By Fabian Murillo Fonseca - Student of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration

Probably when we think about soft skills we think in work and how to apply it in work. But the reality is that work is not the only aspect where soft skills could be useful. Soft skills can be applied to every context in our lives. Let's establish the concept of soft skills so we are going to be clear about the subject. Soft skills are now non-technical skills that relate to how you develop your work and it includes your interaction with colleagues, your problem solving abilities, the managing of your time and work and your capability of leadership. And all these skills can be applied to our daily life.

We can apply all these skills In social life, and I'm going to prove it by some examples. Let's imagine we have a friends reunion in our home and we are in charge of preparing the food. The way you interact with our friends, how you manage the food distribution, how you lead the cooking team it's going to be scencial for a successful dinner. By this example we can prove that soft skills are not only present in work but in every single task we made everyday. Even our constant interaction with the market, when we go to the farmers market sometimes we negotiate prices with the salesman cause we want the best product at the better price; even if we are technological and we other online we look for the best deal in the webpage and sometimes we make a call or write an email to negotiate with the seller. We need to learn to identify daily soft skills and try to practice and improve our methods.

In a psychological way, we can say as well that soft skills are essential to feel confident with ourselves and develop an integral personality. As Lazo & Véliz (2017) mentioned in their publication, the development of soft skills is very important for psychologist’s patients. For example, when a patient has developed empathy it's easier for the psychologist to make an analysis so he can offer an accurate treatment. Other soft skills as creativity or team work help the patience to express herself in a very fluent way, this allows that the communication between the doctor and the patient can be more assertive and fluent, showing favorable results in the treatment.

Obviously, soft skills are present in our student life, it's the place where soft skills are shown and developed, more than in any social or psychological aspect university is the place where soft skills are exploited and start appearing as a natural response of the brain. This is provoked by the learning processes, by default when the student receives information from someone, in this case the professor, and faces the need to work in group with the classmates, the brain starts to develop the soft skills which are in our brain and system by genetic default. For some people developing soft skills is easy due to characters traits, for others it is more difficult but that doesn't mean that this people can’t develop soft skills.

Soft skills are everywhere, we practice a lot of these ones daily, when we communicate with others, when we talk about a specific sobject with someone. It's a fact that we are going to need these abilities for university or work; but instead of being afraid of that skill that is difficult for us to put in practice, we need as professionals and as humans to take this as a challenging process in which we learn and grow. In addition, it's a fact that sometimes we are going to fail in the tries of developing one of these skills, but we need to learn how to stand up and try again and again, as many times as it takes until we achieve perfection.

 

MOXIE es el Canal de ULACIT (www.ulacit.ac.cr), producido por y para los estudiantes universitarios, en alianza con el medio periodístico independiente Delfino.cr, con el propósito de brindarles un espacio para generar y difundir sus ideas.  Se llama Moxie - que en inglés urbano significa tener la capacidad de enfrentar las dificultades con inteligencia, audacia y valentía - en honor a nuestros alumnos, cuyo “moxie” los caracteriza.

References:
  • Lazo, M. V., & Véliz, K.A. (2017, September). Las habilidades blandas del psicólogo clínico en su intervención en la salud pública. Revista Contribuciones a las Ciencias Sociales. http://www.eumed.net/rev/cccss/2017/03/psicologo-clinico-ecuador.html