There are some skills that will make you do well in studies and there are some skills that will make you do well in life. Schools and colleges generally focus on having a curriculum that makes students well equipped to land a good job. They nurture skills that are classified as ‘hard skills’, that are testable through exams and which include professional skills such as accountancy, medical expertise, programming, teaching, etc.
The other kind of skills are ‘soft skills’, which are responsible for our success in both our professional and personal lives. These skills are also called ‘people skills’, ‘social skills’, ‘core skills’, ‘key competencies’ and ‘employability skills’.
These emotion-based skills characterise relationships with other people, and our attitude to work, responsibility and life in general. It is based on what is inside us — our values, outlook and other versatile aspects that are hard to measure and test in the conventional sense.
values, outlook and other versatile aspects that are hard to measure and test in the conventional sense.
Soft skills have more to do with our emotional intelligence than our intelligence quotient. And it is by developing and mastering these soft skills that we can learn, work and live more successfully.
Soft skills include leadership, integrity, creativity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, professionalism, enthusiasm, flexibility, networking and teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking. These are far from the only skills we need to do well in life, there are other soft skills that are as important, but for now we will just look at some of these and see what makes them important.
Leadership
Leadership is not about a position, it is about impact, influence and inspiration. A real leader needs to have enough impact to get the desired results, should have enough influence to spread the passion for work, and inspire and empower others to do their best.
A person with good leadership skill always has the enthusiasm to seek and see the best in himself and others. He will also take responsibility for things and not buckle down under pressure.
Good leaders are needed both in the classroom and workplace. So focus on your leadership skills from now so that you become a pro by the time you enter the workplace.
Communication
Communication skill is one of the most essential soft skills and also one of the easiest to develop. Good communication is very important in building relationships with people around us and to do so we not only need to be good speakers and writers, we need to be good listeners too. Good communicators also modify their communication according to the need of the situation they are in.
In the digital age, where there is so much interaction in all sorts of ways, but most of it not being face-to-face, good communication is more important so as not to send out a confusing message or share more than required in a situation. Digital communication is so swift and there is no undoing what has been sent out in the form of a message, email or post, that it makes it all the more important for us to reflect on what we are conveying. This is one of the reasons that at the workplace those who have good email writing skills are valued and appreciated.
Plus, not being able to see those who are receiving our messages, it becomes almost impossible for us to gauge their actual reaction.
At school, we have a lot of friends, so it is easy to work on our overall communication skills with them and there is always the classroom to practice the formal writing side of communication.