Soft Skill Training with Functional Integration

Soft skill training and Functional training, are they complementary or competing to each other?  Mundane, but becomes Pertinent when it is about time for an MBA second year student to prepare for a job role in the industry. At this point of time the MBA is at a juncture where he is about to venture into something he always wanted to be – A JOB.

At this point apart from other things following 2 shall surely help:

• Training on Personal attributes that enhance an individual's interactions, social graces, communication, language, personal habits etc.
• Training on Skill sets and abilities to perform a certain type of task or activity.

Both the above constitute to form EMPLOYABILITY TRAINING which is less recognised in many universities today. Above, former being SOFT SKILLS TRAINING & latter being FUNCTIONAL TRAINING are hence complementary to each other and inter woven. Functional Soft skills are a valuable component and is a distinguishing factor impacting the probability of student success in the institution and the work. Just as college and career readiness initiatives span the academic spectrum, Functional soft skills development programs can be integrated into the MBA curriculum.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to incorporating Functional soft skills, B- schools seem to find success when they embed the Functional soft skills materials in the curriculum and integrate those skills with academic coursework.

Now, let us look at the following 2 illustrations to understand it simply:

                                                                               

 

• Illustration 1 has the student trained on soft skills through conventional methods of teaching.
• Illustration 2 has the student to undergo functionally integrated soft skill training.

The above illustrations showcase two experiments with implementing Functional soft skills across disciplines and in a variety of contexts. Various B-schools in India adopt and have varied outcomes. The question here is whether we need to take a re-look at our scheme of things. Let us not jump on to determine the outcomes of these, but their experiences offer ideas for reaching students in a unique way to develop those soft skills integrated functionally deemed most vital to students’ college and career readiness.