THE RIGHT SKILLS BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED)

 

BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED) 9. THE RIGHT SKILLS

 

A Heard and soft skills For a long time, hard skills, for example skills in technical subjects, were considered the most important thing in business. But more and more, people are realizing the importance of soft skills – the skills you need to work with other people, and in the case of managers, to manage people in tactful and non-authoritarian, non-dictatorial ways. B Emotional intelligence You’ve got the brains but have you got the touch? While IQ has traditionally been the means by which we judge someone’s abilities and potential. EQ – the E stands for emotional – is the new benchmark for a new world. If you’ve got it, you’re more likely to be powerful, successful and have fulfilling relationship than if you haven’t. Emotional Intelligence – the ability to understand and control your emotions and recognize and respond to those of others – is emerging as the single most important and effective business and personal skill of the new century. At American Express, financial advisers who’d been through emotional intelligence training EXERCISES 9.1 Look at A opposite. Were (a) hard skills or (b) soft skills mainly required at each of the following stages of a project to design insurance products? The project manager ….. 1. employed someone with a doctorate in mathematics to work on risk probabilities. 2. gave three days off to a team member who said they had family problems at home. 3. analysed her own feelings of frustration that the project was going too slowly. 9.2 Complete the sentences with appropriate forms of expressions from B opposite. 1. If someone is good at persuading employees to do things without making them annoyed, they are goof at __________ __________. 2. More generally, getting along with people and avoiding tactless remarks are examples of __________ __________. 3. Knowing your own emotions and feelings is __________- __________: this is an __________ skill. Contrast this with the ability to get along with other people: __________ skills. 9.3 Find the words and phrases (1-6) in the article in B opposite and match them to their meanings (a-f). 1 benchmark a (gradually) becoming 2 fulfilling b a reference point by which you judge something.

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