It’s
always great to
see students study hard to get good grades. Decent
grades
will help guarantee a bright future academically and career
wise.
It will enable graduates to get their foot in the door in the fields of
their choice.
However, after more than twenty years working
in the corporate sector,
I can say that grades and even technical skills do not determine how
successful a person will be professionally. Instead, the most
important set of skills that will determine how far one will go in his
or her career involves dealing with people, ie., people skills.
People
skills are how effective one deals with many different types of people
on a daily basis. The wider the range of others in terms of
ages,
cultures and company levels that one can deal with, the better that
person’s people skills.
It doesn’t matter which field it
is whether it’s medicine, law, engineering, journalism, the arts, one
of the trades or any other career but the most successful individuals
in each area are not necessarily the ones who had the highest school
grades or the most technically gifted. Instead, the top stars
in
each field are the ones with the best people skills.
Unfortunately,
people skills or ‘soft’ skills as they are sometimes known, are not
usually taught in classrooms at any educational level. So
many
students who end up spending all their time and energies during their
school years to maximize their grades do not end up with decent people
skills, especially if these soft skills were not developed outside of
the classroom. In effect, their development was unbalanced
too
much towards pure academics.
Once these individuals enter the
workforce, they will soon realize that those with superior people
skills will end up moving up the corporate ladder faster as their
competition get promoted through the ranks past
them. If
they are lucky, after a few years of learning the hard way, these
individuals will learn to develop much needed soft skills and
hopefully, management will notice their improvement in social
interactions at the office enough to warrant promotions.
However,
most folks in this situation will not be so lucky. They are
either too set in their ways to change or don’t even recognize their
own personal deficiencies. These individuals will have
reached a
ceiling in their fields relatively quickly in their careers.
The
world, both corporate and non-corporate, desperately needs more leaders
and this lack of leadership will not be filled anytime soon if the
majority of the workforce is lacking in people
skills.
Fortunately,
this problem can be addressed in two ways. For those already
in
the workforce, companies can utilize seminars and workshops as part of
on-going professional education on people skills including diversity training.
All management potential candidates as well as current management
should attend to further develop these skills. The result
will be
a much more efficient management which in turn will mean bigger profits.
The
other way which should be done at the same time is to expose students
at every level and as early as possible to principles of people
skills. Schools in many areas are already become quite
diverse so
such additional development
for students
in these types of skills will be a natural evolution. It just
has
to be made part of the regular educational system somehow, with
external trainers and speakers
if
necessary. Of course, staff including teachers and professors
should also be exposed to their own people skills development workshops
as well since they were most likely not given the opportunity during
their own years as students either.
Parents also need to be
educated so that they foster a more balanced development for their
children. Academics are important but kids need to learn that
the
soft skills as part of their overall development too and the parents
should do everything they can to make sure these types of skills are
included.
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