Article by Materahub
Soft skills are increasingly important components in the world of work. They are skills that a person must have irrespective of the type of work they do. They have to do with the person him/herself, his/her ability to manage and relate, making use of his/her own and others’ resources. The ability to deal with and solve problems, make decisions, understand others and empathise with them, manage conflicts, know how to communicate, know how to lead others. All these are soft skills, which especially in the last decades have become as important as hard skills.
But what are the most important soft skills?
- Autonomy: the ability to carry out assigned tasks without the need for constant supervision.
- Self-confidence: the awareness of one’s own value, abilities and ideas.
- Stress resistance: the ability to react positively to work pressure while maintaining control, staying focused on priorities.
- Ability to plan and organise: is the ability to implement ideas, identifying objectives and priorities and, taking into account the time available, plan the process, organising resources.
- Lifelong learning: is the ability to recognise one’s own shortcomings and areas for improvement, taking action to acquire and continually improve one’s knowledge and skills.
- Capacity to achieve objectives: it is the commitment, the ability, the determination that one puts into achieving the objectives assigned and, if possible, exceeding them.
- Taking the initiative: the ability to develop ideas and be able to organise them into projects that are pursued, even taking risks to achieve them.
- Communication skills: the ability to convey and share ideas and information clearly and concisely with all those involved, to listen to them and to engage effectively with them.
- Problem solving: is an approach to work that identifies priorities and critical issues to identify the best possible solutions to problems.
- Team work: is the willingness to work and collaborate with others, having the desire to build positive relationships aimed at achieving the assigned task.
How can theatre help to implement these skills?
Theatre is the perfect way to develop soft skills. It is a place to get involved, to experience connections, struggles, problems. In theatre, through real life scenarios, we can test our skills, understand how we are made and how we would like to be. We can create and manage conflicts because in simulation we can allow ourselves to explore a field much wider than our everyday experience.Shakespeare said: ‘All the world’s a stage’. For this stage called life, drama is considered an all-encompassing medium. It embraces all kinds of topics and situations. More and more companies, training institutes and schools are using theatre to implement soft skills, a simple, fun but at the same time powerful tool for learning in a simple and natural way.
