Soft Skills

from EDSA Magazine Summer 2020

by European Dental Students' Association

Bacteriophages

Soft Skills: Why are they important for individuals and organizations?

Dora Srdoč, Croatia

Soft skills are defined as personal attributes needed for sucess in a job or an organization. On the other hand, hard skills are job-specific skills, an exact knowledge needed to perform a job. Both hard and soft skills are equally important for a person as an individual and while working with different people in a team or organization. Hard skills can be gained through education, training programs, workshops. They are easy to define and evaluate e.g. for an IT professional a hard skill would be computer programming. Soft skills are harder to define or evaluate as they are considerd interpersonal skills. Most famous soft skills are communication, listening, empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, time management, public speaking, teamwork, problem-solving, leadership. Soft skills define how one person interacts with others in a group and as an individual, it shows their personal traits,

communication abilities, the ability to provide a constructive feedback and motivate people they are working with. Why are soft skills considered so important? The answer is quite easy, while those help an individual in a matter of personal growth they also reflect to a whole group that this individual is working with. Every individual that is a part of an organization should bring equal skills and knowledge as every other individual in order for an organization to run efficiently. Another reason why soft skills are always required while working with a group of people is because soft skills are transferable skills that can be used regardless of the job at which the person is working and also can be thought to others. This makes people with soft skills very adaptable to different situations and environment. People as individuals or as a team should never stop working on themselves throughout life. Both soft and hard skills can always be improved over time or be used as a tool to teach other people and insipire them to work on themselves. In order to improve your soft skills a person can enroll in various training sessions and also attend a Training New Trainers seminar and become a certified Soft Skills Trainer. There is no better feeling than helping people develop themselves, inspire, motivate and teach them how to grow while also learining from their journey on becoming new trainers. Being a soft skill trainer means teaching other people new skills in a way of non-formal education. Trainer compass is a tool that aims to indentify and evaluate the competences of a trainer. Those are: behaviour, skill, attitude and knowledge. Trainer’s attitude represents the foundations of a trainer’s practice. It holds the structure for knowledge, skill, and behaviour. It is the core of the trainer, the first and most important thing the trainees will see, feel, connect to, and what people will remember. A trainer should be open minded, free of stereotypes, but also be confident, reflective, patient and overall positive. The knowledge a trainer needs can be divided into knowledge regarding how people work and learn (how learning happens and what are the most effective ways to stimulate long term understanding and mastering), the knowledge essentially needed to facilitate the learning process, and knowledge related to the content of the training being delivered. Next to knowledge, trainers also need some well developed transferring skills that can be roughly named communication skills, as main tool for knowledge exchange and how to properly engage with the audience to start the learning process, and delivering skills (how to speak and present the information so that the audience understands and remembers), making it accessible for the audience to master the skills related to the content. Last but not least, behaviour: no matter whom one is and all the things that one knows and can, it’s not worth much if one doesn’t do something with those experiences, skills and knowledge. The impact of a trainer is only as far reaching as the actions and behaviour that a trainer exhibits. Talking and demonstrating what a trainer is teaching in her/his own behaviour, both in training and everyday life, is absolutley essential for a great trainer.