The Importance of Soft Skills in the Special Needs Population

Communication

When sharing ideas and asking questions, the ability to get one’s message across effectively is extremely important. Whether it be between an employee and manager, or employee and customer, strong communication skills are vital to job performance.

Collaboration

Getting along with others goes a long way toward workplace success. Many jobs involve working as a team, listening to one another, and seeing each other’s point of view. This requires important social skills such as making eye contact, good manners, and active listening. It also requires professionalism: being prepared, showing up on time, and treating others with respect. 

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Many jobs require employees to make connections between ideas, draw conclusions, make predictions, determine if their predictions are correct, and then use data to support their claim. Sometimes solving a problem requires looking at it from a different perspective, or there may be multiple ways to successfully solve the problem. Workers must make decisions not just based on what they think or feel, but on scientific data that supports the best solution. 

Adaptability

Today’s employees must embrace the idea that it’s OK to fail multiple times before they succeed. When they fail, special needs students may act out their frustration in inappropriate ways, so it is especially useful for them to learn how to be resilient in the face of setbacks.

We are working with students every day in school to teach these essential soft skills. Depending on your child’s ability, community-based work experience at offices, retail stores, restaurants, or libraries may be an option for developing and practicing soft skills.

Social events are also tremendously helpful to develop interpersonal skills. Since soft skills are such important drivers of success in school and in adult life, every little bit of practice helps.