Travelling the world of soft skills and emotional intelligence

Soft skills are nowadays becoming more and more important in the context of professional and daily life. Emotional intelligence, empathy, teamwork, conflict and stress management are essential skills inside and outside the classroom. By a combination of theoretical and practical activities, our participants learnt more about how to improve their communication skills.
 
The new edition of the course “Soft Skills and Emotional Intelligence for teachers and education staff​” took place in Palermo from 30/03/2025 to 05/04/2025. The participants came from all across Europe, with Aušra and Reda from Kauno r. Ilgakiemio mokykla-darželis in Lithuania, Felix and Lilly from Leonardo da Vinci Campus Nauen in Germany, Minttu and Mia from OMNIA in Finland, Ave from Tallinn 21st School in Estonia, Filomena, Ana and Filipa from Agrupamento de Escolas Lima de Freitas in Portugal and Alexandra from Lycée Professionnel NADAR in France.

To start with the course, participants discussed the topic of Emotional Intelligence. This term indicates the ability to recognise not only our own feelings but also other people’s emotions, in order to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings. Empathy was also tackled, through a series of exercises the participants were able to learn more about practising empathy, self-control, self-motivation and building a connection.

To continue with the week, we explored the importance of leadership. A good teacher is also a good leader of the classroom because they have to give motivation and guide their students to reach a specific goal. Leadership comes in different forms, but not all of them are effective in every situation. For this reason, participants were asked to think about the main characteristics of the leaders they admire and reflected on the different leadership styles.
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Effective communication is one of the most important skills for working in a team. The participants focused their attention on the different communication styles: aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive and assertive. Communication is essential when it comes to teamwork. Being able to show assertiveness can be tricky, however, by discussing this topic they saw that being assertive does not mean to be impolite, but it means to communicate what you want effectively.
Delving into communication skills, participants prepared exercises on public speaking. They learnt tips and tricks on how to present yourself, how to control body language and nonverbal communication. In order to gain confidence the participants were asked to prepare a short one-minute speech to perform in front of the class and to practice the skills they had learned during the previous days.
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Last but not least, conflict and stress management were taught. Working with people can be difficult sometimes and that can lead to conflict. By sharing their own experiences they realised how these are common situations and that conflict doesn’t necessarily have to bring a negative outcome, but it is also a possibility for growth and development.

​This course allowed participants to confront themselves with each other and learn from their shared experiences. Each participant had a different background that certainly contributed to the growth of the group as a whole. In addition, networking was also possible because of the planned cultural activities, showing that learning does not happen only inside a classroom!

Discover more about this course here.