Students of professional courses must address the issue of developing soft skills which are in demand at all workplaces. They should develop soft skills such as trust, cooperation, teamwork, altruism and similar indispensable components of societal life.

Soft skills refer to a cluster of personal qualities, habits, attitudes and social graces that make someone a good employee and a compatible co-worker. Companies value soft skills because research suggests and experience shows that they can be just as important an indicator of job performance as hard skills. And with business being done at an increasingly fast pace, employers also want people who are strong on soft skills. Soft skills include communication, listening, negotiation, language skills, etc. Soft skills play a vital role for professional success; they help one to excel in the workplace and their importance cannot be denied in this age of information and knowledge. This article throws light on the nature of soft skills that all students of professional courses need to develop in order to become successful in their respective professions.

In recent times, scholars such as Daniel Goleman and others have championed the cause of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Spiritual Intelligence (SI) which throw more light on the desirable soft skills. It is necessary to distinguish Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) so that we understand where actually the soft skills belong.

IQ is a measure of an individual's intellectual, analytical, logical and rational abilities. It is concerned with verbal, spatial, visual and mathematical skills. It gauges how readily one learns new things, focuses on tasks and exercises, retains and recalls objective information, engages in a reasoning process, manipulates numbers, thinks abstractly as well as analytically and solves problems with the application of prior knowledge.

EQ is an array of non-cognitive capabilities, competencies and skills that influence one's ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures. It is the personal, social and survival aspects of overall intelligence. It has the ability to read the political and social environment, to intuitively grasp what others want and need, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and to remain unruffled by stress.

MBA Review Magazine, Professional Success, Soft Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Spiritual Intelligence, Intelligence Quotient, Emotional Quotient, Mathematical Skills, Social Environment, Ethical Mind, Policy Heedlessness, Policy Regulations.