What soft skills are, and why you should attend our courses

After being predicted, announced, told and painted in the most colourful and bizarre ways, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has truly arrived and, with the inexorable and powerful continuity of a tide, is slowly modifying the production and labour market.

The first three industrial revolutions gradually replaced human muscular strength — first with mechanisation, and shortly after with electronics.

Structured forms of work organisation and specialisation replaced craft production models.

The revolution we are now experiencing comes in the name of Artificial Intelligence and, as with all novelties, frightens the most conservative.

This time, however, for the first time, even some men of science are frightened — because the new revolution promises to replace Human Intelligence with that of machines.

Put this way, it would seem worrying indeed; but for those who, like us, are professionally engaged on the innovation front, the scenario appears clear and well-defined.

The sustainable development of our society urgently requires a paradigm shift. If we want to increase the quality, productivity and profitability of our businesses, we must learn to make the new intelligent machines work, we must redesign production processes to reap the benefits of the new technologies.

Machine Learning and Deep Learning are not substitutes for Human Intelligence. This is not real Artificial Intelligence, but rather Augmented Intelligence.

Many of the jobs we know today are about to disappear, and this time those that disappear will also include many highly educated professional figures.

However, we are firmly convinced that, as in all industrial revolutions, in the end the new jobs generated will be by far greater in number than those that have disappeared due to the transformation processes of companies.

The new revolution concerns everyone — young and not so young, students about to enter the labour market and professionals who already have a job today.

Acquiring competences and knowledge of emerging technologies is certainly something to do, but it is not enough.

How to prepare to take on jobs that today do not yet exist?

This is where soft skills come into play.

Soft skills are all those character and behavioural traits and abilities we put on the field when relating in the work context.

They are the ability to work in a group, to cooperate for the achievement of a common goal, the ability to work under stress — but also the ability to solve a problem in a creative and unconventional way, leadership ability, the ability to learn continuously, determination and assertiveness.

In short, they are all those skills that allow the individual to be successful, enhancing the technical competences and executive abilities that, by contrast, we could call hard skills.

How do you develop soft skills?

There is only one way to mature and perfect the character traits and skills that will allow us to face the challenges of the new labour market: to exercise them.

Many consulting and training companies have long been proposing workshops and events focused precisely on soft skills. The corporate innovation market is teeming with offerings about creative thinking courses and team building workshops.

During the workshops, colourful Lego bricks and equally varicoloured post-it notes brighten up the training rooms of large companies and the event halls of business centres.

At Spazio Chirale we have gone one step further.

Always specialised in training with innovative methods on all new technologies, and with an offering that could not be more hard-skill oriented, we have aimed at developing soft skills precisely within the most technological courses.

Our teaching method requires each student to always create something. In every lesson, technologies are experienced and lived. There are no frontal lectures; the slides, if any, serve the teacher to keep the thread of the discourse and not get distracted from the final objective. The teaching environment is the Laboratory, a particular kind of Laboratory called FabLab.

In the FabLab, students learn to use new technologies through direct experience. First you intuit, then you create and build, and then you analyse and rationalise the knowledge now acquired.

During the course one has fun. Fun is part of the creative process, and the creative process is the catalyst that empowers learning.

During each course, work is always done in a group. Teachers are trained to apply our method — they must be facilitators before being professors.

Soft skills are extensively exercised. In our courses one not only learns the technologies but also learns to work in a group, to exploit the synergies that derive from different attitudes, to develop creative thinking, to work without an instruction booklet, and to play with high technology.

In practice, we are the only Higher Vocational Training academy offering courses that simultaneously target both soft skills and hard skills.

Find out more about our courses