Book: The Ace of Soft Skills: Attitude, Communication and Etiquette for Success
Authors: Gopalaswamy Ramesh and Mahadevan Ramesh
Publishers: Pearson Education
Pages: 456
Price: 550 INR
By Yukti Pahwa
Making a successful employee out of an educationally qualified person depends upon certain factors such as communication and etiquette. The authors of the book, from enriched academic and professional backgrounds, portray the role of “Soft Skills built on Attitude,” “Manifested through Communication” and “Polished by Etiquette” in lives of those who aspire to be in any corporate/ service industry. The book begins with the definition of soft skills as the knowledge, other than technical (educationally acquired) knowledge, that is necessary for progress; along with its characteristics and the misconceptions that exist around it. The idea is to equip Indian professionals in carrying out effective interaction with international business community, especially addressing the USA, and vice versa.
The Book has been divided into to three parts. The first portion deals with chapters related to attitude. Here the importance of skills such as passion, pride, process of attaining goals, maintaining modesty and balance in attitude of self in work environment have been explained; in addition to group skills including team and shared accountability, and avoidance of blame game. Willingness to seek friendship and learning from people with diverse backgrounds and culture, avoiding stereotypes and biases of different nature, especially gender has been talked about in details. A whole chapter deals with “Learnability” and “continuous learning”, that entails learning about skills that equip employees to keep up with the ever changing world. Following chapter walks around the interplay between the performance and expectation, ending at a note that employees should always “under-promise” and “over-deliver”, with respect to the employers' expectations. Other chapters deal with a note on time management, accountability, analysing and managing risk parameters, alertness, resiliency in terms of optimism and keeping spirits high at work place, and finally, the importance of hard work.
The second part of the book highlights a unit on elements, modes of communication and distractions in communication; the source of distractions and the ways to minimise distortions in communication, in business scenarios such as presentations and group meetings. Furthermore, there is an explanation towards relevance of doing audience analysis and aim of impactful communication. The following chapters focus on listening skills, using correct posture and body language in different situations, use of visual aids, process of writing resume
