1. Importance of soft skills in IT Iva Milošová VV064

2. About this presentation
SOFT SKILLS x HARD SKILLS
Soft skills in IT
Importance of soft skills
Suppressing emotions
How to develop soft skills
Hypersensitive/highly sensitive people

3. SOFT skills x HARD skills
Computer programming
Typing speed
Proficiency in a foreign language …
Teamwork
Communication
Empathy
Time management
...

4. Soft skills in IT Sensitivity, suppression
Environment where they can „hide“ behind the LCD screen
This and variety of other factors lead to higher probability of dealing with mentally ill people at IT environment

5. Important and problematic soft skills in IT
Communication, public speaking
Active listening
Empathy and „reading people“, body language
Teamwork
Diplomacy and negotiation
Time management
Flexibility, patience
Leadership

6. Why is it SO important? team leader/manager/…
has to be able to motivate and coordinate the team
has to be able to create „safe“ environment
conflict solving, balanced relationships
programmer/designer/…
work ethics (flexibility x extremes)
cooperation with others
empathy

7. Otherwise… chaos, disrespect, conflicts, unmanageable people
Consequences: not meeting deadlines, failing projects …
IT environment requires special approach
Everything starts with e-motion.

8. Suppressing emotions
Habit of escaping emotions due to the inability to deal with them
Usually lack of emotional support from people around -> suppression appears to be the only solution
Strict upbringing, traumas
Inability to deal with own high sensitivity
To provide the feeling of safe work environment, it is the key for pushing boundaries
Transparency, honesty and respect

9. DEVELOPING SOFT SKILLS
Patience, practice, commitment, decision to be ready to face new challenges and push boundaries
Choose those skills you want to develop (preferably one at the time)
Specialized seminars
Seeking opportunities in your environment to practise on daily basis (+ feedback)

10. On a contrary: Hypersensitive/highly sensitive people
People who tend to be very good at soft skills in general
The challenge is … to be able not to use them 24/7 
Abnormally sensitive nervous system - to noises, smells, tone of voice, emotions of other people, …
Good at reading people, active listening, intuition, telling if someone lies rightaway, artistic and more

11. Hypersensitivity - disadvantages
Really hard to set boundaries (they FEEL the opponents point of view as their own)
Hard to say NO in general, pleasing people
Usually very shy and not much communicative in a group
Sometimes not being able to BE around more people – exhausting
Being overwhelmed easily
Suppression
Other

12. Practical x emotional approach
FINAL THOUGHTS
Need for understanding and safe environment
Practice and patience
Developing relationship with own emotions
Balance
Practical x emotional approach

13. References Life Lives of others Universal knowledge

14. Thank you. Questions?