Get Your Students Hired
I think all the soft skills are important and they may vary in importance depending on the situation. I believe excellent customer service is the one that can encompass all the soft skills.
I learned this from a national company I worked for many years ago. I will try to concisely explain. Their mission basically was to provide high level healthcare by providing excellent customer service to every customer. The key here was: "who is your customer?" and the answer was: "anyone and everyone you meet while engaged in the company business, either on or off site". In excellent customer service they incorporated all the people skills and workplace behaviors into this concept. They spent a great deal of time and effort teaching this concept to their employees and it was part of the evaluation process. It took time for new employees to understand and incoporate these concepts. The best and easiest example I can give is too operate always the way Disney World operates.
Thank you, Sally! Those little (we hope!) discrepancies in values continue to chafe. I wish someone would indeed come up with a perfect answer. Redefining and rationalizing by context can make only temporary peace. Compartmentalizing leads to fragmentation of our selves in every context. I think we must keep searching for a solution in integrity--our personal wholeness.
Of the 10 most important, I think that I would have to agree with the PA study and say that being able to develop effective work relationships is most important. While I agree that having common sense is what links everything else together, I think that effective work relationships is the result of having the other soft skills - they are pre-requisites for effective work relationships.
My thought process goes like this: How could an employee in any type of workplace have effective work relationships if he/she did not demonstrate the behaviors listed under "attention to detail", or turned up to work under the influence of alcohol/drugs? Or if he/she was not able to participate productively in conflict resolution, did not provide good customer service, or did not demonstrate dependability? An employee who did not have integrity, a positive attitude or an ability to understand others would also not be able to develop effective work relationships. And, as already stated, displaying common sense holds everything together.
So - that is my reasoning for choosing "Effective Work Relationships" as the most important soft skill.
Dixie, your comment about staying true to our personal values really jumped out at me in this forum.
I feel that this falls under the soft skill of integrity. Whereas the course material discusses integrity in relation to the school and our dealings with students, you have pointed out the importance of being able to maintain personal integrity. If anything within our job results in a conflict with our personal values, it's a problem in my opinion. How do we deal with a situation where, for example, the school's policy on handling a certain type of student issue is in direct conflict with our personal beliefs and values?
Perhaps there is an additional skill that has not been mentioned, which encompasses being able to compartmentalize personal and professional values, which in turn gives us the ability to accept a different set of rules in the workplace?
I don't expect anyone to necessarily have the perfect answer to my questions...... These thoughts came to me from reading your post, and it occurred to me that our mental, emotional and spiritual health is compromized when we find ourselves in situations where this kind of conflict occurs.
Thanks for writing a thought provoking comment, Dixie!
To me the most important soft skills are
customer service, conflict resolution, compassion, and understanding and reading emotions and personalities.
Luke,
Communication is a big part of the learning environment. Do your best to over communicate.
Philip Campbell
Loren,
This is not easy for everyone to do. Especially in tough situations. Ones emotions are a hard thing to control. We all need to work on it on a regular basis.
Philip Campbell
Andrea,
Teamwork is so important, and one thing that many people cite as a need. We need everyone to want to be part of a team. Thanks for sharing.
Philip Campbell
I believe being able to communicate to a broad array of students learning abilities, and being able to manage conversations with certain personalities that may not 'mesh' with your own. For example, I've had students not understand what I've lectured on and later had to reiterate the information to them in a fashion that does not make them feel inferior or stupid (if I may use that term).
Soft skills are very important to be able to reac h your students and understand their emotions and activities. Instructors managing their own EQ leads to better communications between student and instructor. The best way to remind myself when I hear from an unhappy or class disrupting student is STOP! WAIT! LISTEN! and use your soft skills to respond, such as management of your emotions.
One of the more important soft skills is the ability to recognize and managing your emotions. This is combined with also being aware of other people's feelings other than your own in any given situation. I personally try to maintain a positive attitude and smile which helps a lot!
Coco Mayer
I feel the most important soft skill is being a team player. With any occupation teamwork is needed, it does matter whether you are in the armed forces or in a hospital setting teamwork is important because it helps to save lives. In other professions teamwork can ease workloads, decrease stress and provides a positive work environment.
Communication is the most important soft skill in the classroom. It impacts what students learn and how they learn the information. The other soft skills are also important but communication is the most important.
Donna,
Communication is always something that should be worked on at all levels.
Philip Campbell
I'm going with integrity. Although I suppose integrity without other soft skills, like positive attitude, might negate it. For example, if in having integrity I am also unyielding, my soft skills might suffer. It's not enough to have integrity... you must be able to put it to use constructively and, like batman, for good.
I teach in a healthcare program so it is critical that our students learn to communicate effectively. In the workplace employers expect healthcare professionals to not only be technically skilled, but also able to discuss needed treatment, procedures, and expected outcomes with the patient in a compassionate, competent manner. So much of what healthcare providers do is related to the "soft skills". Today, we are seeing a diminished ability to "manage" people and patients. A patient will be unhappy with treatment received no matter how successful the outcome if the "delivery" is substandard. We are judged by the way we act, not just by what we do or the level of our skill.
A lot of what instructors do is designed to show that they are not clueless, that they understand what the student's situation is -- that they have empathy. There is a hard side to empathy, it's not just a soft skill, it involves knowing stuff, not just displaying niceness.
Celine,
It is nice to see that we are trying to give students a good balance between both technical and soft skills.
Philip Campbell