Multiply Training - Blog , Soft Skills

AI vs Soft Skills

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 19:41:00 +0000

As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Artificial Intelligence and disruptive technologies will change the face of our planet forever! There are no guarantees as to how things will look. However, one thing will be certain: the human element. The asset that genuinely appreciates within an organization is its people. Systems become dated, buildings deteriorate, but people can grow, develop, and become more effective when they understand their potential value.

Deloitte, through their research, published an article called “Soft Skills for Business Success” affirming that in the future economy, one of the highest demands will be for people with soft skills. Thus, a high IQ and excellent education will only get you so far. Those who want to ‘future-proof’ themselves will have to develop their soft skills.

Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills

What is the difference between hard skills and soft skills? Hard skills are technical skills that can be learned academically. Hard skills are easily measured. Soft skills, on the other hand, are skills that are under the surface and are often difficult to assess. The Oxford Online Dictionary defines soft skills as “personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.” Most people can learn the hard technical skills of a job, but what is lacking is the soft skills needed to keep the job! Soft skills will be the defining factor between those who excel and those who fail. Business owners are now seeing the need to develop their people holistically. Employees can be trained in technical skills, but it won’t mean anything to the company if they are always sick, can’t communicate, can’t work in a team, don’t show initiative, and struggle to manage their emotions.

Soft Skills Don’t Expire

What makes soft skills so important is that they are skills without a ‘sell-by’ date. They will never become obsolete through disruptive technologies. They are also transferable skills that are valuable no matter what industry one finds oneself in. Investing in soft skills therefore not only makes you more employable but also more versatile and agile. As Daniel Goleman, the EQ expert, said: “For star performance in all jobs, in every field, emotional competence is twice as important as purely cognitive abilities. For success at the highest levels, in leadership positions, emotional competence accounts for virtually the entire advantage.”

Training and Development of Soft Skills

So where do we start? Parents, educators, coaches, and business owners need to become very intentional about how we develop and train the people we are responsible for. We need to teach them positive self-esteem. We need to teach them healthy eating and sleeping habits. We need to teach them to be aware of their emotions and how they should respond, not react, in difficult situations. We need to show them how to communicate, work in teams, and deal with conflict. We need to teach them how to lead from a place of integrity, humility, and teachability. It is time we revisit the essential need for soft skills in our own lives and in those we lead.

Future of Education Soft Skills

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:42:48 +0000

According to Statistics SA, “South African youth are still vulnerable in the labour market. South Africa’s unemployment rate is high for both youth and adults; however, the unemployment rate among young people aged 15–34 was 38,2%, implying that more than one in every three young people in the labour force did not have a job in the first quarter of 2018.

Youth unemployment, however, is not unique to South Africa; it is a global phenomenon. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are about 71 million unemployed youth, aged 15–24 years, globally in 2017, with many of them facing long-term unemployment. In South Africa, those aged 15–34 years are considered as youth”.

How do we increase the employability of our young people?

We all know education is one of the key answers to the social challenges we are facing. However traditional education as we know it is also failing. Many graduates with excellent degrees remain unemployed. What is needed is the right type of education. We need an education model that will ensure our young people are more employable and ready to cope in the future job markets.

One of my favorite quotes is that of Ralph Waldo Emerson. “That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so”.

What I have discovered about education over the last two decades as an educator of Emerging Adults (Young people between 18 – 30 years of age), is that education has two key components, academics and life lessons. Life lessons take place between the classes. The challenge is that the more essential experiences of life seem to slip by without us even noticing them. We need to become intentional about our education so that we can draw the value out of learning in everyday context.

How can we become more intentional about that which we do not call education?

1. Place a high value on Soft Skills

Establish the value of soft skills. You will only invest in what you value. If we fail to identify the value of that which we do not call ‘education’, we will fail to be intentional about investing in and developing that side of our education. When a value is placed on Social Emotional Learning (SEL), it will not be seen as an optional extra, but a crucial development to make oneself ‘future proof’.

2. Invest In your Soft Skill Credentials

Many of us have spent 12 years at school and invested another 3-7 years on our tertiary education. We can earn great academic credentials, but what about investing in our soft skills credentials? Reading books about soft skills, attend online or live seminars, doing short courses, anything that will ‘up skill’ you in the area of your soft skills. What if you don’t have money to invest in your personal soft skills development? Then draw value from life lessons. Thus my next point…

3. Draw value from life lessons

Life is the best learner, as you go through life be aware of the soft skills you are developing along the journey for example:

3.1 Make connections

Work on relational connections. Learn to socialize with all types of people. People older and younger than you. People from different social, economic backgrounds and different cultures. Learn to see and value in all people.

3.2 Learn how to handle conflict

Learn how to manage your emotions and that of others by developing effective conflict strategies before you face the conflict. If you have effective strategies in place, you will not be so caught off guard and thus less apologizing to do later. Learn from each problematic situation you find yourself in, what are the skills you have learned from each conflict situation?

3.3 Embrace Responsibility

Responsibility in many ways has become a curse word for this generation and to be avoided like the plague. Responsibility is not a curse, but a blessing. Wrapped up in responsibilities are the gifts of valuable life lessons. The more responsibility I take on, the faster I learn and grow.

3.4 See the value in developing Grit

When I have to push through the uncomfortable circumstances, I develop grit and grit and builds character. This character gives me the capacity to handle the next challenge life will throw at me.

In conclusion

Just remember Soft Skills are primarily non-academic, the first level is the knowledge of the Soft Skill the second level lies in practice. Practice re-enforces learning.

What would the result be if we paid more attention to investing in the softer side of our education and putting that into practice?

Maybe it is time, that which we don’t call education becomes as important as that which we call education?

An overview of Soft Skills

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:49:35 +0000

Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to provide a broad overview of soft skills and its development. We will ask the following questions. What is the history of Emotional Intelligence? Is there a growing need for soft skills development? How are soft skills currently being measured? What is the ROI on soft skills? How is education dealing with the need for a focus on Soft Skills?

History of Soft Skills

Up until the late 80 and early 90’s, most people believed that cognitive abilities and IQ was going to determine success in the workplace. We now know that EQ is as important.

Emotional Intelligence might be defined as: “A type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions (Salovey and Mayer 1990:433). The history of Emotional Intelligence can be traced back to the Intelligence testing movement of Thorndike (1920), who recognised that there are multiple intelligences, one of them being social intelligence.

David Wechsler (1939) built on this concept by suggesting that the moods, feelings, and attitudes surrounding intelligence could be critical components to success in life. In the 1950s, Abraham Maslow created the hierarchy of needs discussing how people could develop emotional strength. The Theory of social intelligences did not receive too much attention until Gardner (1983) in his book, ‘Frames of the mind: the theory of multiple intelligences’. Gardner identifies eight different intelligences; linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. According to Gardner, no one person is the same when it comes to how one learns, develops and solves problems. Payne, (1985), Bar-On (1988), Goldberg (1993), Mayer and Salovey (1990) continued to develop the concept of Emotional Intelligence until Goleman(1995), brought emotional intelligence to the mainstream public.

Growing need for soft skills development

Research shows that soft skills can result in higher earnings and higher chances of work success (Heckman & Kautz 2012; Balcar 2014). Research is also showing that there will be a greater need for soft skills in the future (Deloitte 2017; Carnevale, 2013; Manpower Group, 2013).

Soft Skills development is becoming a ‘hot topic’ due to disruptive technologies and many other factors. Deloitte, in their research on Human Capital Trends (2018) it was shown how the world of work is changing to become more personalised and connected, with formal hierarchies breaking down and being replaced by networks of teams. Another article by Deloitte (2017), “Soft Skills for Business Success” 2, highlights the fact that by 2030 soft skills intensive occupations will make up 2/3 of the world’s workforce and critical soft skills like Self Management; Teamwork; Problem Solving and Global Citizenship just to name a few, will be essential to stay relevant in the business world.

Rossano and Hill (2015)3 in their literature review “Soft e-leadership skills” prepared for the European Commission highlighted the fact that although technology will be at the forefront of the future economy, leaders will need skills in collaboration, communication; empathy; diversity and cultural knowledge to build teams across multiple platforms.

Soft Skills are going to be needed in all fields including IT professionals. Wagner and Sternberg (2002), renowned cognitive psychologists highlighted the fact that ‘School Smart’, good academics at school does not translate to ‘Street Smart’ good work intelligence. They highlighted four areas that need to be mastered for IT professionals: Managing tasks; managing career; managing self; and leading others.

Due to this, recruiters, are becoming more concerned about hiring people with excellent soft skills and more rigorous recruiting procedures are being put into place (Alsop 2006; Colvin 2014; White 2013).

Assessing Soft Skills

The challenge with measuring soft skills is that personalities cannot be put into neat boxes, as Srivastava and Oliver (1999), highlighted for us in their work on the “Big Five”. Credentialing Soft Skills is a new frontier that has not yet been thoroughly mastered, due to the nature of Soft Skills being behaviour based and not analytical. Some of the organizations that use Soft Skills Assessments would be: The States Department of Defense uses a personality test called the (TAPAS).4 Other organizations like DeakinCo5; SHL6; Mayer- Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) presented by MHS7 all present tests measuring some form of soft skills and emotional intelligence.

However, there are challenges to testing softs skills. Connelly (et al. 2010) suggest peer review as a much safer way of assessing soft skills, as it showed ratings by others were more accurate, less biased, and more predictive of future outcomes.

Soft Skills and ROI?

In their article “Derive Hard Numbers from Soft Skills” and based on their research Phillips (et al. 2015)8, firmly believe that companies that invest in Soft Skills will see the results regarding their Return on Investment (ROI). They say: “Soft skills create agile organizations, develop innovative companies, make the best places to work, and build the most admired companies. Soft skills bring out the best in people as their behaviours and competencies are shaped to fit the strategy of the organisation, the desired work climate, and the ever-changing, unpredictable landscape.

Soft Skills in Education

Despite the increase in technology their remains considerable gaps in students learning abilities especially when it comes to critical skills needed for Tertiary education like, focus; self-regulated learning; critical thinking and problem-solving.

A plea to include non-cognitive in education could be seen in a 2012 report by the National Research Council entitled “Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century”. In this report, they highlight the fact that: “Business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management often referred to as “21st-century skills.” (Ed, Hilton and Pellengrino 2012).

Soft Skills education has also been the theme of work by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)9, an organization with a mission “to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education”. CASEL believe that the questions students these days are asking are not information based (anything that can be Googled). The questions they are asking are: “Who am I? How do I work with you? How do we build a team”?

Conclusion

It is essential that if we are leaders in any way shape or form that we consider the significant importance of Soft Skills development. It is never too late to develop yourself and your team. Hard skills can only take you so far; soft skills will take you further!