book review
It’s All About Being Skilled! Book: The Ace of Soft Skills: Attitude, Communication and Etiquette for Success Authors: Gopalaswamy Ramesh and Mahadevan Ramesh Publishers: Pearson Education Pages: 456 Price: `550
By Yukti Pahwa
M
aking a successful employee out of an educationally qualified person depends upon certain factors such as communication and etiquette. The authors of the book, from enriched academic and professional backgrounds, portray the role of “Soft Skills built on Attitude,” “Manifested through Communication” and “Polished by Etiquette” in lives of those who aspire to be in any corporate/ service industry. The book begins with the definition of soft skills as the knowledge, other than technical (educationally acquired) knowledge, that is necessary for progress; along with its characteristics and the misconceptions that exist around it. The idea is to equip Indian professionals in carrying out effective interaction with international business community, especially addressing the USA, and vice versa. The Book has been divided into to three parts. The first portion deals with chapters related to attitude. Here the importance of skills such as passion, pride, process of attaining goals, maintaining modesty and balance in attitude of self in work environment have been explained; in addition to group skills including team and shared accountability, and avoidance of blame game. Willingness to seek friendship
and learning from people with diverse backgrounds and culture, avoiding stereotypes and biases of different nature, especially gender has been talked about in details. A whole chapter deals with “Learnability” and “continuous learning”, that entails learning about skills that equip employees to keep up with the ever changing world. Following chapter walks around the interplay between the performance and expectation, ending at a note that employees should always “under-promise” and “over-deliver”, with respect to the employers’ expectations. Other chapters deal with a note on time management, accountability, analysing and managing risk parameters, alertness, resiliency in terms of optimism and keeping spirits high at work place, and finally, the importance of hard work. The second part of the book highlights a unit on elements, modes of communication and distractions in communication; the source of distractions and the ways to minimise distortions in communication, in business scenarios such as presentations and group meetings. Furthermore, there is an explanation towards relevance of doing audience analysis and aim of impactful communication. The following chapters focus on listening skills, using correct posture and body language in
different situations, use of visual aids, process of writing resume´, interview meetings, writing proposals, preparing reports and feedback mechanisms. The final segment of the book draws upon the skills related to ‘Etiquette’ and mannerism. It elaborates on how behaviour has to be modified with “small talk and humour”, change with change in medium of communication (highlighting the phone and email communication), special situations like foreign trips and/ requests made by important people that have to be regretted, and finally the adaptation of behaviour with change in language and culture around. A devoted chapter on “Respecting Privacy” is a beautiful empahsis on how one should be “privacy-savvy at many levels” at workplace. Just before the book ends the chapter on “Learning to Say No” provides with an impetus to the reader with the ways in which potentially harmful requests from the boss can be averted. Finally, last few pages have been dedicated to the importance of the English language skills that are, in todays world, considered as the most important of the skills baggage one should carry. The book makes an insightful reading and is full of contextualised Indian illustrations, for all those who belong to service industry. \\
digital LEARNING
OCTOBER 2010
49