UNAIR NEWS – The Postgraduate School of Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) held an HR talk with Iska Ningrum SIKom, one of the trainers and public speakers from Intuisi Consulting Agency & Intuisi Creative Agency. The Importance of Soft Skills talk show was aired on Thursday, Jan 4, 2024, via Instagram live broadcast on @pasca_unair.
The Importance of soft skill development
Iska said that people nowadays are too focused on developing hard skills when soft skills are no less important. Soft skills are a person’s non-technical abilities, such as the ability to communicate with others.
“Communication is the process of conveying a message from one individual to another individual with the aim of ensuring that the message is conveyed well,” she said.
Iska stated that effective communication is necessary to boost a career at work. Effective communication in the workplace is done by knowing the personality types of co-workers. It can be done by identifying characters according to personality types: melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, and choleric.
It is important to learn other people’s personalities to communicate effectively. Basically, each personality type has different communication patterns. “For example, our co-worker has a sanguine personality, so he cannot apply a melancholic communication pattern because it will not be suitable,” she said.
Effective ways to communicate
Furthermore, an effective way to communicate with colleagues is to provide suggestions with a good approach because, generally, humans do not like being criticized. “There are basic principles in conveying criticism. Such as giving appreciation before providing constructive criticism and solutions to improve,” she said.
Apart from colleagues, you also need an effective way of communicating with superiors at work. What you can do is make thorough preparations before discussing it with your superiors and pay attention to your appearance.
“Communication is not only about how to talk to other people verbally, but also related to gestures, expressions, and manners,” said the communications graduate.
It is also necessary to understand how to communicate between generations. Usually, in our work, we will collaborate with people from different generations.
“For example, generation Z is used to getting things instantly, so to connect with them, we have to communicate flexibly,” she explained.
In the end, Iska gave tips for honing soft skills: being aware of your shortcomings and improving communication through training. It is also necessary to communicate with yourself because communication is established with other people and yourself.
Author: Lady Khairunnisa Adiyani
Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia
