You’ll hear people talking about ‘soft skills’ and how important they are, yet, they are among some of the most difficult skills to master. Like any skill, developing it needs regular practice and feedback.
Many organisations regularly focus on technical skills when hiring and putting teams together. Little attention is paid to working on and developing crucial soft skills – such as the ability to collaborate, communicate and connect. This focus leads to team work that doesn’t work.
Soft skills encompass many things such as listening, empathy, reasoning, curiosity, openness – to name a few. They take time to develop and need an environment where people trust one another.
Here at TetraMap, we prefer to call soft skills ‘human skills’. That’s because these are the skills that technology and artificial intelligence cannot adequately replace, and they are also the skills that help create the strongest teams.
In this mini course, you will learn:
- how TetraMap uses metaphor in the context of interpersonal communication skills in teams.
- what ‘human skills’ are and how/where we learn them.
- how to recognise and describe differences through use of nature as a metaphor.
- how to respond in ways that increase communication and reduce conflict.
- why appreciating our natural diversity is helpful for everyone.
It should take about 10 – 15 minutes to work through all the sections below.
Make your own notes on each section – the more you reflect, the more impact and applications you will find. We have asked many questions in order to help you find many right answers! If you can take the mini course with a friend or colleague so you can expand your discussions in your own context.
Enjoy!
