Page 17 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

Project Name: Manual for Soft Skills
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Soft Skills: Growing Importance | 5

Management Skills
Managerial skills include the ability to manage people, capital, and budgets
as well as the ability to undertake organizational activities such as planning,
marketing, and evaluation. Managerial skills are essential for teachers and
academic administrators. For an administrator or a school principal whose
responsibility lies in managing the rest of the staff, the managerial skill is
immensely important.

Leadership Skills
The ability to motivate and assist others to achieve their full potential, to take
risks and to formulate a vision comes under the purview of leadership skills.
These skills are essential for both teachers and students; teachers play a great
role in helping students to acquire these skills.

Contextual Skills
The ability to operate successfully in different settings, such as different coun-
tries, different regions or a culturally diverse workplace is a contextual skill.
The authors of the above-mentioned report are careful to make the point
that while technical skills are necessary by themselves, they are not sufficient
for commercial success in the contemporary scenario.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS

In a survey of 400 employers concerning their perceptions of workplace,
basic skills, and competencies required for current and potential employees,
the employers explained that they wanted entry-level workers to possess
employability skills rather than technology competencies. To them, the most
important skills (rating over 92.6 per cent) were basic skills, thinking skills,
personal quality skills, and interpersonal competencies; technology compe-
tencies and systems competencies rated the lowest at 54.5 per cent and 52.8 per
cent respectively (Richens and McClain 2000). In another study, employers
identified a lack of soft skills (e.g., general social skills that includes actions or
behavioural patterns like callingto inform if one is going to be late or absent,
staying on the job despite frustrations, etc. ) as the primary barrier to employ-
ment (Owen et al. 2000).
In engineering, for example, communication skills are often considered
more important than high-level mathematics, group work skills are more
important than academic individuality, and a commitment to lifelong learning
and continuing professional development more important than a theoretical
contribution to research-focused projects and development.

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