, and uncertain environments
• Creating change: Ability to initiate transitions, make decisions
• Leading change: Ability to coordinate operations to move from an initial state to a desired situation
• Living well with change: Personal ability to evolve in an environment in transition and/or to create a serene climate for a team
• Identifying change: Ability to identify, anticipate and integrate the signs of future change
• Autonomy: Ability to evolve in a changing context and/or to make decisions without supervision
• Measuring impact: Ability to identify the benefits and drawbacks of change

Learning

• Individual learning: Ability to understand, organize and master autonomous learning by yourself
• Group learning: Ability to learn through the sharing of knowledge and practice,
• Openness: Ability to be interested in diversity and in different codes
• Curiosity (practical): Ability to seek new information for the purpose of learning
• Pedagogy: Ability to design & deploy activities to develop the learning of others
• Transmission: Ability to share knowledge with another person or group
• Self-knowledge: Ability to identify preferred ways of learning and what fuels (or not) curiosity and openness

Analytical skills

• Collecting & processing information: Ability to search and classify information for later use
• Formulate a question: Know how to ask questions to meet a need, collect relevant and useful information
• Analytical spirit: Ability to identify and understand the different elements of a situation
• Summary: Assessing the importance & relevance of information
• Critical thinking: Observe and rationally question information, a situation, an idea...
• Organize: Select, schedule, sequence, archive information
• Compare/benchmark: Ability to put into perspective, to look for external reference models
• Decide: Ability to choose/set goals
• Put into perspective: Ability to take a high vision and to consider a situation as a whole

Creativity

• Curiosity (Discovery): Be interested in new knowledge, ideas, ideas, methods, initiatives, techniques
• Imagination: Ability to illustrate/represent/invent theories, images, concepts, symbols, etc.
• Spirit of initiative: Dare and propose, seize opportunities, take risks, see the benefits
• Reflection: Capacity for internal dialogue and introspection
• Entrepreneurship: Ability to launch new projects, from the idea to its realization, alone or with others
• Innovative spirit: Ability to find original, innovative solutions, to break out of classical patterns
• Intuition: Ability to rely on the sum of one's experiences
• Originality: Ability to deal with a situation in an offbeat, unexpected, surprising way
• Thinking in a tree structure: Ability to think quickly, significantly, and abundantly, by associations of ideas
• “Out of the box”: Ability to think without normative and regulatory constraints, habits and uses

Problem solving

• Organization: Ability to build, adapt or modify a method for organizing different elements of a problem
• Strategy: Conceptualize and project your action in the short, medium, long term
• Decision-making: Choosing, carrying out, taking action based on the information at your disposal
• Time management: Organize/reorganize your time and that of others for a specific purpose (efficiency, leisure, balance...)
• Height gain: Ability to observe an overall situation to measure the ins and outs
• Analysis: Ability to sequence data and identify stakeholders & their challenges in a given situation
• Observation: Ability to detach yourself from a situation and to act as a neutral third party
• Ask questions: Define issues, disagreements, critical points, and areas of convergence
• Put into perspective: Ability to gain perspective and to bring elements of comparison/relativize/reframe
• Design a plan: Propose progressive and sequenced resolution scenarios
• Setting goals: Ability to measure progress toward solving the problem
• SMARTE Goals: Set Specific, Measurable, Attractive, Attractive, Realistic, Timely, and Environmentally (ontologically) OK Goals
• Convincing: Encouraging stakeholder buy-in

To go further, discover our article on Top 10 soft skills of 2024.

2 - Recruiter: how to assess behavioral skills?

After several years of R&D with researchers in Psychology and Neuroscience, we created Yuzu, a New Generation Assessment Center, specialized in the assessment of soft skills.

With Yuzu, talents are immersed in Situations developed with the latest technologies of Video game.

The evaluations, on the other hand, are accessible to all profiles thanks to simplified orders and cloud technologies (all you need is a computer and an internet connection to be evaluated).

Evaluate the behavioral skills of your candidates with Yuzu

The advantages of our solution:

• One candidate experience exceptional to boost your employer brand ;
• A solution accessible to all to ensure equal opportunities;
• A decision support tool to detect and promote interpersonal skills.

Whether it's for your recruitment process Or of internal mobility, we are transforming theAssessment soft skills in a moment Loud and playful.

For more information, see our article onsoft skills assessment.

3 - Candidate: How to develop and assess behavioral skills?

Behavioral skills are acquired and strengthened through practice, training, and Feedback. With the times And the right one method, these skills can improve your experiment professional.

Personal and professional development strategies

To improve your behavioral skills, start by identifying and classifying them according to your goals, needs and those of your business. Use self-assessment tools, personality tests, or specific quizzes to do this.

Then design a tailor-made action plan that could include:

• Reading books, articles, or blogs that focus on behavioral skills.
• Participation in training courses, workshops, webinars or conferences.
• Membership in communities, networks or clubs that share your interests.
• The request for mentoring, coaching or sponsorship from competent professionals.
• The regular practice of targeted skills, through challenges or projects.

Use constructive feedback and self-assessment

To assess your behavioral skills, look for constructive feedback from colleagues, managers, customers or partners. Use assessment tools, conduct interviews or satisfaction surveys. THEself-assessment is also crucial. Ask yourself questions like:

• What behavioral skills did I use in this situation?
• What are my strengths and areas for improvement?
• How does my behavior affect myself, others, and the organization?
• What actions can I take to improve my behavior?

Learning technologies and tools

Learning and assessing your behavioral skills can be made more engaging, interactive, and personalized through technology. Explore online platforms, apps, serious games, or simulations. These tools offer you the opportunity to:

• Access diverse content, adapted to your level and learning style.
• Test your knowledge and skills through quizzes and exercises.
• Receive immediate feedback and tips for moving forward.
• Track your progress and results through performance indicators.

To remember

In a recruiting world marked by fierce competition and rapidly changing expectations, behavioral skills stand out as the cornerstone of any successful career.

It's no longer a secret: businesses across industries are actively looking for talent who can demonstrate high emotional intelligence, an ability to collaborate effectively, and an ability to navigate challenges with resilience and professional ethics.

These soft skills, well beyond a simple diploma or hard skills, are the real driver of innovation and performance within organizations. They are the answer to the complex needs of our time, where managing stress, communicating constructively, and working as a team transcends the simple framework of employment to affect the quality of our daily lives.