Dec '20
The IUP Journal of Soft Skills
Focus
The paper, "Blended Learning of Soft Skills Through Life Skills in an Organization" by S Ammani and V B Chitra, discusses gaining knowledge of blended soft skills at workplace through life skills. It focuses on areas like self-awareness, self-motivation, cooperation, empathy, interpersonal skills, listening skills, negotiation skills, humor, etc. Acquiring these skills helps us deal with any circumstance and makes life comfortable, more balanced and stress free.
On similar lines of gaining knowledge on soft skills, the second paper, "Learning Soft Skills Through Group Discussion" by Sangeeta Sharma and Sushila Shekhawat, emphasize on acquiring soft skills through Group Discussion (GD) in educational institutions to help students compete with the professionals. The paper highlights that soft skills should be acquired by involving students in different activities through GD and not merely classroom teaching. It improves communication skills, listening skills and time management.
Good communication skills help in all phases of life from personal to professional life. It can be verbal, non-verbal, written or visual. The ability to speak, listen, write are essential to improve the quality of life. It is a 'must-have' skill. Developing excellent communication skills is undoubtedly the most effective. The third paper, "The Role of Nonverbal in Making Verbal Effective in the Classroom" by Anupama Shekhawat, discusses effective communication skills among teachers-students and effective teaching in the classroom.
Apart from communication skills, critical thinking is also essential. It helps in expressing ourselves. The fourth paper, "From Critical Thinking to Critical Voicing for Impact", the authors, Vickie Cox Edmondson and Jeffrey P Shannon, highlights the critical analysis that helps influence decision-making in articulating and executing strategy. Formulating a strategy is molded through learning conversations and information exchanges among knowledge workers. A multi-layered, five-stage model evolving from critical thinking to critical voicing is used in guiding knowledge workers in decision-making and framing strategy.
With the evolution of new technology, skill change is inevitable. The skills required to help solve a problem yesterday may not work tomorrow. There is always a need to update our skills with the changing times and changing job requirements. To be employable and successful, we have to match with the pace of changing business environment, and recognize and acquire skills that fit the present role. The last paper, "The Role of HR in the Employability Skills of 21st Century" by Vrajlal Sapovadia, examines the role of Human Resources (HR) in terms of the required employability skills. HR helps in guiding and recognizing the skills, they motivate employees to gain those skills, but one should also have self-visualizing and self-learning skills. Overlooking the adoption of employability skills leads to job dissatisfaction, irritation with the daily job requirements or replaced by right people with right skills. In order to retain our job, it is vital to update our skills, learn new skills. One has to be flexible not only to learn technical skills and hard skills but also soft skills.
Consulting Editor
| Article | Price (₹) | ||
| Blended Learning of Soft Skills Through Life Skills in an Organization |
100
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| Learning Soft Skills Through Group Discussion |
100
|
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| The Role of Nonverbal in Making Verbal Effective in the Classroom |
100
|
||
| From Critical Thinking to Critical Voicing for Impact |
100
|
||
| The Role of HR in the Employability Skills of 21st Century |
100
|
||
Blended Learning of Soft Skills Through Life Skills in an Organization
In the current global world, we spend most of our time at the workplace. One should work with team members with mutual cooperation. Soft skills help us to work in a healthy environment. Our peer group members and colleagues may or may not cooperate with us. Soft skills help us to create a good working environment where we can share our knowledge, ideas and information with others. This paper focuses on areas like self-awareness, self-motivation, cooperation, empathy, interpersonal skills, listening skills, negotiation skills, humor, etc. at the workplace. As human beings, it is a must to show empathy towards others and understand others' problems. Interpersonal skills show the way to understand their feelings, emotions, etc. It helps avoid conflict. Those who possess good emotional intelligence can exhibit their views freely. Those who do not have command over their feelings, react violently. Self-aware leaders are confident and they talk about strengths and weaknesses. It is said that life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Being intelligent and acting intelligent are not the same. This paper represents blended learning of soft skills at workplace through life skills.
Learning Soft Skills Through Group Discussion
Group Discussions (GD) are a robust way to teach not only communication skills to the students but also non-verbal communication, difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness, how to be polite, how to put across your points, how to encourage the reticent participants, etc. GD has been an important component of 'soft skills for professionals', course offered to second and third year engineering students at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. This paper focuses on the objectives of teaching the theory of GD and highlights the learning outcomes after all the GDs were conducted in the class.
The Role of Nonverbal in Making Verbal Effective in the Classroom
To be a teacher and to be an effective teacher is a completely different concept. To be an effective teacher is a tough task which many of the teachers fail to comprehend and their teaching suffers, and finally this is reflected in the poor feedback that a teacher gets from his/her students. An effective teacher has deep content knowledge as well as effective communication skills to impart the content to students. Perfect nonverbal skills not only help to present best lectures but also enable the teacher to motivate the students and craft up enthusiasm within them. This way an interactive student-teacher relationship is framed like that of Dronacharya and Arjuna.
From Critical Thinking to Critical Voicing for Impact
The strategy-making process has traditionally been and perceived as exclusive and limited to a small group of mostly homogeneous decision makers who communicate and interact with each other on a regular basis (Hautz, 2017). However, with the advancement of the knowledge economy, the strategy-making process has opened up, giving knowledge workers throughout the organization an opportunity to impact the process (Smith et al., 2018). Thus, in addition to having technical knowhow and expertise, the ability to positively influence the decisions of a rational person who has a different perspective or stake in outcomes is valuable in a collaborative decision-making process. This paper suggests that the strategy-making process is shaped through learning conversations and information exchanges among knowledge workers. Specifically, a multi-layered model with five stages evolving from critical thinking to critical voicing to help knowledge workers influence organizational outcomes and performance is presented. Real-life examples drawn from the authors' working experiences in industry are illuminated.
The Role of HR in the Employability Skills of 21st Century
The current age changes in business and industry are at a pace which is unimaginable and unprecedented. The changes are fast. The changes in business environment happening in a year now were not even seen a century ago. Technological invasion, globalization, economic upliftment and social expectations are drivers of these changes. The skills required for a job now and tomorrow are unpredictable. To remain employable, one has to master one's ability to visualize and be dynamic, adaptable and self-learning. It is not only the technical and hard skills, but soft skills will also provide you the edge in terms of employability. The dimensions of soft skills are expansive. The ability to recognize and acquire skills that optimally fit in managerial role is the key to succeed. This paper critically analyzes the role of Human Resources (HR) in the employability skills of 21st century.