The soft skills you need to be a great technical writer tend to be consistent across organizations. Just like hard skills, you can learn soft skills by taking a course; asking for feedback from a manager, coach, or mentor; or reflecting on how you handled a situation.

Important soft skills for technical writers include:

• Working well with subject matter experts.
• Attention to detail.
• Ability to quickly learn new technical concepts.
• Ability to empathize with your audience.
• Ability to manage your own time.

Great technical writers are known as much for their soft skills as for their technical proficiency, and over time they develop a reputation in the industry for their winning combination of soft and hard skills. These technical writers are almost always in hot demand and can usually command top-of-the-market rates, take their pick of roles with great organizations, or negotiate employment conditions that work for them.

Insight

Use Reflections to Build Your Soft Skills Reflecting on how you handled a situation can be a great pathway to personal growth. Take the opportunity to reflect on a situation you were involved in, either at work or in your personal life, that you think went particularly well—or not so well, providing you with an opportunity to do better next time. Keep your reflections filed somewhere you can add to them over time. Reflections can be a great way of identifying behaviors that have worked well—for yourself or for others—and incorporating them into your repertoire of soft skills. You can also use them to identify habits that you think might need changing. Don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t handled a situation as well as you could. Reflections help you understand what you can do better next time.