 So in our last video, we talked about the top five hard skills that all engineers should know in order to become a great engineer. And today we'll be talking about the other half, which is the top five soft skills that all engineers should know. And believe it or not, soft skills are actually an important and crucial part of your toolbox of skills in order to become an exceptional engineer. The reason for this is because we as engineers, we actually don't work in isolation. Typically, we work with a stakeholder or a bunch of other people. And so in my experience, for example, as a mining engineer, I have to work with a whole bunch of other people, such as people from GeoTech, people from feud services, people from operations, maintenance, reliability, and occasionally we sometimes even have to work with people that don't have a technical background, such as from finance or from regulatory. And that's when it's even more important to have these excellence soft skills. And so let's go find out what these top five soft skills that all engineers should know. The first soft skill is problem solving. And so hopefully this is not a big surprise to anyone, because we as engineers are hired to solve problems. Even if you have a problem that you can easily solve, you should always apply those analytical thinking abilities to look for ways to optimize the solution. One thing to know is that problem solving in university versus in the real world are two very different things. In university, you're given the problem, you're given set of facts, and you're given the questions. So all these things are clearly laid out for you. Whereas in the real world, you may often just be given the questions, but you may yourself have to go find all the supporting information that goes into solving the problem. And sometimes you may even need to ask clarifying questions about what is it actually that the client or the customer wants you to solve. And so the second skill is critical questioning. I think it's important that you have a critical eye to always be asking, why are we solving this problem? And secondly, if it's worth the time and effort to go solve this problem, sometimes you may be asked to do things that are nice to have, but you're still investing time and effort. And that's really when it's so important to know exactly why you're being asked to do something. And another example is for engineers that have field exposure. It's whenever you're going out into the field, you should always be thinking with a critical mind and ask those questions about, is this really safe or is this actually the way that we're supposed to be doing things? And so because people are often subjected to complacency, sometimes people in the field may forget to do something or they may leave out a step. And that's when it's so important for you to go ask those questions. And to see maybe perhaps there may be a safety issue related to the work that you're doing, or maybe they fled out a step in executing their job when they're building a structure that you've designed. I've done to find these improper procedures can be a great way to prevent a safety incident or operational inefficiencies. The third skill is presentation, creation and delivery. And so as I mentioned in my last video about the top five hard skills that all mining engineers should know is that you shouldn't know how to use Microsoft PowerPoint, but using Microsoft PowerPoint effectively to create engaging presentations is a whole other skill set for mining engineers. For example, you put a lot of work into the design and scheduling and sequencing of your mind plan. And typically the last step is that you need to inform the designs and the schedules that you have just created and presented to an audience of your stakeholders to get their buy-in. What you have to do is you have to take a lot of complex technical information and distill it into simple information that everyone can easily understand. And typically you'll want to skip out all those complex little details and just highlight the most important part that matters to them. And that itself is an art, is a skill that you have to master. Typically charts, graphs, pictures, or even videos are the best way to convey those information. And typically the less text it is, the more I engaging it will be. And instead of just having a one big chart, you also want to use callouts to identify the critical message that you're delivering. And so creating effective PowerPoints and delivering that it's a whole other different skill set. And of course included in the presentation delivery part is that you need to effectively communicate your message verbally. And so that communication part of clearly articulating your message is another crucial part of the presentation delivery process. The fourth soft skill that all engineers should have to master is leadership. And so in the perspective of a mining engineer, you're running this very giant complex operation. And as a mind planner, you're privy to a lot of these information inflows and outflows. And you can in a way think of yourself as a mastermind behind this mining operation. And as a mining engineer, you can show leadership and initiative by identifying a problem and providing a recommendation to solve it before they're even brought up by other people on a similar note. Leadership doesn't just apply to your work in the office, but it also applies to whenever you're out in the field. So for example, if you notice something is wrong in the field, you can take leadership by identifying that something is wrong, bringing it to the attention of the supervisor and providing some solutions to solve whatever's wrong in the field. And that, again, will help address safety concerns and potentially operational inefficiencies. And again, these are two things that are highly valued by management. The fifth skill is negotiation and conflict resolution. As mining engineers, we're developing these highly technical mind plans that takes into account a lot of considerations. And sometimes you just can't be able to satisfy everyone and make a plan that solves all the concerns because there's just so many constraints to a mind plan. Sometimes what you have to do when you present your mind plan is to negotiate an outcome that is okay with everyone that everyone can assess. Sometimes you have to take a loss somewhere in order to satisfy someone else's concern somewhere else. And that's a very difficult skill to master, but it's definitely one that would very likely come up within your career. And so to summarize the top five soft skills that I think all engineers should have is one, problem solving, two, critical questioning, three, presentation, creation and delivery, four, leadership, and five, negotiation and conflict resolution. None of these soft skills are easy to master. And in fact, I think they can take a long time for you to get good at. But the best way to get good at these skills is to practice them daily, seek mentorship from other people, take courses about these skills if you can, and read. But I think that if you're able to master these soft skills and of course adding in the hard skills, you definitely become a very effective engineer and you'll be able to do great things within your career and make a whole lot of money. That's it for this video. Thank you so much for watching. And if you have any video suggestions ready, yes, feel free to leave them in the comments section below. And I'll consider making a video just for you. And thank you very much and we'll see you next time.