One non-tech answer is learning to listen and learning to ask intelligent questions. Assuming you are writing software for people to use, these skills can be very valuable talking to users, executives and pretty much anyone a software engineer deals with. Maybe this is not too useful if you are working on some non user facing stuff like hard algorithms or protocols, I don't know.

I've seen even experienced people end up asking leading questions and get the answers that they want (or think are right), instead of just letting the other person tell them what their thoughts. The result is weeks or months of wasted effort, bugs and user unhappiness.