Introductory Discussions on Soft Skills Development
- 1. AMA THOUGHTS – SOFT SKILLS I just love thinking of and working on soft skills, and I don't know exactly why or how, but I’ve realized that the topics on soft skills and thinking of soft skills practices have always interested me. Maybe, it is due to two reasons: 1) my family grooming and 2) my Cadet College orientation; let me focus a little on these two aspects separately. First, about my upbringing from early childhood. Even though I am the only child of my biological mother, there was no excuse for receiving undue comfort by getting released from the family tasks. From my early childhood, I have seen both my parents very hardworking. While my father was setting up examples of hard work in professional life and hierarchical achievements, my mother groomed me psychologically through all the hard work and practices in domestic and household affairs. Interestingly enough, they not only prepared me academically for facing all the difficult exams of the Cadet College admission process but also prepared me physically and mentally for the next journey of my Cadet College education after I got the final results of the admission tests. While the Cadet life was initially a pain for many of my friends (though many of them are now serving and senior military officials), it was rather comparatively easygoing for me; I guess mostly because of my early orientation process in the family. The next part is the institutional practice of soft skills at Cadet College. From dawn to dusk, Cadets have to do things (academic, physical, mental, personal, everything) in a systematic routine. Initially, things were kind of imposing on many of us as we were just kids (pre-teenagers) at that time. But gradually, as time passed and we moved on, we became habituated to all the activities including in the practice of all sorts of physical and behavioural soft skills. Ultimately, when I was studying at the University, I was easily identified as a little bit different as a better groomed one among others, may not be academically, but surely for the soft skills of manners, communication, and presentation, which also remained in the similar flow of others’ observation towards me in my early days of professional life. I received all my professional promotions so timely till my last designation at my last workstation as an Associate Professor and the Head of the English Department; and again I feel, it is not just the academic or official performance of the routine work at work, rather it was all about the records through all my work supervisors’ observations on my attitudes and norms at work throughout my whole professional journey. I believe all those timely achievements occurred due to all the early practice of hard work and soft skills in my life, which ultimately can make any person habitually easygoing with the soft skills required at work. Throughout my twenty-five years of active work experience in classroom teaching, research activities, and academic management, I have always focused on the development of soft skills. My family teachings and grooming through Cadet College education have both consciously and unconsciously developed in me a sense of respect and passion for soft skills. In my professional journey, I have always received the benefit of practising discipline and maintaining a balanced environment around me through the best use of the soft skills that I had already developed. I have also seen my ex-Cadet friends’ career-topping in the shortest possible time; I believe, that is also mainly for their management and maintenance of soft skills in their personal and professional lives. Now, last but not least, a senior experienced teacher during my tertiary studies at the University, who was the then Head of the Department (I also served him as his official assistant for two and a half years) used to tell us often, something like this: “It is more important how you say rather than what you say.” Today, whenever I try to transfer my knowledge and share the importance of soft skills, I always recall those precious utterances of the mentors who contributed to my life and living. © Associate Professor Ahmad Mahbub-ul-Alam (Retd) PhD Fellow at Bangladesh University of Professionals