Formula for Success:
When one thinks of soft skills what comes to one’s mind is: What is the difference between soft and hard skills?; why soft skills are essential?; and what are their advantages? The end effect is to increase our efficiency and to enhance our creativity – In other words how fast we could adopt to situation in our work place and how we adapt ourselves by way of being prepared for the demands and challenges in the work place to bring out rich dividend in the form of success in work and formation in teaching. An additional question would creep in: Should we practice time management for doing more work within a given time or could we follow mind management in making our work effective, meaningful, and lasting. Time management gives you efficiency, while mind management guarantees effectiveness; the former offers impact, while the latter ensures influence. Actually, you need a combination of both – The trick is how much to follow and when.
James Clear in his book Atomic Habits suggests a four-step formula for success: They are Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. He gives the following example: You are fond of donuts. You see an ad of donuts as you walk along a shopping mall – Immediately your craving for donuts consumes you – Your response is to walk into the next donut shop – and you reward yourself by buying a donut and enjoy eating it. When it comes to any soft skills the same formula could be used. You should have interest in the soft skill as something that would help you and others towards the goal to achieve; you increase your interest in learning skills; you respond more as you get more expertise or experience; and your success would benefit not only your credibility and effectiveness but also the outcome from the point of the beneficiaries – In our cases, our students.[1]
Stages of Creativity:
Your expertise should lead to creativity which is the need of the hour. David Kadavy in his book Mind Management offers a four stage formula for creativity. The four stages are: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. When you prepare for your classes or lectures you tend to focus on what is the central theme and how this could be made clear and simple to the students. In this stage you forage or gather information from sources known or familiar to you. This is the remote preparation. Once you have prepared the lecture, the incubation period begins – All you have already prepared are taken to the purview of subconscious. The subconscious mind is believed to be located just below (sub) the surface of our conscious mind.[2] The subconscious gets short-term memory connected to the long-term memory stored within us over the years by looking in its file-system connectivity, examples, case studies, statistics, etc and put them in a coherent and presentable format. This presents itself to you as inspiration and insight in the morning – This is the stage of illumination where insights arising from correlation and integration of information take place. Then your output, that is, actual delivery of lecture or the final product is the verification of all as a combo of preparation, compilation, icing, and presentation. This is bound to enhance teaching-learning process.[3]
Role of the Subconscious:
As mentioned above, the subconscious plays a major role in preparing our output and making them effective. All begins with your thoughts. Just as water takes the shape of the pipe it flows through, the life principle in you flows through according to the nature of your thoughts. Your very thoughts flow through subconscious as harmony, health, peace, joy, success, abundance etc. Joseph Murphy, mentions in his book The Power of your Subconscious Mind:[4]
“Psychologists and psychiatrists point out that when thoughts are conveyed to your subconscious mind, impressions are made in the brain cells. As soon as your subconscious accepts any idea, it proceeds to put it into effect immediately. Working by association of ideas, it uses every bit of knowledge that you have gathered in your lifetime to bring about its purpose. It draws on the infinite power, energy, and wisdom within you. It lines up all the laws of nature to get its way. Sometimes it seems to bring about an immediate solution to your difficulties, but at other times it may take days, weeks, or longer…”
In this context, You may remember, St Ignatius recommending to recall when you go to sleep when you would get up and what you would have to do next day. This is the triggering process of incubation turning into illumination.
This process triggers the subconscious. Again, as J. Murphy says:[5]
“There are two levels to your mind – the conscious or rational level and the subconscious or irrational level. You think with our conscious mind, and whatever you habitually think sinks down into your subconscious mind, which then creates according to the nature of your thoughts. Your subconscious mind is the seat of your emotions. It is the creative mind. If you think good, good will follow; if you think evil, evil will follow. This is the way your mind works.”
No poison can kill a positive thinker, and no medicine can save a negative thinker. You think of success and creativity and they would materialize in real life. With cooperation of the subconscious you can achieve greater things. If brain power is soft skill, subconscious power is softer skill.
Vital Soft Skills:
When we think of soft skills we tend to think of media-related teaching props such as power points, audio-video clips, etc. They are the basic ones but there are more sophisticated, complex, and effective ones. In general the following are recommended as soft skills in which one should be trained or become expert. Recent studies indicate that implementing soft skill training improves employees performance by 14%; and 12% increase in productivity. At the same time poor communication affects client relations and becomes the root cause of 60% problematic issues.
The vital soft skills are:[6]
- Critical thinking and problem solving: These skills give more freedom and confidence to face new challenges in any given context or circumstance.
- Leadership skills: It is not top-down efficiency but bottom-up effectiveness. It is more listening to the needs of the students, and as much as possible this is individual-based. Knowing them and understanding them would make it meaningful and effective to lead them and form them as integrated persons.
- Interpersonal skills: This is more based on listening and fostering empathy. You need to see the world of the other from his/her perspective – Understanding their perception of reality is very basic leading to success.
- Communication skills: Much of expected output of success depends on effective communication. Communication includes listening, availability, approachability, cordiality, clarity and conciseness in communication, effective response without undue delay etc would help build better relationships and effective team work leading to success.
- Adaptability skills: To be sensitive and flexible for changes that might crop up which opens up the door to innovation and ability to adjust to the emerging situation.
- Time Management and Organization skills: Only about 20% of people feel that they are in control of their work. By resorting to prioritizing and by applying one’s mind and heart one could accomplish 80% of the work in 20% of the estimated or given time – More on this you could read on 80:20 rule. Building up an effective and cooperating team would take any organization to newer heights.
In this process of developing soft skills one needs to create space and time as well as creative cycle. Ultimately the touchstone of any soft skill is creativity and innovation bringing out success and meaning.
Soft Skills applied to Learning-Teaching:[7]
One of the main concerns in our teaching-learning pedagogy is that we want our students to remember what has been taught. Forgetting, what has been learnt, could be frustrating and depressing, particularly when you are trying to learn new skills to absorb vital information more effectively. When you can’t recall the knowledge you need, often stress can build up and it might cause wasting time due to missed opportunities and at times because of costly mistakes.
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) explored why we forget things and how we can prevent it. He came up with the following insights:
- Memories weaken over time: We need to relearn what we have learnt (through revision). Multiple revisions during the semester would help one understand and master the subject effectively – The subject could be retained for long.
- The biggest drop in retention happens soon after learning: You may leave a webinar or lecture with your head filled with facts and figures, only to find that you can remember very little of it just a couple of hours later. We need reviewing and reinforcing our learning.
- It is easier to remember things better that have meaning: Things that have relevance in the context and need of the learner would gain entry into one’s learning sphere with lasting effect.
- The way something is presented affects learning: Information conveyed through visuals, stories, incidents, and anecdotes with statistics hold good for longer time with better understanding. When we have concern and consideration for others, our relationship becomes cordial and remedial!
- How you feel affects how well you remember: A stressful mind and a sleep-starved person may not retain much information. Sufficient sleep, it has been found, could help our brains sort and store information. When you learn with interest, your retention also increases.
So you need to work on ‘spaced learning’ by giving time to review new information and time to sink deep in memory; by creating ‘overlearning’ through review or repetition of discussion; by making information relevant and meaningful, as much as possible, from the context of the learners; and by challenging the mind through asking questions, brainstorming, and asking for alternate opinions. Critical thinking reinforces our learning process.
Best Soft Skill – to be human:
Finally, the best soft skill is to be human who understands the other from his/her perspective. In the formation of our students we strive to,
Make a mind which never minds;
Make a heart which never hurts;
Make a touch which never pains; and
Make a relation which never ends.
Our syllabus is intellect-oriented but our values are emotion-related. We are bundles of emotions. All have the potential of tears and smile. The most expensive liquid in the world is a tear. It’s 1% water and 99% feelings. Try not to become the cause for someone’s tears. But be the reason for tears of happiness which will bring in cheerful life. The best soft skill is to convert tears into smile.
In a world of Artificial Intelligence, when we ask the question which jobs are safe from the reach of AI? The answer would be: The jobs that require creativity. And human creation of robots, however smart they are, they may not have soul nor are they capable of feeling with you. The origin and goal of soft skill is feeling for the other and being there for the needy. The starting point of soft skill road is analytical mind and the destination is integrating heart. This is what Solomon meant when he asked God for ‘discerning mind and understanding heart’ (1 Kg 3:9). And the connecting link between the starting point and the destination is ‘creative imagination’ integrated with confidence.
While learning or picking up soft skill, if we come to realize that yesterday I was clever since I tried to change the world, and today I am wise, since I try to change myself, then we are already on the road to success and creativity. The best soft skills for work and life are warm heart and cool mind. All the best for your training program. I appreciate and thank the organizing team for creating this excellent opportunity to learn more.
Cf. LCAS Staff Soft Skill Training Program: Inaugural Address 11Jul2022
Francis P Xavier SJ
11Jul2022
[1] J. Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to build good Habits and break bad Ones, Random House, London, 2018.
[2] https://alanaivoicelab.com/where-is-the-location-of-your-subconscious-mind/
[3] David Kadavy, Mind Management – Not Time Management: Productivity when Creativity Matters, Kadavy Inc., 2020.
[4] J. Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Thompson Press, Faridabad, 2015, p.18.
[5] J. Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Thompson Press, Faridabad, p.17.
[6] https://www.capsim.com/blog/soft-skill-training-topics
[7] https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/forgetting-curve.htm