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SOFT SKILLS AND INTERPERSONAL

COMMUNICATION

UNIT 1: SELF-ANALYSIS
Sadique Nayeem
Asst. Professor
Dept. of CSE

Sitamarhi Institute of Technology, Sitamarhi

 Soft Skills
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 Soft skills (also called non-technical skills) are those personal values and
interpersonal skills that determine a person’s ability to work well with others in a
project team.
 Soft skills are needed to deal with the external world and to work in a
collaborative manner with one’s colleagues.
 These skills include:
 effective communication,

 leadership, and teamwork skills;

 demonstrating problem solving abilities,

 initiative, and motivation skills;

 displaying honesty and

 strong work ethics.

 Interpersonal Communication
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 Interpersonal communication is the process of exchange of information, ideas

and feelings between two or more people through verbal or non-verbal
methods.
 It often includes face-to-face exchange of information, in a form of voice, facial
expressions, body language and gestures. The level of one’s interpersonal
communication skills is measured through the effectiveness of transferring
messages to others.
 Commonly used interpersonal communication within an organization include:
 Daily internal employee communication,

 client meetings,

 employee performance reviews and project discussions.

 In addition, online conversations today make a large portion of employees’

interpersonal communication in the workplace.
 Types of interpersonal communication
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Interpersonal communication skills take place under the following categories:

1. Verbal Communication
2. Written Communication
3. Listening
4. Non-verbal Communication
 Elements of interpersonal communication
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Important elements of interpersonal communication skills taking place between two

or more people include
1. The Communicators
2. The Message
3. Noise
4. Feedback
5. Context
6. Channel
 Importance of interpersonal communication
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Importance of Interpersonal Communication at the workplace

1. The flow of thoughts and ideas
2. Enhances teamwork
3. Higher productivity
4. Helps to solve problems and issues
5. Iron out the bottlenecks
6. Helps to retain quality staff
7. Positive image
8. Attracts investors and vendors
 Ways to improve interpersonal communication
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Some of the best ways to improve your interpersonal communication skills are as
follows-
1. Maintaining eye contact
2. Do not interrupt
3. Putting away the mobile device
4. Be honest
5. Stop making assumptions
6. Pay attention to non-verbal cues
7. Be positive
8. Be empathetic
 SWOT Analysis
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 Personal SWOT analysis is a great tool to assess yourself in order to plan your
career. As Confucius once said, “Do a job you love, and you will never have
to work a day in your life”.
 The tricky part is finding a job you love that matches your skill set and of course
pay well. This is where a personal SWOT analysis comes in handy.
 SWOT stands for
 Strengths
 Weaknesses
 Opportunities
 Threats

 You can use it to assess yourself, compare yourself to your peers/competitors

and also use it to find career growth opportunities.
 How to do a personal SWOT analysis?

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 List down the “Strengths”
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 The first step is to list down your strengths. Knowing these will help you to be
more confident in an interview or when looking for a job promotion. Because
you have listed down things beforehand you’ll have an easier time recalling
things as well. Here are few questions to ask yourself when filling this part.
 What are the professional qualifications/certifications you have that makes you
stand out from the rest?
 Can your expertise in some area make a difference to the organization?
 What projects/campaigns have you completed successfully?
 Do you have powerful industry contacts ? Especially useful in areas like
advertising, marketing, and insurance.
 What other skills make you stand out from the rest? For examples things like
leadership and dedication to work.
 What do others think as your strengths?
 Know your “Weaknesses”
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 The second step is to identify your weaknesses. As mentioned before, SWOT is

used by individuals to assess and improved themselves. Identifying weaknesses is
the best way to improve them.
 This also helps you to be prepared to answer or counter them if they come up
during an interview or performance review. Ask yourself these questions when
filling this.
 Do you have the necessary skills/qualifications to be successful in your current or
future roles?
 Do you have bad habits? For example frequently getting late, poor
communication skills, bad time reporting etc.
 What other traits can you improve to be more efficient?
 What do others think as your weaknesses? Even if you don’t consider it as a
weakness.
 Find matching “Opportunities”
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 Opportunities come in different shapes and forms. Sometimes opportunities past

by you without you even noticing them. So here are few things to be on the
lookout for.
 Are there any significant changes/advancements in your industry that you can
take advantage of?
 Has new technology or industry trend emerged that you can make use of future?
 Is a new position advertised in your company that matches your skill set? Or did
a position became vacant?
 Is there a new project in your organization that you can join which will benefit
your career
 Can acquiring new skills give you a competitive advantage? For example in the
airline industry knowing another language to your mother tongue is an
advantage.
 Be aware of “Threats”
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 When doing a personal SWOT analysis you need to think of yourself as a

company or a product and assess yourself against others. This way it makes it
easy for you to identify threats. So here’s how to identify threats.
 Is one of your peers doing a better job than you in a similar role? Are both of
you fighting for the same promotion?
 Is popularity of new technologies or demise of old technologies threatening your
career? For example, it is common for software engineers careers to become
stale because they didn’t spend the time to learn the latest technologies.
 Are your personal traits hurting your career advancements?
 What are the obstacles that prevent you from achieving your targets? Could be
at work or in your personal lives.
 Identify the threats and try to eliminate the ones you can.
 Blank Personal SWOT Analysis Template
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 Now you know how to do it, it’s time to create your own personal SWOT
analysis diagram.
 When to do a personal SWOT analysis?
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 It is a self-assessment, so anytime is a good time. But there are few specific

instances where it can really benefit you.
 When going to an interview – So you can focus on your strengths and talk
about them more. It will help in preparing the CV as well. If you have a very
good idea about the job requirements beforehand you can modify the CV to
match them as well. Remember that recruiters spend on average 6 seconds to
decide whether you fit in or not.
 When applying for a promotion – helps you to assess yourself against other
candidates. You’ll have a good understanding of your strengths against your
competitors so you can focus on them rather than your general strengths.
 Before a career switch – helps you to figure out whether your skills match the
opportunities in your new career or whether they are much suited for your
current job.
 Using a personal SWOT analysis for a career
switch
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 Let us take one example. Before Rahul moved marketing he worked as a

software engineer for 7 years. He didn’t hate the job, but he wasn’t in love with
it either. And he was doing more and more online marketing stuff during his free
time. After a while, he assessed his skills, realized that he had enough skills to
succeed in marketing and moved to a full-time marketing role. Here’s how the
SWOT would look like during that time.
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 Self-confidence
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 Self-confidence is a trait that reflects in every area of our lives be it educational

life, professional, and personal life.
 People talk about the importance of self-confidence all the time but do not
realize the extent of its importance. We only realize the importance of self-
confidence when there is a lack of self-confidence in a person and it affects
negatively in different areas of life.
 Confidence basically means to trust. When you say that you have full confidence
in someone, it means that you trust them. Similarly, self-confidence means to trust
oneself, trust one’s abilities. It is an ability to make yourself comfortable in
different situations while remaining true to yourself.
 “Believing in oneself while accepting the flaws and becoming better. All these
descriptions collectively make up the definition of self-confidence”.
 Difference between Self-confidence and
Over-confidence
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 People often confuse self-confidence /confidence with over-confidence.

 But the difference between these two can make a huge difference in a
person’s personality.
 As discussed above, confidence means to have trust in abilities whereas
overconfidence means to overestimate one’s true abilities.
 Overconfidence often borders the narcissistic personality in a person.
 One basic difference between the two terms is that an overconfident person
absolutely believes in himself without even thinking that anything can go
wrong.
 Whereas, self-confidence means to believe in one’s abilities but giving the
margin of making mistake.
 Importance of Self-confidence
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1. Leads to Better Self-esteem

2. Decreases Anxiety
3. Positive Self-worth
4. Makes a Better Leader
5. Increase Motivation
6. Brings Happiness
7. Ensures Security
8. Improved Relationships
 Ways to improve self-confidence
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 Acceptance: the first step of every change and effort is to accept the lacking
and errors. Accept that there is a lack of self-confidence in your personality.
 Identification: Enlist all the weaknesses and strengths of your personality,
unbiasedly. Also, enlist your skills and talents that are useful.
 Conscious efforts: It is necessary to put conscious efforts into the journey of
acquiring self-confidence. This is a sign of awareness that can go a long way in
every stage of life.
 Remove the negativities: Remove all the negative perceptions about oneself
from your mind. These negativities are the major hurdle in your journey towards
acquiring self-confidence.
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 Participate: Participate in different activities in school, college, or office that

require social interaction. Participate in competitions. These competitions and
interactions positively highlight our weaknesses and this helps us in
overcoming them. Moreover, the appreciation we receive from others during
these participations automatically motivates us towards self-confidence.
 Be assertive: In some situations, people with more confidence win even
without having a proper skill. The reason is that their confidence lets them be
assertive and convince people in their favor. Therefore, we need to learn to
be assertive without being disrespectful.
 Self-Esteem
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 In psychology, the term self-esteem is used to describe a person's overall

subjective sense of personal worth or value. In other words, self-esteem may be
defined as how much you appreciate and like yourself regardless of the
circumstances. Your self-esteem is defined by many factors including:
 Self-confidence
 Feeling of security
 Identity
 Sense of belonging
 Feeling of competence

 Other terms that are often used interchangeably with self-esteem include self-
worth, self-regard, and self-respect.
 Self-esteem tends to be lowest in childhood and increases during adolescence,
as well as adulthood, eventually reaching a fairly stable and enduring level.
 Factors That Affect Self-Esteem
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There are many factors that can influence self-esteem. Your self-esteem may be
impacted by:
 Age
 Disability
 Genetics
 Illness
 Physical abilities
 Socioeconomic status
 Thought patterns
 Racism and discrimination have also been shown to have negative effects
on self-esteem.
 Healthy Self-Esteem
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 There are some simple ways to tell if you have healthy self-esteem. You
probably have healthy self-esteem if you:
 Avoid dwelling on past negative experiences

 Believe you are equal to everyone else, no better and no worse

 Express your needs

 Feel confident

 Have a positive outlook on life

 Say no when you want to

 See your overall strengths and weaknesses and accept them

 Having healthy self-esteem can help motivate you to reach your goals, because
you are able to navigate life knowing that you are capable of accomplishing
what you set your mind to. Additionally, when you have healthy self-esteem, you
are able to set appropriate boundaries in relationships and maintain a healthy
relationship with yourself and others.
 Low Self-Esteem
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 Low self-esteem may manifest in a variety of ways. If you have low self-esteem:
 You may believe that others are better than you.

 You may find expressing your needs difficult.

 You may focus on your weaknesses.

 You may frequently experience fear, self-doubt, and worry.

 You may have a negative outlook on life and feel a lack of control.

 You may have an intense fear of failure.

 You may have trouble accepting positive feedback.

 You may have trouble saying no and setting boundaries.

 You may put other people's needs before your own.

 You may struggle with confidence.

 Consequences of Low self-esteem
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 Low self-esteem has the potential to lead to a variety of mental health

disorders, including anxiety disorders and depressive disorders.
 You may also find it difficult to pursue your goals and maintain healthy
relationships.
 Having low self-esteem can seriously impact your quality of life and increases
your risk for experiencing suicidal thoughts.
 Excessive Self-Esteem
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 Individuals with narcissistic (egoistic) traits may appear to have high self-
esteem, but their self-esteem may be high or low and is unstable, constantly
shifting depending on the given situation.
 Those with excessive self-esteem:
 May be preoccupied with being perfect
 May focus on always being right
 May believe they cannot fail
 May believe they are more skilled or better than others
 May express high-flying ideas
 May grossly overestimate their skills and abilities

 When self-esteem is too high, it can result in relationship problems, difficulty with
social situations, and an inability to accept criticism.
 How to Improve Self-Esteem
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 Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to address problems with self-
esteem. Some actions that you can take to help improve your self-
esteem include:
 Become more aware of negative thoughts. Learn to identify the distorted
thoughts that are impacting your self-worth.
 Challenge negative thinking patterns. When you find yourself engaging in
negative thinking, try countering those thoughts with more realistic and/or
positive ones.
 Use positive self-talk. Practice reciting positive affirmations to yourself.

 Practice self-compassion. Practice forgiving yourself for past mistakes and

move forward by accepting all parts of yourself.
 Low self-esteem can contribute to or be a symptom of mental health disorders,
including anxiety and depression. Consider speaking with a doctor or therapist
about available treatment options, which may include psychotherapy (in-person
or online), medications, or a combination of both.
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Thank you