Soft Skills Rule! or The Importance of Learning from Life

Soft skills are important for everybody, everywhere. That is a fact that cannot be denied.

Students aspiring for an MBA often ask me what knowledge and skills they most need to have to succeed in getting into the B-School of their choice. I always tell them that it is paramount to develop their soft skills and to keep themselves open and receptive to the lessons life wants to teach them.

Take a look at some admission forms of the best MBA schools in the world. They all have questions that assess your personality and attitudes, your maturity and exposure, your emotional stability and self-worth, you transferable attributes etc.

"Tell us about a time you felt proud of yourself."
"What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishments?"
"Describe a time you felt really good about yourself" (variants of this question may ask you to elucidate the time you failed; the time you saved the day; the time someone asked you to do something unethical etc.)

You are sure to be asked similar questions during admissions interviews.

While the grind for good grades can’t be denied given the ultimate goal of getting a desirable job or a post-graduate education from a coveted institution, students must realise the importance of life skills. Good exam results will not automatically grant them professional success or personal fulfillment; their soft-skills will.

Candidates equipped with soft-skills are more likely to be selected in interviews even if their results aren't brilliant because increasingly, higher education administrators and human resource recruiters are realising that if necessary, technical or domain training can easily be imparted to inductees who possess a high degree of soft skills. However, the opposite is almost impossible.


image credit: mappio.com

Leadership, initiative, problem solving, lateral thinking, flexibility, inter-personal skills, positive attitude, confidence, ethics, openness to experiences, etiquette, community-spirit, and maturity are examples of soft skills. Unfortunately, unlike technical and domain knowledge, students can’t learn these skills from text books or class lectures.

These are learned from everyday living and growing and "becoming" as students participate in sports and other extra-curricular activities that have nothing to do with certificates, examinations and results and, in fact, have everything to do with extending their boundaries and having fun.

In sum, once your "hard" qualifications prove your eligibility for that seat or position you are seeking to fill, your prospective educators or employers will probably make their final evaluations and decisions about your candidature based upon your "soft" attributes. 

Never underestimate the importance of life skills.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills