A Practical Guide to Soft Skills: Communication, Psychology, and Ethics for Your Professional Life

189 Pages·2021·2.338 MB·English

by  Richard Almonte

A PRACTICAL GUIDE
TO SOFT SKILLS
This accessible text looks at the range of soft skills sought after by employers
and provides a practical guide to developing and effectively demonstrating
these skills.
Soft skills – including communication, customer service, teamwork, problem
solving, and personal management – represent a major component of any worker’s
professional identity. This book analyzes major soft skills, including both inward-
facing soft skills (how workers manage themselves to effectively perform their
work) and outward-facing skills (how workers effectively interact with others
and in groups). It explores how these skills are rooted in fundamental areas
of liberal arts including interpersonal communication, psychology, and ethics.
It provides an active learning pedagogy, including creative exercises and case
studies through which students can assess their understanding of underlying
concepts and their application in real-world situations.
T he book can be used as a supplement for communication, business, and
career-oriented courses, and it will be of interest to individual students and junior
professionals as well as career counselors, postsecondary instructors across the
curriculum, and professionals in human resources and learning and development.
R ichard Almonte teaches Communication in the Centre for Business at
George Brown College in Toronto.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE
TO SOFT SKILLS
Communication, Psychology, and
Ethics for Your Professional Life
Richard Almonte
Cover image: © gremlin / Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Richard Almonte
T he right of Richard Almonte to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A ll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
T rademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
I SBN: 978-1-032-08101-4 (hbk)
I SBN: 978-1-032-07105-3 (pbk)
I SBN: 978-1-003-21294-2 (ebk)
D OI: 10.4324/9781003212942
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b y Apex CoVantage, LLC
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1 Soft Skills in a Digital Age 1
PART 1
The Background to Soft Skills 19
2 Ethics 21
3 Psychology 37
4 Interpersonal Communication 55
PART 2
Outward-Facing Soft Skills 71
5 Communication 73
6 Teamwork 85
7 Customer Service Orientation 98
viii Contents
PART 3
Inward-Facing Soft Skills 113
8 Problem-Solving Orientation 115
9 Productivity and Work Ethic 129
1 0 Likability 142
1 1 Can Soft Skills Be Taught? 156
I ndex 170
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my colleagues in George Brown College’s Centre for
Business who, along with me, teach GHUM 1087 each semester. I’d especially
like to thank those who worked on the original course development with
me: Frank Maloney, Morris Marshall, Roger Cecchetto, and Ted Snell, as
well as those who were co-investigators on the effectiveness research project
in 2019–2020: Heather McAfee and Ted Snell. Thanks too to my academic
administrators: former Dean Maureen Loweth, Academic Director Elizabeth
Speers, and former Chair Kathy Dumanski, all of whom championed the soft
skills work. Finally, thanks to the students who’ve taken the course over the
years and shared their soft skills insights and experiences making the course
that much richer.