HSI 101: Soft Skills

Autumn 2023—2024
Lecture 1, August 3, 2023
Agenda for Today’s meeting
• General Introduction
• Discussion on “skills: soft and otherwise”
• Some theoretical information on soft skills
General Introduction
• Your instructor: Aruni Mahapatra, Ph.D
• English Discipline; Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Geographical Background: Odisha, Delhi, USA, Roorkee
• Professional Background: English literature
Advice to New Students
• Welcome: Congratulate yourselves
• Hold your judgement
• Choose to be kind
• Take Care
Take Care of Your Bodies
• Water
• Sleep
• Motion: Walk, Run, Cycle
• Food: get the nutrition; feed your gut, not just your mouth.
• Weather, Clothing: function AND fashion.
Take Care of your peers
• Batchmates
• Roommates
• Neighbors
• Strangers
• Be attentive: not everyone who needs care may ask for it.
What is HSI 101?
• A mandatory core course
• Taught by professors of English
• 7 faculty members
• Lectures
• ~50 Ph.D students
• Tutorials (“Practicals”)
Content?
• Lecture Plan already shared
• Tutorial Plan will be shared by Ph.D students
• Slides will be shared by faculty members
Assessment?
• Mid Term Examination (MTE): 25 marks
• End Term Examination (ETE): 50 marks
• Practical (In-class language use activities): 25 marks
House Keeping
• Space and Time
• Lectures: rooms and timeslots
• Tutorials: rooms and timeslots
Line of Communication
• No. of students in HSI 101: >1300
• Class Representatives ONLY
• DO NOT EMAIL ME ABOUT CLASS TIMES AND LOCATION
• Why?
• You already have that information.
• If there are any last-minute changes, I will let you know.
MODE of Communication
• Professional MODE:
• EMAIL
• WHATSAPP: reserved for emergencies
• Appropriate salutations:
• Dear Sir
• Dear Dr. Mahapatra
• Dear Dr M
• Inappropriate salutations:
• Hi!
• Hello
• WORST: no salutation
Relevance, Significance
and classification of Soft
Skills
Earliest Cave Paintings: France, earlier than
30,000 BC
Food for thought
• Hunting VS Drawing
• Food VS Art
• Sustenance
• Biological/nutritional/cultural/spiritual
• Should we compare?
• And yet, we are forced to compare.
3-minute writing activity
• Imagine you have the chance to go back and repeat your years of
school education. Now, write three sentences:
1. Pick one subject/skill/area that you did not pay attention to, and which you
would like to study better, this time around.
2. Why did you not study/practice that subject/skill?
3. Why do you think, now, that it is an important subject/skill?

Write your name, enrollment no., and sub batch on the paper.
THIS IS YOUR ATTENDANCE RECORD.
Recent news story from USA
• Government of Kentucky passed a ruling
• No subsidy for French Literature Majors (Honors) in BA.
• Reason provided: does not generate employment
• Larger implication: waste of public resources.
• Counter argument: what are we going to do with too many
engineers?
• What will we do in our free time?
Feelings: whether you like it or not
• People VS Process
• Theory and Practice
• Cultural Difference
• Change in Chain of Command
• Inability to Work in a Team
• Poor interpersonal relations
How people usually respond to emotions
What Emotions Are
• Real
• The human body’s way of keeping score
• Not always visible
• Make themselves visible one way or another.
Approaching professional interactions with
emotional awareness
First step towards emotional intelligence:
awareness
• Acknowledge
• Understand
• Accept
• Children hitting each other
• Children crying
• Adult colleagues being aggressive towards each other
1. Identify the feelings you are experiencing.
Cultivate a vocabulary of emotions so you can accurately identify what you are feeling. Are you frustrated
or confused, hurt or angry, overwhelmed or lacking confidence? Being able to admit and name the feeling
is the first step.

2. Understand your feeling response.

Look inside to find out what is going on for you. Why are you reacting this way? What is this feeling
response telling you? Where did this reaction come from? Digging inside to gain a deeper understanding
of yourself will enable you to predict your own reactions.
3. Manage your emotional response.
Once you know and understand the feeling, you need to deal with it. It is at this point that you recognize
your options and choose the best one in the situation. Should you confront, and if so, how? Should you do
more investigating before you respond? Do you need a cooling-off period? What do you want out of this
situation, and what is the best way to get it? This is the step that ensures that you are in charge of your
emotions rather than having your emotions direct you.
4. Communicate your feelings and needs to others.
Letting others know how you feel is critical, and you cannot behave with emotional intelligence without
communicating your feelings effectively. Communication helps eliminate the confusion and mixed
messages that are all too common and helps build trust and openness through transparency.
5. Apply the power of emotions in your relationships.
Using what you know about your feelings and the feelings of others in a produc- tive way is the final step
in making sure you are not just right but effective.
5-minute activity: toxic boss situation
• Imagine a situation at your new (or first work place). You find out, a
few weeks into your new role, that your superior has been providing
incorrect information to you, and then complaining about your
incompetence to your peers and other seniors behind your back.
• What emotional reactions would this produce?
• What kind of strategy would you take?
• What steps would you take to deal with this situation?
 Definition of Soft Skills

• Soft skills are non-technical skills

that describe how one works and
interact with others.
• Generally, any skill enabling
better interaction with people
can be considered a “soft” skill.
• These types of skills can come
naturally depending on your
personality but can be surprisingly
hard to learn on your own.
Soft Skills vs Hard Skills
• Soft Skills are different
from hard skills
• Soft Skills are more of
Communication style,
work ethic and work style
• Some examples of soft
skills include:
• Communication
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Problem-solving
• Hard skills, also referred to
as measurable abilities,
include anything from
mastering Photoshop to
emergency care knowledge.
• Soft skills, also called people
skills, are the mix of social
and interpersonal skills,
character traits, and
professional attitudes that
all jobs require.
Soft skills are:
• More subjective than
hard skills:
• More timeless than
hard skills:
• Context Specific
 Relevance of Soft Skills

When an employee with a high

level of emotional intelligence has
good communication skills and
interpersonal skills, they are more
likely to be able to clearly
articulate goals and lead a team
in a positive manner.
Continued…
• Creativity
• Appropriate use of humor
• Confidence
• Honesty and integrity
• Friendliness
• Time management
• Good manners
• Enthusiasm
• Positive attitude
• Good listening skills
• Attention to detail
• Self Motivation
Significance of Soft Skills
• Soft skills are absolute necessary and are vital skills that every
individual must possess.
• Lack of these skills can limit the potential of a person. However,
having soft skills improves one’s ability to work with others and
positively impacts one’s career or even positively influences
one’s personal life by improving ways of interacting with others.
• This is also on record that soft skills cannot be learned solely
through training and are more challenging to develop. They
are more about the character, relationships, and personality of a
person.
Human-centric skills
• The world is changing fast with artificial intelligence in almost every
field of work; machines are replacing humans with automatic tasks.
• However, there is no substitute for soft skills in this hi-tech world.
• Therefore, these become a differentiator for a job seeker to fit
himself/herself in the fast-changing job market landscape and meet
the hiring requirements of any organization.
• So, human-centric skills are becoming essential for a human touch
mechanism. Hiring employees with advanced soft skills can
significantly impact their working capability from an organization’s
perspective.
For individuals
• The modern workplace is inter-personal and the future is all about
soft skills
• High demand by recruiters and organizations
• They are hard to automate
• Career progression, promotion, and growth
 For businesses
• Improved productivity
• Improved leadership
• Better teamwork
• Enhanced employee satisfaction
• Increased workplace communication
 How to improve your Soft Skills?
• It is true that soft skills cannot be taught with formal training, they are ways
to develop and polish them.
• Work with a mentor– This will help to build and improve your skills. A
mentor who can give constructive feedback and model appropriate skills can
go a long way in helping you to hone your skills.
• Practicing skill sets that are important to you or your weakness– soft skills
can be refined by practice. Make it a routine to work on soft skills that
require improvement and work on them consistently.
• Observe soft skills in others and mimic– some professionals have specific
soft skills as their strength. It is a good practice to observe these skills in
them and make it a habit to incorporate them into your day-to-day use
 Continued…
• Many people are strong in certain soft skills, while weaker in others. For example,
someone might be a great public speaker and able to command a room full of people
while on stage, but struggle to interact with people at a busy networking event.
• It’s common to either underestimate the importance of soft skills or overestimate
your own abilities. Here are a few scenarios that may be improved with stronger soft
skills:

• You have a low client retention rate compared to others in your field
• You are frequently late for meetings or struggle to meet deadlines
• You fail to grow your professional network, or avoid networking opportunities
altogether
• You manage to land meetings with prospective clients, but rarely proceed to the next
stage or close deals
Importance of soft skills to work
• Soft skills are needed across all industries, for example, strong
communication skills are needed whether you are working as a
teacher, an engineer , a businessman etc.
• Developing each soft skill comes with its own advantages, for
instance, improving communication will help your employees interact
more effectively and improvements in time-management can increase
productivity.
benefits of employees developing their soft
skills:
• Increased productivity - Employees' efficiency in their tasks and responsibilities
increases which will help bring the company closer to achieving its goals.
• Improved teamwork - For a business to function effectively people must work
well together in order to achieve a common goal. The quality of work improves
when people use their individual strengths and skills together in collaboration.
• Improved leadership - Soft skills help prepare employees for leadership
positions because specific skills are needed, such as, active listening, empathy
etc. This is important because 50% of employees leave their job due to poor
managers.
• Increased workplace communication - Effective communication between staff
increases which consequently reduces the risk of messages becoming distorted.
This allows the company to operate more smoothly.
Continued …
• This is an age of fourth Industrial revolution, i.e., an age of robotics and artificial
intelligence. Despite this technological revolution, the demand for soft skills is on
the rise. Soft Skills are crucial in age of AI:
• Automation Can't Replace Soft Skills: While automation can replace some
technical skills, it cannot replace soft skills.
• Soft Skills Complement Technical Skills: In many cases, soft skills are
complementary to technical skills. For example, a data analyst who possesses
strong communication and presentation skills can explain complex data analysis to
non-technical stakeholders effectively.
• Soft Skills are Essential for Leadership: As organizations adopt new technologies,
leadership skills become increasingly important. Soft skills such as empathy,
communication, and emotional intelligence are essential for effective leadership.
Must train yourself …..

• Technical skills may get you

the job, but soft skills can
make you a good human
being….