Soft Skills
Text: Nermin Smaji?
Photographs: Web
Dear readers,
In today’s life „soft skills“ is a term
which is widely recognized and in literature or on the internet in different
articles there are different points of
view and different de?nitions of what
soft skills actually are. Many of those
de?nitions have one thing in common
which is that soft skills are non-technical personality-speci?c skills which
enhance the effectiveness of an individual in every area of life. When said
in every stage of life, it understands
that having soft skills, or having more
developed soft skills, will in?uence
an individual’s personal life through
better relations with other people,
more effective communication, easier adapting to unexpected situations
and easier handling dif?cult situations which might occur throughout
life. Even if soft skills are not easy to
measure or to de?ne the level which
one person possesses, they can be
constantly improved and through improving and working on them you will
always keep learning new things.
In order to become better in what we
do, working on the improvement of
soft skills is a must. Exactly this idea
was recognized more than 5 years
ago in EESTEC when the work on establishing our Training System started.
Throughout the years many EESTECers had an opportunity to participate
in soft skills trainings and through
theoretical and practical parts directly
worked on improving their skills.
When it comes to which topics soft
skills include, there is a big variety
and from different points of view one
is considered to be more important
than others. In the following text you
can ?nd inputs how to improve soft
skills and tips and tricks for improving
concrete soft skills which are among
the most important ones and which
can take your involvement in EESTEC
but also in your private life on a higher
level.
1. Set goals and be self-motivating
The basis of success and improving
soft skills is having personal goals.
If you don’t know where you are going how can you take the right path?
Having clear short-term or long-term
goals and being always aware of them
is the fundament for having motivation
to improve. If you really want to achieve
the goals you have, you will starve for
?nding ways of how to reach those.
Obstacles may and will arrive but they
are nothing compared to the feeling
you have when you achieve big goals
and you are heading towards your
dreams coming true. All the experiences you get through achieving your
goals are directly in?uencing on your
personal development. If the goal
seems unreachable don’t change it,
change your approach!
“What you get by achieving your
goals is not as important as what
you become by achieving your
goals.”
Henry David Thoreau
2. Be a team player and communicate effectively
Communication is as old as the existence of human kind. From the ?rst
men until today we are communicating
and obviously there is no visible end.
Only this fact that the communication
is the basis for functioning of human
beings is already a fact worth giving it
some try to improve it. Looking today,
when communication skills are appreciated as never before and they are
developed into many areas, verbal,
non-verbal, virtual communication
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