What a refreshing Article in the Financial Review, by Mark Eggleton.

Here is just a taste..

This content is produced by The Australian Financial Review in commercial partnership with DeakinCo.

Soft skills such as the ability to communicate effectively, think critically or work in a team are not only critical to every employee but are often ignored as too hard to quantify by business leaders, was the general consensus among participants at a recent Digital Economy Skills roundtable in Melbourne.

The term soft skills is one that annoys LinkedIn managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Matt Tindale, because the so-called soft skills are those that should be baked into every employee in the digital economy.

…they are the skills you need to get the jobs or the promotions. He says how people get those skills “whether it’s university, short online courses online or whatever” is vitally important to creating the mobile, agile and educated workforce we need to thrive in the global digital economy.”

• from the Financial Review full article here 

He goes on to say much more that we agree with a PWHQ. There is one error in where he suggests these skills can be gained and it’s worth mentioning. University is an excellent place to learn Soft Skills, EQ (if you prefer.) Short online courses? No, Podcasts? No. Sporting clubs? Yes and other areas of social interaction. Hackles are raised here when people think they can simply jump on line to learn social skills, fill out questionnaires, play games online or trawl through the knowledge that is curated in the online world. Social areas online are not real-time or necessarily in the-moment. Yes we can gain knowledge. Lots of it. Knowing is not doing. Knowledge is not power- mindfully applied knowledge is power and to do that you need real world face to face experience. Why? Several reasons and here is just one good one; When we develop ourselves and our skills we necessarily go through discomfort, we become vulnerable and have to cope, thrive even. Learning social skills and emotional intelligence skills online, by it’s definition, is not real.

The discomfort is manufactured. Personal stake and therefore learning is watered down and quite simply, we are reacting to a facsimile of a manufactured situation, at best. That’s a little bit like watering down real medication a few times to make it more convenient to take.

The solution is real world, real time problem solving that relates to our personal and company needs. In a real world environment we maintain the genuine vulnerability of failing in front of others and a company shows its true colours with genuine support,or disdain for those that fail. That’s authentic. It’s also why  companies are turning to universities to run courses that help employees connect both hard and soft skills. When we work with companies they are often concerned regarding the ‘Play’ aspect. That word is the elephant in the room. The way we get past that it to make clear that the playing is not about turning their employees into ‘clown doctors’ or trying to create happy clappy environments on the floor of a manufacturing plant. Play is simply one piece of the experiential learning that our participants go through. The play is genuine and our participants are able to be themselves, safely and quickly. They share relief, humour and moments where they can be vulnerable, being themselves, removing the ‘masks’ that are donned for the different situations and different people they encounter daily.  Then the learning really begins.