Developing Soft skills: Continue? Stop? Start?
In the present scenario COVID has very high impact on our lifestyle and above all it will impact the way we grow and develop our soft skills in the future. Education system is totally disturbed and many questions are hovering above our head. Is remote way of learning a trend or will it be “only” a new way to add to present pedagogical solutions? What are the dangers of believing that the “remote way” will be the way? While remote way is becoming future of learning, learners are also getting into such a comfortable zone where developing soft skills will be the major task ahead of them.
From the present scenario which is reality 1, we have to jump to Ideal scenario which is reality 2. And question arises here is ‘How to move to the Ideal Scenario?’ João Barbosa, CEO of Dynargie says, “We should see what’s the probability level of concreteness that means what’s the probability to move to the ideal scenario. It would be very low if we want to have a disruptive change from reality 1 to reality 2. And to make it high we should see what are the things we should continue doing, what things should be stopped and what things we should start doing.”
Things we should continue doing:
- Some kind of classroom: Classroom is a place where we interact with others, to which our emotions are attached. So key idea is we should have some kind of classrooms where we can interact with people, learn from them, share our ideas.
- Teachers: We need to have teachers in our life as they are our mentors, they will always show us the right path. So key idea is be connected with your teachers.
- Idol: We always need someone to be an example which motivates us to go ahead and achieve our goal. So key idea is follow your idol and work hard to be like him.
- Learn through experience: Key idea is step outside your comfortable zone and start learning through doing some work on what you have learnt. We can’t learn through e-learning or remote what we can learn through experiences.
- Never be alone: Problem of remote is we are alone. We always have stupid ideas in our mind which we want to tell someone. So key idea is be connected with your friends, share your learning, experiences, ideas with them.
Things which should be stopped:
- Ex-cathedra: Teachers cannot be monologue. They have to stop ex cathedra way of teaching, ex-cathedra way of developing students. One should not be prepared just to listen, he should be prepared such that he can confidently put his views among others.
- Hierarchy: It should be stopped. Because if we simply empower people and get them rallied around a meaningful purpose, they’ll work together without any need for defined leaders or managers — no power structure of any kind.
Things which should be started:
- Development inside Un-Comfortable zone: If we develop soft skills inside a comfortable zone than we are just a paste of the copy being a copy to the teacher. Developing soft skills is the new copy paste concept but here paste should be better than the copy. And this is only possible if we are in un-comfortable zone.
And we should also understand that Perfect development of soft skills in realities do not exist because we have so many challenges, have slow down factors. But if we find out the things which should be continued, stopped and started, we can jump to the Ideal Scenario and may have the high probability level of concreteness. Whenever we aim for a skill to develop, we should develop it in a structured way. Be regular to it, be the part of similar community, connect with someone to discuss your doubts and ideas and help other people with that.
References
If you want to hear more from corporate thought leaders, education visionaries and ecosystem builders, you can visit our you tube channel and connect with us for future events.
