Dr. Ali Qassem's English Articles
International Motivational Speaker & an HRD Consultant and Trainer
Dr. Ali has his weekly English article every Wednesday, and his weekly Malay article every Saturday in
New Sabah Times
Sabah's First Established Newspaper.
New Sabah Times
Sabah's First Established Newspaper.
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Focus on Your Soft Skills !
I would like to begin this article by thanking our Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Haji Aman for pointing out the importance of building soft skills in our students, who are the leaders of the future.
During the officiating of the 10th PTPL College Convocation Ceremony on August 11, Datuk Seri Musa said, “Institutions must emphasise on building soft skills and entrepreneurship to ensure that the graduates are competitive and prepared to contribute to the industry”.
Our information age, customer-driven markets, knowledge-based competitive economy and globalization are quite different from the past. Now, our soft skills (I prefer to call them people skills) are important to find opportunities, maintain our jobs, and even for personal development, just as important as our technical skills.
In the past, our job opportunities and ranks were determined by our technical skills or product knowledge and our years of experience. Managers and employers in the past - and still until now in many organizations - focused on the technical skills that are necessary to increase productivity in the organization effectively.
The fact is that our years of experience and our technical skills alone do not count, especially in supervisory and management positions. Your years of experience in operating a machine, for example, or being the best doctor, engineer, lawyer, sales person or accountant, do not make you a good manager. What counts - besides the technical skills - is if you are able and capable of dealing with and aligning your people and manage them well.
Today, getting a job requires more than academic qualifications, years of experience, and a good resume. These qualifications, years of experience, and good resume will get you the interview, but they will not guarantee you of getting and maintaining the job.
“People Skills” is a term that refers to the skills that influence and affect how we interact and deal with each other, circumstances and situations. These skills include interpersonal skills, personal habits, effective communication, creativity, analytical thinking, diplomacy, flexibility, coping with change, problem solving, leadership, participating in teamwork, and the ability to build relationship with different personalities. Theodore Roosevelt said, “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people”.
Every human is born with four capacities. They are the levels of a person’s IQ (Intelligence Quotient), BQ (Body Intelligence Quotient), SQ (Spiritual Intelligence Quotient), and EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient).
Our IQ level can be improved by many ways. It can be improved by eating the right diet, feeding the mind continuously with knowledge and updated information, sleeping well, practicing positive thinking, and exercising the mind regularly to achieve a maintained high level of Mental Agility.
“BQ” is about how much we care about the trillions of cells that are in our body, which work 24 hours doing everything possible to protect our body and to help it in its continuous functions.
SQ (Spiritual Intelligence Quotient) is our needs to contribute, to grow, to be significant, and to achieve a state of certainty, to deal with the uncertainty, to love and to be loved, and to serve others.
“EQ” is our emotional social interaction intelligence that comes from our self awareness and our awareness of others. It is our capacities of recognizing our own and others that come from understanding them, knowing how we communicate, respect, listen, care, sympathize and empathize, and help them. In other words, it is the way we behave towards others.
Britannica describes human behaviour as, “The potential and expressed capacity for physical, mental, and social activity during the phases of human life”. This behavior and interaction are controlled and highly affected by our attitude, which is the way we feel about someone, something or an event.
Similarly, our attitude is affected by many factors. Among the most important factors are the information we acquire and have, and our level of the ability of meeting people’s minds.
Life in general, or business, as a commerce, an occupation, or as an organization is about people. It is about building relationships with people, communicate and deal with them. Therefore, people skills are necessary for us to deal with circumstances in life and they determine the difference between winning and losing a deal. Furthermore, since no one can achieve significant success without people, one has to master various interpersonal skills that are necessary to maintain relationships, a comfortable life style, and a career.
No matter how brilliant and technically skilled we are, our technical skills count only 15% of getting and keeping our jobs. Studies on the importance of (People Skills) resulted with a conclusion that the most important skill to get a job is the person’s interpersonal skills.
Regarding this issue, Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Carnegie Foundation, after spending one million dollars and five years in a research, proved that 85 percent of the reason that a person gets a job, keeps that job and move a head in that job has to do with an individual’s people skills and people knowledge.
Supporting this conclusion and describing the importance of soft skills, psychologist Daniel Coleman said, “Soft skills are a combination of competencies that contribute to a person's ability to manage his or herself and relate to other people-matters twice as much as IQ or technical skills in job success”.
Generally, employers are looking for people who are loyal, committed confident, innovative, good team players, tolerant, courageous, well communicators, and problem solvers. Those who are lacking these skills are going to face major difficulties in getting jobs opportunities and they might be left behind.
It takes discipline and hard work in order to become a people skilled person. One has to be able to think of what is he/she is about to say, to whom, and how, then, respond rather than react in any given situation.
Improving our people skills is an art. It can be obtained by discovering our weaknesses and turn them into strength, continuously getting extra information and knowledge and taking action to turn them into practice. This will enable a person not only to be a most sought after employee, but also to make him flexible and able to adapt him/herself to the world’s continuous rapid change.
During the officiating of the 10th PTPL College Convocation Ceremony on August 11, Datuk Seri Musa said, “Institutions must emphasise on building soft skills and entrepreneurship to ensure that the graduates are competitive and prepared to contribute to the industry”.
Our information age, customer-driven markets, knowledge-based competitive economy and globalization are quite different from the past. Now, our soft skills (I prefer to call them people skills) are important to find opportunities, maintain our jobs, and even for personal development, just as important as our technical skills.
In the past, our job opportunities and ranks were determined by our technical skills or product knowledge and our years of experience. Managers and employers in the past - and still until now in many organizations - focused on the technical skills that are necessary to increase productivity in the organization effectively.
The fact is that our years of experience and our technical skills alone do not count, especially in supervisory and management positions. Your years of experience in operating a machine, for example, or being the best doctor, engineer, lawyer, sales person or accountant, do not make you a good manager. What counts - besides the technical skills - is if you are able and capable of dealing with and aligning your people and manage them well.
Today, getting a job requires more than academic qualifications, years of experience, and a good resume. These qualifications, years of experience, and good resume will get you the interview, but they will not guarantee you of getting and maintaining the job.
“People Skills” is a term that refers to the skills that influence and affect how we interact and deal with each other, circumstances and situations. These skills include interpersonal skills, personal habits, effective communication, creativity, analytical thinking, diplomacy, flexibility, coping with change, problem solving, leadership, participating in teamwork, and the ability to build relationship with different personalities. Theodore Roosevelt said, “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people”.
Every human is born with four capacities. They are the levels of a person’s IQ (Intelligence Quotient), BQ (Body Intelligence Quotient), SQ (Spiritual Intelligence Quotient), and EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient).
Our IQ level can be improved by many ways. It can be improved by eating the right diet, feeding the mind continuously with knowledge and updated information, sleeping well, practicing positive thinking, and exercising the mind regularly to achieve a maintained high level of Mental Agility.
“BQ” is about how much we care about the trillions of cells that are in our body, which work 24 hours doing everything possible to protect our body and to help it in its continuous functions.
SQ (Spiritual Intelligence Quotient) is our needs to contribute, to grow, to be significant, and to achieve a state of certainty, to deal with the uncertainty, to love and to be loved, and to serve others.
“EQ” is our emotional social interaction intelligence that comes from our self awareness and our awareness of others. It is our capacities of recognizing our own and others that come from understanding them, knowing how we communicate, respect, listen, care, sympathize and empathize, and help them. In other words, it is the way we behave towards others.
Britannica describes human behaviour as, “The potential and expressed capacity for physical, mental, and social activity during the phases of human life”. This behavior and interaction are controlled and highly affected by our attitude, which is the way we feel about someone, something or an event.
Similarly, our attitude is affected by many factors. Among the most important factors are the information we acquire and have, and our level of the ability of meeting people’s minds.
Life in general, or business, as a commerce, an occupation, or as an organization is about people. It is about building relationships with people, communicate and deal with them. Therefore, people skills are necessary for us to deal with circumstances in life and they determine the difference between winning and losing a deal. Furthermore, since no one can achieve significant success without people, one has to master various interpersonal skills that are necessary to maintain relationships, a comfortable life style, and a career.
No matter how brilliant and technically skilled we are, our technical skills count only 15% of getting and keeping our jobs. Studies on the importance of (People Skills) resulted with a conclusion that the most important skill to get a job is the person’s interpersonal skills.
Regarding this issue, Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Carnegie Foundation, after spending one million dollars and five years in a research, proved that 85 percent of the reason that a person gets a job, keeps that job and move a head in that job has to do with an individual’s people skills and people knowledge.
Supporting this conclusion and describing the importance of soft skills, psychologist Daniel Coleman said, “Soft skills are a combination of competencies that contribute to a person's ability to manage his or herself and relate to other people-matters twice as much as IQ or technical skills in job success”.
Generally, employers are looking for people who are loyal, committed confident, innovative, good team players, tolerant, courageous, well communicators, and problem solvers. Those who are lacking these skills are going to face major difficulties in getting jobs opportunities and they might be left behind.
It takes discipline and hard work in order to become a people skilled person. One has to be able to think of what is he/she is about to say, to whom, and how, then, respond rather than react in any given situation.
Improving our people skills is an art. It can be obtained by discovering our weaknesses and turn them into strength, continuously getting extra information and knowledge and taking action to turn them into practice. This will enable a person not only to be a most sought after employee, but also to make him flexible and able to adapt him/herself to the world’s continuous rapid change.