SOFT SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT THOUGH DIFFICULT TO LEARN AND MASTER

One can master writing a code in a particular computer language, one can master playing tennis or basket ball or golf, one can master a specific classical dance, one can master singing, one can master acting, one can master cooking a recipe, one can master judo, kung fu or karate, one can master painting, one can master opening and assembling a machine or equipment but mastering soft skills is very difficult. People work for hours and months and years to acquire, learn, practice and master these hard skills or technical skills or external skills.

However, most people don't even appreciate that there is something to learn and practice and master in soft skills. For most people, the soft skills just happen, you don't have to learn them. They think that some people are good at them because they are gifted with them as if it's out of some genetic or psychic determination. And then they say, "He is naturally good in maintaining great relationships with people, I just can't be doing that; I am just not cut out for it. I generally mess up my relations with many people". "He is a born speaker, I am not that talented". "He has a way to negotiate to resolve conflicts, I create more problems". These expressions are not mere cliches, people say them with all their seriousness and sound a bit pathetic and diffident towards themselves that they can't be so good at these things. The truth is that there is hardly any genetic or psychic determination here. The people good at soft skills have mastered soft skills by working at them for hours and years together.

A child learns to communicate (soft skill) when he is around one year of age and it does not happen to him automatically. The child has tremendous desire to learn speaking and then he puts tremendous efforts in developing his vocabulary of words, phrases and sentences with body language, gestures and grunts. And as the child grows over the years he picks up the right ways of speaking as well as the wrong ways of speaking. When he does with the right kind of things, he speaks well and impresses but if he does with wrong things, he derates. The one who keeps correcting and practices more and more the right ways of speaking becomes a good and effective speaker. The one who does not correct himself and does not learn the right ways of speaking falls behind in the soft skill called "speaking". So soft skill is necessarily an outcome of the desire-knowledge-practice-habit model described earlier.