To Hard Skills, With 100% Softness

RAJIB KUMAR

Following is an excerpted version of Rajib Kumar’s deliberations at the 5th Material World Anniversary Debate


Chairman Sir, An employer ultimately hires you for your hard skills; if you do not have the core skills does it make any difference whether you are well groomed or whether you speak in unaccented (or superficially imposed accent) English?
These lovely ladies and gentlemen sitting in call centers of mobile phone service providers…. how many times are they actually able to address a slightly out of the turn problem you are facing amidst the much touted “this call could be recorded for training purposes”?

And doesn’t “have a nice day” give you a taste of gall and wormwood when you still continue to suffer?

There is a tendency to project that soft skills are the only skills required in certain sectors. Tell me something, you are out on a date with your fiancée and the very handsome 6 something steward first serves water on your food because his angle with the targeted glass went all wrong and then spills coffee on your most expensive coat. And so what do you say to him, Mr. Handsome, please come again…?

Similarly, if the food in some star category hotel tastes awful does it really help if the fat or huge chef comes to your table gives you the most delicious smile?

Excuse me, he is hired to make delicious food in the first place, the smile can come as an extraneous benefit but surely not at the cost the former…

You have a soft skills trainer in every para and by para in Kolkata. The story is much the same in other big cities in the country. I am told its good business so I tell my students even if you do not get jobs you sure can try your luck as a soft skills trainer…
Soft skills are basically accessories; extraneous…you have a building and then you put in the glass and then paint on the wall. Things to decorate…

When you go to buy a mobile set…. first and foremost you look for a “good set”. And then you see whether it has the add on features…

Chairman Sir, let me say something…. if you do not know your subject and you have excellent soft skills you can fool your target audience a few times…but surely you cannot fool all the people all the time…. on the contrary the man or woman with his excellent hard skills shall at some point feeler it out to you that he or she knows his subject.

I recall a Pure Science teacher when I was in school. He had practically no what is today attributed as soft skills. We used to dismiss him as a time waster…we never took his classes seriously. One fine day on a request from someone he gave about 10 of us a special class. We still remember how he explained Resonance – “one fox howls, all the foxes starts howling”. Today I realize his lack of engagement in regular classes was perhaps because our care less 50 + class was not able to motivate him enough…

Why can’t I laugh the way I want? Why do I need to be amused even when I find something very un-amusing?

In the run up to this event, I sent an SMS to my wonderful friend Janemoy Patnaik, Principal of Central Bank Officer’s Training College.

I kept receiving “pending” reports throughout the day. I call up customer service late in the afternoon. I am advised to take off the sim and battery and put them back after 5 minutes.

“The problem shall go” he asserts. Like an obedient student I comply. Nothing really changes. I call up at around 10 pm. This time the fella at the other end tells me “it is not your problem. It a problem at the other end to you whom you “sended” the sms. (True to my ever-online training and teaching mode) I correct his English in the process. ..Not sended dear…sent.

I start getting irritated…dear, I want to know when this damn thing will stop…so I can be at peace…do you have a clue? “Yes” he insists….”Por Favor”- what is it? “No Problem at your end; problem at your end.” He repeats.

What is the problem? I thundered this time.

“ I don’t know Sir”- he finally confesses. Chairman Sir, soft skills training these days are ignoring the basic facet of communication. Use of correct grammar is one area, which is among the first of casualty. Very soon we shall be in a position when we wont be able to understand each other’s language.

I shall end on a serious note…what are we teaching in these soft skills? A certain way to smile, a certain way to respond to something, a certain way to greet somebody…. you walk into an office and you see everybody smiling at you at the same way…. where is our identity and individuality…. Are we not taking our uniqueness in the human resource-the heterogeneity- for a ride in the process?? Isn’t this obsession with soft skills bent upon creating human clones?

Isn’t this kind of education stifling our children’s creativity and innovation?
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily purport to constitute an official position of Offline or Material World.

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