Rethinking how soft skills are taught

Creative Training Delivery Day – 17/4/2015

Emma Sue Prince

Key facts

  • Behaviour is more important for success in the workplace than other knowledge or skills
  • Qualifications and skills are threshold competences that every entry-level worker must have to any industry now
  • Employers now “recruit for attitude and train for skills”
  • The freelancer or self-employed person needs skills like adaptability, optimism and resilience in spades
  • Soft skills training traditionally expensive and not cost-effective to teach

How teachers can support

  • Traditional education does not cater for these behaviours. It’s often an “after-thought” just before entering the workplace
  • Supporting behaviours and soft skills needs to happen throughout studies
  • Teachers can support this by providing students with more opportunities to reflect on the softer skills of working in a team or on a group project, encourage learning journals/blogs, giving opportunities to students to step outside their comfort zones and reflect on the experience and the skills it brings, use drama and improvisation techniques more in training to raise awareness of soft skills, encourage work experience plus reflection i.e. how to maintain a positive attitude, provide as many experiential learning opportunities as possible as this is fast-track to developing self-awareness

Resources

You can become a member of for free and get access to free training resources and guidance. The site supports any teacher or practitioner working within the fields of developing soft skills and interpersonal skills.

The Advantage Licensed Trainer

This is a two-day experiential learning workshop designed to raise awareness of adaptability, critical thinking, empathy, integrity, optimism, being proactive and resilience. It has been piloted with different target groups including creative and cultural skills FE tutors and undergraduates and is now being used in corporate training by Nestle.

Becoming a licensed trainer will enable you to deliver this dynamic workshop to your students as well as offer an additional revenue stream to your College by offering the course to external clients.

Next Licensed Trainer course runs in London on 25th+ 26th June, 2015 with a special promotion for Creative and Cultural Skills members. It is possible for you to be sponsored by your training department to become licensed. The license includes all materials and continued support. Click on the link for more info and to apply: