Effective Strategies and Activities for Developing Soft Skills, Part 1.

Abstract

AbstractEmployers seek employees who possess skills. Employees who do not have excellent may not experience success in obtaining and sustaining employment. McEwen's (2010) framework for skill-building-introduce, explain, practice, and reinforce-was used to describe activities for enhancing skills. Assessment of development is discussed. Implications for the business education curriculum are also presented.IntroductionSoft are known by many names, including core employability essential generic key competencies, and transferable (McEwen, 2010), and emotional quotient (EQ) (Sigmar, Hynes, & Cooper, 2010). Perrault (2006) defined as traits and capabilities that an individual possesses in addition to the individual's technical and/or knowledge skillset (p. 125). These include delivering presentations, writing, listening, collaborating, managing time, managing self, and solving problems. Although such as accountability, time management, and punctuality primarily involve the cognitive domain, many other involve the affective domain. Bennington believes that many affective domain end with the suffix ility (Wolgemuth, 2011). Some examples of such include adaptability, agility, credibility, dependability, flexibility, humility, likeability, possibility, respectability, and stability. These ilities are and attributes that are desired by employers and form the basis for work and workplace success.The purposes of this two-part article are (a) to provide business educators with factual information about development strategies and assessment, and (b) to provide business educators with a variety of interesting teaching ideas and resources that they can use to help students develop their skills. Part 1 of this article addresses the first purpose, and Part 2 addresses the second purpose.Soft can be distinguished from which are quantitative in nature and considered by some to be difficult to acquire. However, often require more time to develop and may be more challenging to assess accurately. As Cellante and Graham (2012) stated,No longer can educators place predominant emphasis on the hard skills, [sic] which relate to the clearly defined more technical requirements of the job; there must be equal weight given to soft skills as they serve as necessary complements to acquiring and maintaining employment (p. 31).Soft are essential for students to master (Chou, 2009; Dixon, Belnap, Albrecht, & Lee, 2010; Glenn, 2011; Kermis & Kermis, 2010; Klaus, 2008b; Mitchell & Crawford, 2010; Regine, 2011; Stevenson & Starkweather, 2009; Stitt-Gohdes, 2011; Stovall S Wilhelm, Logan, Smith, S and more than one quarter said entry-level workers were deficient in critical thinking (Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, as cited in Klaus, 2008a). It appears young employees are writing company e-mails as if they were texting cell phone messages with their thumbs, noted a writer in The New York Times (Korkki, 2007, p. 2). In response, employers are sending a message of their own:When you're i? the office, put on those dress shoes and start spelling correctly, and in full (Klaus, 2008a, n.p.). This response is indicative of the conflicting workplace skill perceptions between employees and employers. …