6 minute read
The Power of Soft Skills
Soft skills help graduates build relationships and keep employment
BY EMILY HARRIS
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Emily Harris is a Soft Skills Training Specialist and Case Manager. Students take classes every Monday.
When you think of job readiness, what do you think of? Most people may think about creating a resume, practicing interview questions, or even doing research on a company you’re interested in. While these are all important steps to take to get a job, they don’t help someone maintain a job. Soft skills are the key to unlock success in both your personal and professional life, which is why we focus on building many soft skills throughout our program.
Soft Skills vs Hard Skills
Hard skills refer to the more job-specific abilities or knowledge learned through education, hands-on experience, or training. These are skills that are quantifiable and can be measured, such as machine operation, cutting hair, or anything in which you can receive a degree or certificate. Soft skills refer to the more interpersonal skills that help build and maintain a person’s relationships with other people. Since soft skills aren’t necessarily quantifiable, they can be hard to measure in job applicants and even harder to take time to teach on the job.
Employers are now more focused on finding employees who have strong soft skills, such as effective communication and good time-management, rather than only looking for job-specific qualifications that can be taught after being hired. In LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report, they found that 92% of professionals reported that soft skills are equally or more important to hire for than hard skills, and 89% said that lacking critical soft skills was the reason that a new hire doesn’t work out (McLaren, 2019.) Employers are willing to take more time to teach on-the-job tasks when they can trust that their employees will not only thrive within the company, but also keep a good reputation for the company with their customer base. Because soft skills surround very personal attributes in each person, it is not likely any employer will have the time or ability to work one-onone with each employer on these things.
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It is important to create a culture where we actively practice these soft skills throughout each stage of our lives, especially if we ever want to see a world where things like mental health planning is a preventative action instead of something that is started only after the need for it becomes evident. Discussing and practicing these skills through the duration of our program also gives our students an opportunity to really create a community to grow within.
Soft Skills and Trauma
Many of the students we work with here at Pawsperity have an extensive background in trauma. Creating a space where they can revisit some of these soft skills allows them to think about what they may want or need to work on within their personal lives moving forward. After experiencing trauma, some may find that they go into survival mode to make it through whatever they are facing. Soft skills are the key to moving us from our “survival brain” to the front part of our brain, or our “present brain,” which handles planning, critical thinking, and processing. The mastery of soft skills leads to things such as improved decision making, utilizing coping skills regularly, and understanding one’s emotions. Breaking down some of these skills to talk about what they look like within the workplace and how they function in the current state of their personal life and relationships, can help to bring each individual well rounded success in all areas.
Some people never had the opportunity to learn some of these important soft skills growing up, such as emotion regulation, time-management, creating boundaries, effective communication, and critical thinking. A graduate of our program, Kelly Stark, shared that communicating with peers, co-workers, and customers has always been tough for her to do.
“The soft skill classes are still helping me grow little by little with understanding my peers, where they are coming from, or understanding them better…when I better communicate to them and talk with them with more mutual respect instead of me coming off verbally gruff,” Kelly explains when asked how the soft skills have helped her grow. She disclosed that things like picking the correct words, using verbal manners, and explaining difficult or personal things has historically been very difficult for her. After graduating from the program and starting her career, she says that utilizing soft skills “...helps take some stress off conversations” which in turn “always makes a workday flow much smoother with understanding behind it.” Kelly takes pride in her work and being able to better communicate with those around her more effectively.
Ending the Cycle
The focus of our mission here at Pawsperity is to end the generational poverty cycle, which goes hand in hand with teaching an array of soft skills and fighting to end mental health stigmas. Because soft skills aren’t something that everyone is guaranteed to learn within our education system, it is important to encourage others to share or teach those around them about these skills as they work to implement them into their own life. Within many of the soft skills classes taught in our program there are sections dedicated to walk through how each skill can be taught to children, since most of our students are parents, plan to be parents, or have children integrated in their lives in some way. Another one of our graduates, who wishes to be kept anonymous, spoke about the importance of making the soft skill classes family friendly learning opportunities. The graduate brought up utilizing our mental health safety planning sheets and how they helped her understand what her own child needed.
“Teaching my child how to be in charge of their own mind and body was the most powerful and important thing I could have done for her, and I learned a lot about how to do this through our soft skills classes,” she explained.
Learning how to understand your own body and mind as an adult can be difficult enough, let alone bringing yourself back to the mindset of a child who has gone through different experiences than you did. Learning together as a family unit can make so much more progress than learning independently at different times. Soft skills give you all of the tools necessary to move forward with creating strong social support systems, which helps individuals become more successful overall.
It is important to create a culture where we actively practice these soft skills throughout each stage of our lives, especially if we ever want to see a world where things like mental health planning is a preventative action instead of something that is started only after the need for it becomes evident. Discussing and practicing these skills through the duration of our program also gives our students an opportunity to really create a community to grow within. Some of these skills, such as boundary setting or conflict resolution, can be very hard to actively practice with people. Creating a safe space where everyone is asked to do this work can make it easier to do and receive helpful feedback while learning with one another. The goal of teaching these soft skills is not only to make sure the students succeed in the workplace, but also so they can thrive in their personal life.
