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The IUP Journal of Soft Skills

The Teaching of Soft Communication Skills in Entrepreneurship Development Courses at the +2 Level in India

Article Details

Pub. Date	: Dec, 2018
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of Soft Skills
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJSS11812
Author Name	: Sushmita Chakravarti and Saikat Chakraborty
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Management
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 11

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Abstract

Entrepreneurs play an important role in the economic development of emerging economies such as India, and Entrepreneurship Development Programs (EDP) at various life stages boost it. EDP’s impact at the +2 level is strategic and timely as it adds self-sufficiency to the young who are either forced to or willingly take up entrepreneurship after their +2 education. Creating a new venture and the sea of uncertainties and risks involved in entrepreneurship can be daunting and frustrating, testing the tenacity of the +2 students’ soft skills, especially soft communication skills. Soft communication skill helps in information gathering, customer handling, teamwork, communicating with stakeholders, establishing relationships, and in tackling the challenges involved in venture creation. This paper thus argues for the teaching of soft communication skills in entrepreneurship development courses at the + 2 level, and highlights the need for and benefits of taking such initiatives, whilst suggesting certain broad guidelines in this regard.

Description

The global economy is undergoing many changes with respect to business making many business ideas redundant and at the same time paving way for certain others. And one such change that the past few decades have seen is an increase in entrepreneurship. Timmons (1989) reported that “the entrepreneurial dream of self-employment, or starting, growing and cashing in a business” gives the highest levels of personal satisfaction, challenge, pride and remuneration among others like any other job and it is “a sport of challenge, uncertainty, calculated risk-taking and risk-minimizing”. Entrepreneurship is the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. Setting up an entrepreneurship is not an easy task. Entrepreneurs should have enough confidence in themselves and should be able to respond to setbacks and defeats as temporary interruptions and work with complete involvement using proper strategies to achieve success. In short, entrepreneurship requires various context-dependent skills, and so Entrepreneurship Development Programs (EDPs) should aim at imparting these skills to make the young individuals independent, confident and equipped to move ahead. Skill development and entrepreneurship thus should not be limited to hard skills or vocational studies only, rather soft skills also need to be introduced. Herein, we take up the matter of imparting soft communication skills in EDPs.