Soft Skills and Self-Evaluation: Comprehensive Study Notes
Soft Skills vs Academic Skills
2011 study from Michigan State University (MSU): faculty and students ranked discipline knowledge as the most important type of skill, while employers and alumni ranked professional skills as the most important.
Representation: study from MSU; difference in priority between academic knowledge and professional skills.
Why Focus on Soft Skills?
National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey findings:
Employers want new hires to have technical knowledge related to the job, but more important are soft skills: teamwork, decision-making and communication, and the ability to plan and prioritize work.
Comparative perceptions of readiness:
One survey showed that of education leaders said students are well prepared to enter the workplace, but only of employers thought so.
In a similar Gallup poll, the figures were vs. respectively.
Interpretive question:
Is this common sense? If yes, then it wouldn’t be a problem.
Soft Skills in This Class
Major categories:
Professionalism/Personal Responsibility
Self-Evaluation
Taking Initiative
Attitude
Communication
Approach to failure
Critical Thinking/Good Work Habits
Decision Making/Problem Solving
Time management
Goals
Response power
Respect for Context
Service
Teamwork
Food insecurity
Cultural competence
Self-Evaluation: Concept and Learning Objective
Self-Evaluation Definition:
Regularly assessing one's own thoughts, words and actions against clear, meaningful standards, and one's own performance against specific goals, timelines, guidelines and parameters.
Learning Objective:
Create the habit of regular, productive, honest self-evaluation against meaningful external standards.
Brainstorm: What does self-evaluation mean to you?
Reflective prompt from Page 6: brainstorm the meaning and personal interpretation of self-evaluation.
Brainstorm: Definition and Best Interests
Revisit the definition: Regularly assessing one's own thoughts, words and actions against clear, meaningful standards, and one's own performance against specific goals, timelines, guidelines and parameters.
Guiding questions:
Why is this approach in your best interest?
Why is this approach in the best interest of your future employer?
What do you think the key is to self-evaluation?
Why Is Self-Evaluation Important?
Core rationale:
Self-awareness drives learning and growth.
Without a measuring stick, it’s hard to set meaningful, concrete goals for improvement.
You can’t monitor progress toward goals without evaluating yourself along the way.
Self-evaluation is the fundamental building block for learning soft skills.
Continuous improvement means evaluating yourself in the beginning, middle and the end.
The Key to Self-Evaluation
Practical guidance:
Make a habit of doing it regularly.
Regular self-evaluation supports your own learning and growth.
The mirror is the best teacher: learn to use it to measure your performance against concrete goals for improvement.
Brainstorm: Example of Regular Self-Evaluation
Prompt: Think of an example of a time when you exemplified this approach to regular self-evaluation.
Describe the example in detail:
Who was involved?
What happened?
Where did it occur?
How did you exemplify self-evaluation?
Why do you think this is a good example?
Applying Self-Evaluation
Actionable guidance:
Measure concrete actions that are within your own control.
Measure your actions every step of the way.
Create your own evaluation tools to monitor, measure and document everything you do.
Self-Evaluation: Key Points
Summary statements:
Employers think soft skills are important.
Self-evaluation promotes self-awareness and is the fundamental building block for learning soft skills.
Self-evaluation drives learning and growth.
You must measure yourself against concrete goals.
It must be done in the beginning, middle and end.