Soft Skills Activities
PAIGE TURNER
CLASS
Soft skills are necessary for successful job interviews, promotions at work, developing relationships and achieving a variety of goals. Examples of key soft skills are communication, teamwork, listening and assertiveness skills. Soft skills can be developed at any stage of your life. Exercises, role-playing and repetition help with soft skill development over time.
1 Assertiveness Exercise
People can have passive-aggressive or passive responses to situations where they would benefit from assertive behavior. Assertiveness skills can be learned through role-modeling exercises. Demonstrate the difference between assertive, passive-aggressive and passive behavior at the beginning of the exercise. Create conflict-filled scenarios and ask participants to role-play assertive behavior within those situations.
2 Teamwork Exercise
Teamwork exercises teach participants collaboration and communication skills. Ask students to break up into different teams. Create an obstacle course with desks and chairs. Ask each team to divide up into pairs with one leader and one follower. The followers should all be blindfolded. Ask the leaders of each pair to take turns leading their follower through the obstacle course with their words. This exercise builds listening and communication skills.
3 Listening Exercises
Good listening skills are essential for success in different arenas of life. Set up a listening exercise for your students. Read out a vivid description of a location. Ask students to listen carefully and repeat the descriptions with all the details. Repeat the exercise with different descriptions. Ask students to listen for and identify intonation and emotion in your voice.
4 Communications Workshop
Communications workshops provide participants with a way to practice their communication skills. Ask a student to role-play a specific character or celebrity with a bad attitude. Ask other students to respond to this character. Ask a set of students to role-play the interaction of a team in conflict. Have them resolve the conflict during a set time limit. Use the workshop to teach communication and conflict resolution techniques.
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