There are many SWOT analysis templates.

Get ready to evaluate your internal strengths,

acknowledge your weaknesses, and find what makes you excited about your work, job, or career as
well as what keeps you awake at night.

To make a SWOT worth the effort, you need to set aside the time to really think about it, then sleep
on it and revisit it. You won't think of everything in one sitting, and that question or answer that
entered your brain overnight might be the most relevant and revealing insight in the exercise.
Understand that you will need to come back to this a few times over a week or two to truly capture
complete answers.

Begin by identifying your strengths. These are the traits or skills that set you apart from others. Ask
yourself these questions:

What are you good at naturally?

What skills have you worked to develop?

What are your talents, or natural-born gifts?

The next step is weaknesses. This part examines the areas in which you need to improve and the
things that will set you back in your career. These are some questions to consider:

What are your negative work habits and traits?

Does any part of your education or training need improvement?

What would other people see as your weaknesses?

For the opportunities section, look at the external factors you can take advantage of to pursue a
promotion, find a new job or determine a career direction. These are some questions to ask yourself:

What is the state of the economy?

Is your industry growing?

Is there new technology in your industry?

Finally, look at any threats to your career growth. This part accounts for the external factors that
could hurt your chances to attain your goals. Consider these questions:

Is your industry contracting or changing direction?

Is there strong competition for the types of jobs for which you are best suited?

What is the biggest external danger to your goals?

Remember to be objective, and consult others who know you if necessary. Moving outside your
comfort zone will help you get the results you're looking for instead of reinforcing your own beliefs.
The key to writing a good personal SWOT analysis is honesty. Be unflinching in revealing faults and
weaknesses but also in celebrating your personal strengths and what makes you the best you.

What are Soft Skills?

Table of cntents

Soft Skills are personality qualities and behaviors. Soft skills are unlike technical or hard skills. They
relate to how you work, how you interact with your colleagues, how you manage your work and how
you solve problems. Soft skill is basically how you behave in different situations.

What are soft skills?

How Soft Skills Work?

Importance of soft skills

Types of soft skills

How to improve your soft skills?

Advantages of soft skills

Disadvantages of soft skills

What are soft skills?

Soft Skills associate to how you work or behave. The main categories of soft skills that employers
look for in job candidates are interpersonal skills and communication skills.

Soft Skills are personal attributes needed for success on the job which include time management,
listening skills, networking, teamwork, creative thinking, conflict resolution.

The idea of this blog is to focus on soft skills, types of soft skills, to understand why they are
important, the advantages and disadvantages, and how these skills can be developed. By the end of
this blog, you must be confident about the concept and how you can add soft skills in your armor to
break through in any organization or work area.

How Soft Skills Work?

Soft skill is an important way to succeed for most employers. All jobs require employees to engage
with other employees in some or the other way.

Another main reason managers and employers look for applicants with soft skills is that soft skills are
conveyable skills that can be used regardless of the person’s job. This makes candidates with soft
skills very adaptable employees.

Soft skills are particularly essential in customer-based jobs. These employees are directly in contact
with customers. It requires several soft skills to be able to listen to a customer and provide that
customer with helpful and polite service.

Importance of Soft Skills

Soft skills are indispensable and are vital skills that every individual must possess. Lack of these skills
can limit the potential of a person. However, having soft skills improves one’s ability to work with
others and positively impacts one’s career or even positively influences one’s personal life by
improving ways of interacting with others. As stated earlier, soft skills cannot be learned through
training and are more challenging to develop. They are more about the character, relationships, and
personality of a person.

The world is changing fast with the onset of artificial intelligence in almost every field of work,
machines are replacing and automating tasks that humans once performed. However, there is no
substitute for soft skills. Hence, these become a differentiator for a job seeker to fit himself in the
fast-changing job market landscape and meet the hiring requirements of any organization. So,
human-centric skills are becoming essential due to this change. Hiring employees with advanced soft
skills can significantly impact their working capability from an organization’s perspective. To
summarize, the below factors strongly emphasize the importance of soft skills from the individual as
well as business point of view:

For individuals,

The modern workplace is interpersonal and the future is all about soft skills

High demand by recruiters and organizations

They are hard to automate

Career progression, promotion, and growth

For businesses,

Improved productivity

Improved leadership

Better teamwork

Enhanced employee satisfaction

Increased workplace communication

Type of Soft Skills

This list is non-exhaustive. In this article, we focus on the most common skills that are primarily
required in all organizations. These skills are enumerated as follows and gives its reader a fair idea
about these skill sets.
Communication– is a skill that is most important in a professional set-up. It refers to the ability to
speak effectively to others in different situations.

Related Communication Skills –

Active Listening

Confidence

Clarity

Organization

Problem–solving– is a skill to resolve issues quickly and efficiently. Problem-solving is a subset of

effective teamwork. This skill refers to an ability to find a long-term solution to a problem in the
organization’s best interest and that of people’s interest.

Related Problem solving Skills –

Teamwork

Research

Risk Management

Creativity

Creativity – is a broad ability that integrates different skill sets, including other soft skills and
technical skills. Employees with a creative imagination can find new ways to perform tasks, improve
processes, or even develop new and exciting avenues for the business to explore. Creativity can be
used in any role at any level.

Related Creativity Skills –

Learning from others

Calculated Risks

Curiosity

Broad mindedness

Adaptability – How easily you adapt to changes? If you’re working in a technology-driven company
or start-up, adaptability is essential. Changes can happen in processes, tools or clients you work with.
Employees who are capable of adapting to current situations and ways of working are valuable in
many jobs and industries.

Related Adaptability Skills –

Flexibility

Consistency

Organization

Confidence

Work Ethic – is the ability to deal with tasks and duties in a timely manner. A strong work ethic will
help you develop a positive relationship with your employer and colleagues even when developing
technical skills in a new job.

Related Work Ethic Skills –

Time Management

Integrity
Persistence

Attention to detail

The workplace is ever-changing. Different skills or a combination of these are required to be put into
practice from time to time to function effectively at work. There are many skills that employers
demand these days. These include time management, work ethic, adaptability and flexibility, work
ethic, integrity, just to name a few more.

How to improve your Soft Skills?

Though these skills cannot be taught with formal training, they are ways to develop and polish them.
We will discuss some of the ways that can help a person work on their soft skills, make a lasting
impression with the recruiters, and have a long and progressing career at work or in an organization.
So let’s touch on the “how” of developing soft skills.

Work with a mentor– this will help build and improve your skills. A mentor who can give constructive
feedback and model appropriate skills can go a long way in helping you hone your skills.

Practicing skill sets that are important to you or your weakness– soft skills can be polished by
practice. Make it a routine to work on soft skills that require improvement and work on them
consistently.

Observe soft skills in others and mimic– some professionals have specific soft skills as their strength.
It is a good practice to observe these skills in them and make it a habit to incorporate them into your
day-to-day use.

Advantages of soft skills

Everyone has some type of soft skill. These skills are built over some time and get developed via a
mode of experience and previous positions held by an individual. They are transferable skills and
cannot be taken away. Soft skills allow a person to work for any industry or organization and do not
limit people to perform specific work or to function in specific work environments. Soft skills allow an
individual to demonstrate what soft skills he carries in his personality, attributes, and attitude.
Disadvantages of soft skills

The biggest disadvantage of soft skills is that they are not a substitute for hard or technical skills.
Having a desired qualification or certification is mandatory for all types of work in any company or
organization. Having a good soft skill set gives an edge to the person in the competitive space but is
not a replacement for hard skills that are required for a particular job to be done. Another challenge
is that they cannot be quantified or measured unless demonstrated. It is difficult to prove to have a
desired soft skill which is a big downside.

SMART goals are:

Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous

Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress toward the accomplishment of the
goal

Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve

Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your life purpose

Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to
create urgency.

Specific SMART Goals

Goals that are specific have a significantly greater chance of being accomplished. To make a goal
specific, the five “W” questions must be considered:

Who: Who is involved in this goal?

What: What do I want to accomplish?

Where: Where is this goal to be achieved?

When: When do I want to achieve this goal?

Why: Why do I want to achieve this goal?

For example, a general goal would be “I want to get in shape.” A more specific goal would be “I want
to obtain a gym membership at my local community center and work out four days a week to be
healthier.”

Measurable SMART Goals

A SMART goal must have criteria for measuring progress. If there are no criteria, you will not be able
to determine your progress and if you are on track to reach your goal. To make a goal measurable,
ask yourself:

How many/much?

How do I know if I have reached my goal?

What is my indicator of progress?

For example, building on the specific goal above: I want to obtain a gym membership at my local
community center and work out four days a week to be healthier. Every week, I will aim to lose one
pound of body fat.

Achievable SMART Goals

A SMART goal must be achievable and attainable. This will help you figure out ways you can realize
that goal and work towards it. The achievability of the goal should be stretched to make you feel
challenged, but defined well enough that you can actually achieve it. Ask yourself:
Do I have the resources and capabilities to achieve the goal? If not, what am I missing?

Have others done it successfully before?

Realistic SMART Goals

A SMART goal must be realistic in that the goal can be realistically achieved given the available
resources and time. A SMART goal is likely realistic if you believe that it can be accomplished. Ask
yourself:

Is the goal realistic and within reach?

Is the goal reachable, given the time and resources?

Are you able to commit to achieving the goal?

Timely SMART Goals

A SMART goal must be time-bound in that it has a start and finish date. If the goal is not time-
constrained, there will be no sense of urgency and, therefore, less motivation to achieve the goal.
Ask yourself:

Does my goal have a deadline?

By when do you want to achieve your goal?

For example, building on the goal above: On August 1, I will obtain a gym membership at my local
community center. In order to be healthier, I will work out four days a week. Every week, I will aim to
lose one pound of body fat. By the end of August, I will have realized my goal if I lose four pounds of
fat over the course of the month.

The Importance of SMART Goal Setting

Often, individuals or businesses will set themselves up for failure by setting general and unrealistic
goals such as “I want to be the best at X.” This goal is vague, with no sense of direction.

SMART goals set you up for success by making goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and
timely. The SMART method helps push you further, gives you a sense of direction, and helps you
organize and reach your goals.

Motivation and factors of Motivation

Often, people confuse employee motivation and engagement. The two are very different, they are
not mutually exclusive and you can definitely have one without the other. Employee motivation is the
level of enthusiasm an employee brings to the workplace; whereas, employee engagement is the
emotional commitment the employee has to the organisation and its goals.

Motivating your employees does not have to be difficult or cost the earth, however it does require a
balance of a few factors. Here are 5 factors we feel are key to creating motivated employees:

1. Reward and recognition

Reward and recognition come hand in hand. Recognition for good work has a limited shelf life; praise
begins to lose its impact if not accompanied by reward. Exceptional work deserves reward and while
recognition is sufficient in certain cases, employees begin to lose motivation if they are not rewarded
for extra effort.

There are many ways to reward employees. Rewards can vary in both cost and impact and it is best
to offer a portfolio of rewards, examples include once in a lifetime trips and experiences, vouchers or
something as simple as an extra day off. The aim of rewarding and recognising employees is to
encourage and motivate them to exceed within their roles and promote positive behaviours.

2. Development

Development is very important for motivating employees; studies have shown that 20% of
employees prefer career development opportunities and training to monetary reward. Development
makes an employee self-dependent and allows them to contribute more effectively in the workplace,
it also helps employees to enhance their input to your business.
When an organisation invests in their employees, it breeds loyalty, retention and motivation. A study
in the Harvard Business Review found that employees are appreciate and value when managers take
a genuine interest in their development; it demonstrates to the employee that the organisation
believes in them and wants them to progress within the company. Development inspires employees
to work harder so as not to let down the company that has invested in them.

3. Leadership

A study by Gallup found that, only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is
managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work – this clearly displays how much a
good leader motivates employees. A good leader has the knowledge of what truly inspires loyal and
motivated humans to perform at a high level. It is important that a good leader has reasonable
expectations, gives credit where credit is due and appreciates their staff.

4. Work life balance

Providing a good work life balance nurtures employees. Motivated employees are less likely to take
sick days, leave the organisation and will be more prepared to work longer hours. Equally these same
employees are more likely to ‘burn out’ and will feel less motivated if there is not a healthy work life
balance. Whilst motivated employees will go above and beyond for the company, wanting to do their
best, if exhaustion strikes they may start to lose the passion for their job. As an organisation, it is
important to ensure that employees are working reasonable hours and are combining work with
activities that promote health and wellbeing.

5. Work environment

Motivated employees thrive in a positive work environment. This refers to the physical and non-
physical environment – the physical environment is the office space and surrounding areas.
Employees work better in open spaces that stimulate the senses, look at Google, they are known for
their extraordinary office spaces that focus on employee wellbeing – with green spaces, quiet areas,
beach volleyball, to name but a few! Google spare no expense on the employee environment
believing that the space you work in greatly affects employee motivation. Google’s philosophy is that
“life at Google is not all work”, therefore they promote casual collusion between employees,
demonstrating how collaboration promotes creativity, drives production and increases motivation.

Regarding the intangible environment, motivated employees value engagement and communication.
Engagement is achieved through many different factors such as, giving regular feedback,
development and daily challenges. Effective communication is created through a continuous open
dialogue, dependent on trust. Honest and open communication throughout the business is the
foundation of creating a workplace where all employees can thrive.

To conclude, motivated employees can aid in increasing productivity, engagement and even profit! It
is important not to take motivated employees for granted and continue to nurture them and ensure
that they feel motivated and valued to do their best work for the organisation.

What Is Self-Esteem?

Importance

Theories of Self-Esteem
Causes

Healthy Self-Esteem

Having healthy self-esteem can influence your motivation, your mental well-being, and your overall
quality of life. However, having self-esteem that is either too high or too low can be problematic.
Better understanding what your unique level of self-esteem is can help you strike a balance that is
just right for you.

This article discusses how self-esteem is defined, why it is important, and the factors that affect self-
esteem. It also covers what you can do to help improve your self-esteem.

What Is Self-Esteem?

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem describes a person's overall subjective sense of personal worth or value. In other words,
self-esteem may be defined as how much you appreciate and like yourself regardless of the
circumstances.

Key elements of self-esteem include:

Self-confidence

Feelings of security
Identity

Sense of belonging

Feeling of competence

Other terms often used interchangeably with self-esteem include self-worth, self-regard, and self-
respect.

Self-esteem tends to be lowest in childhood and increases during adolescence, as well as adulthood,
eventually reaching a fairly stable and enduring level. This makes self-esteem similar to the stability
of personality traits over time.1

Why Self-Esteem Is Important

Self-esteem impacts your decision-making process, your relationships, your emotional health, and
your overall well-being. It also influences motivation, as people with a healthy, positive view of
themselves understand their potential and may feel inspired to take on new challenges.

Four key characteristics of healthy self-esteem are:

A firm understanding of one's skills

The ability to maintain healthy relationships with others as a result of having a healthy relationship
with oneself

Realistic and appropriate personal expectations

An understanding of one's needs and the ability to express those needs

People with low self-esteem tend to feel less sure of their abilities and may doubt their decision-
making process. They may not feel motivated to try novel things because they don’t believe they can
reach their goals. Those with low self-esteem may have issues with relationships and expressing their
needs. They may also experience low levels of confidence and feel unlovable and unworthy.

People with overly high self-esteem may overestimate their skills and may feel entitled to succeed,
even without the abilities to back up their belief in themselves. They may struggle with relationship
issues and block themselves from self-improvement because they are so fixated on seeing
themselves as perfect.

Theories of Self-Esteem:

Many theorists have written about the dynamics involved in the development of self-esteem. The
concept of self-esteem plays an important role in psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
which depicts esteem as one of the basic human motivations.

Maslow suggested that individuals need both appreciation from other people and inner self-respect
to build esteem. Both of these needs must be fulfilled in order for an individual to grow as a person
and reach self-actualization.

It is important to note that self-esteem is a concept distinct from self-efficacy, which involves how
well you believe you'll handle future actions, performance, or abilities.

Factors That Affect Self-Esteem

There are many factors that can influence self-esteem. Your self-esteem may be impacted by:
Age

Disability

Genetics

Illness

Physical abilities

Socioeconomic status2

Thought patterns

Racism and discrimination have also been shown to have negative effects on self-esteem.3
Additionally, genetic factors that help shape a person's personality can play a role, but life
experiences are thought to be the most important factor.

It is often our experiences that form the basis for overall self-esteem. For example, low self-esteem
might be caused by overly critical or negative assessments from family and friends. Those who
experience what Carl Rogers referred to as unconditional positive regard will be more likely to have
healthy self-esteem.

Healthy Self-Esteem

There are some simple ways to tell if you have healthy self-esteem. You probably have healthy self-
esteem if you:
Avoid dwelling on past negative experiences

Believe you are equal to everyone else, no better and no worse

Express your needs

Feel confident

Have a positive outlook on life

Say no when you want to

See your overall strengths and weaknesses and accept them

Having healthy self-esteem can help motivate you to reach your goals, because you are able to
navigate life knowing that you are capable of accomplishing what you set your mind to. Additionally,
when you have healthy self-esteem, you are able to set appropriate boundaries in relationships and
maintain a healthy relationship with yourself and others.

Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem may manifest in a variety of ways. If you have low self-esteem:

You may believe that others are better than you.

You may find expressing your needs difficult.

You may focus on your weaknesses.

You may frequently experience fear, self-doubt, and worry.

You may have a negative outlook on life and feel a lack of control.4

You may have an intense fear of failure.

You may have trouble accepting positive feedback.

You may have trouble saying no and setting boundaries.

You may put other people's needs before your own.

You may struggle with confidence.

Low self-esteem has the potential to lead to a variety of mental health disorders, including anxiety
disorders and depressive disorders. You may also find it difficult to pursue your goals and maintain
healthy relationships. Having low self-esteem can seriously impact your quality of life and increases
your risk for experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Excessive Self-Esteem

Overly high self-esteem is often mislabeled as narcissism, however there are some distinct traits that
differentiate these terms. Individuals with narcissistic traits may appear to have high self-esteem, but
their self-esteem may be high or low and is unstable, constantly shifting depending on the given
situation.

Those with excessive self-esteem:

May be preoccupied with being perfect

May focus on always being right

May believe they cannot fail

May believe they are more skilled or better than others

May express grandiose ideas

May grossly overestimate their skills and abilities

When self-esteem is too high, it can result in relationship problems, difficulty with social situations,
and an inability to accept criticism.

How to Improve Self-Esteem

Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to address problems with your perceptions of yourself
and faith in your abilities. How do you build self-esteem? Some actions that you can take to help
improve your self-esteem include:

Become more aware of negative thoughts. Learn to identify the distorted thoughts that are
impacting your self-worth.

Challenge negative thinking patterns. When you find yourself engaging in negative thinking, try
countering those thoughts with more realistic and/or positive ones.

Use positive self-talk. Practice reciting positive affirmations to yourself.

Practice self-compassion. Practice forgiving yourself for past mistakes and move forward by accepting
all parts of yourself.
Low self-esteem can contribute to or be a symptom of mental health disorders, including anxiety and
depression. Consider speaking with a doctor or therapist about available treatment options, which
may include psychotherapy (in-person or online), medications etc

Though some of the causes of low self-esteem can’t be changed, such as genetic factors, early
childhood experiences, and personality traits, there are steps you can take to feel more secure and
valued. Remember that no one person is less worthy than the next. Keeping this in mind may help
you maintain a healthy sense of self-esteem.

Importance of Self-confidence and How can one Improve Self-confidence?

Self-confidence is a trait that reflects in every area of our lives be it educational life, professional, and
personal life. People talk about the importance of self-confidence all the time but do not realize the
extent of its importance. We only realize the importance of self-confidence when there is a lack of
self-confidence in a person and it affects negatively in different areas of life.

Confidence basically means to trust. When you say that you have full confidence in someone, it
means that you trust them. Similarly, self-confidence means to trust oneself, trust one’s abilities. It is
an ability to make yourself comfortable in different situations while remaining true to yourself.
Believing in oneself while accepting the flaws and becoming better. All these descriptions collectively
make up the definition of self-confidence.

Difference between Self-confidence and Over-confidence

Why is Self-confidence Important?

1. Leads to Better Self-esteem

2. Decreases Anxiety
3. Positive Self-worth

4. Makes a Better Leader

5. Increase Motivation

6. Brings Happiness

7. Ensures Security

8. Improved Relationships

Self-confidence in a Student’s Life

How can one improve self-confidence?

Conclusion

Difference between Self-confidence and Over-confidence

People often confuse self-confidence or confidence with over-confidence. But the difference
between these two can make a huge difference in a person’s personality. As discussed above,
confidence means to have trust in abilities whereas overconfidence means to overestimate one’s
true abilities. Overconfidence often borders the narcissistic personality in a person. One basic
difference between the two terms is that an overconfident person absolutely believes in himself
without even thinking that anything can go wrong. Whereas, confidence means to believe in one’s
abilities but giving the margin of making mistake.

Why is Self-confidence Important?

Self-confidence impacts the whole personality and life of a person. This is why the importance of
self-confidence cannot be denied or neglected. Self-confidence not only has a huge impact on
different areas of a person’s life but also impacts every smaller function of our daily lives. The
following points highlight the importance of self-confidence.

1. Leads to Better Self-esteem

Self-esteem is a combination of believing in oneself and believing in one’s self-worth. In psychology,

self-esteem is considered an important ability to have a successful life in terms of having a healthy
life – both physically and mentally. Having confidence in oneself is a gateway to developing better
self-esteem and vice versa. Many theories of psychology state that self-esteem is made up of two
components that are self-efficacy and self-confidence. It helps people to better cope with life’s
difficulties and challenges, inculcate happiness and love in life, and have mental peace.

2. Decreases Anxiety

Having self-confidence is a way to decrease anxiety and fears in a person’s life. Almost all of the
issues related to social anxiety, self-esteem, and some other forms of anxiety have a root cause of
low self-confidence in a person. If you compare two people – one having self-confidence and the
other having low confidence – there is a visible difference in their anxiety level and fears. Moreover,
a person with low self-confidence tries to avoid every possible situation where they have to be in the
limelight that reinforces the anxious behavior. So the cycles continue unless it is broken by increasing
confidence.

3. Positive Self-worth

The importance of self-confidence is positively related to making people comfortable in their skin.
Confident people accept their flaws and know that this does not decrease their self-worth. It
becomes easier to accept one’s weaknesses because you are confident in your abilities that you will
get over them one day. By having self-confidence, one also has a purpose in life to achieve the goals
that have been set. On the other hand, low-confident people give up without trying. Consequently, it
decreases self-worth.

4. Makes a Better Leader

Leadership is all about having confidence in one’s abilities. One can have necessary skills and talent
but without self-confidence, the trust in having to utilize these skills is lacking. This is why there are
people with excellent skillset but they are not good leadership. One of the qualities of a great leader
is to have self-confidence. A leader is also an eloquent and confident speaker and a charismatic
personality. All these qualities are tied with having the self-confidence to impress people and
convince them to follow the leader.

5. Increase Motivation

Confidence is an ability that affects everyday life activities whether big or small. When you have
confidence, you will automatically gain more motivation to perform those tasks as compared to
someone who has low confidence. People with low confidence are preoccupied with the fear of
failure. This preoccupation often loses their motivation to perform the tasks and try harder.

6. Brings Happiness

A confident person does not hesitate from doing anything in life. This brings variety into life and
gathers various skillsets. There are no regrets of missed opportunities and no self-accusatory and
ruminating thoughts. When there is no regret in life, life automatically becomes happier than it
normally is.

7. Ensures Security

A person with low confidence has low self-esteem. What happens with low self-esteem is that there
is a lot of self-doubt and fear regarding oneself. there is insecurity about one’s abilities. However,
confidence ensures the security of the person. Even the person messed up a situation, there is a
knowledge that it was just one situation and other experiences will be better. Instead of falling into
self-doubt and feeling insecure about one’s abilities, confident people are secure.

8. Improved Relationships
Self-confidence also means to be true to yourself and confidently show the real side of yourself.
Instead of worrying over the image one radiates in a relationship, genuine interactions give a better
impression. Confident people are known to be more open and genuine in their interactions because
they are not constantly thinking about their impression in any social interaction. As genuineness is a
character that improves relationships, confident people are known to have a better relationship than
non-confident people.

Self-confidence in a Student’s Life

Confidence is directly linked with healthy coping mechanisms a person adopts in difficult times,
failures, and setbacks. A student’s life is full of struggles and hardships. Self-confidence means to
continue to trust in abilities and motivation to work harder to change those difficult situations
instead of giving up that even when the situations are hard. It develops resilience in students to carry
on their struggling period, bravely.

How can one improve self-confidence?

There is no doubt over the importance of self-confidence and how it brings a positive change in
everyone’s life. However, everyone wants to improve their confidence so that they can do better.
What are the ways through which one can achieve that?

Acceptance: the first step of every change and effort is to accept the lacking and errors. Accept that
there is a lack of self-confidence in your personality.

Identification: Enlist all the weaknesses and strengths of your personality, unbiasedly. Also, enlist
your skills and talents that are useful.

Conscious efforts: It is necessary to put conscious efforts into the journey of acquiring self-
confidence. This is a sign of awareness that can go a long way in every stage of life.

Remove the negativities: Remove all the negative perceptions about oneself from your mind. These
negativities are the major hurdle in your journey towards acquiring self-confidence.
Participate: Participate in different activities in school, college, or office that require social
interaction. Participate in competitions. These competitions and interactions positively highlight our
weaknesses and this helps us in overcoming them. Moreover, the appreciation we receive from
others during these participations automatically motivates us towards self-confidence.

Be assertive: In some situations, people with more confidence win even without having a proper
skill. The reason is that their confidence lets them be assertive and convince people in their favor.
Therefore, we need to learn to be assertive without being disrespectful.

Conclusion

In conclusion from the above discussion, it can be assumed that people who succeed have unlocked
and understood the importance of self-confidence and have used it for their benefit. It does not
matter if the task is small or big, it requires confidence in a person to achieve the task successfully
and beautifully. As good as self-confidence is, it is important to learn and practice to be self-confident
in our life and improve as a person.

Barriers to Effective Communication

Communication is defined as the process by which information is exchanged between individuals

through a system of signs, symbols. The concept of communication involves a sender, a message and
a recipient.

The sender sends the message and the recipient is the receiver of the message. The process of
communication is never smooth as it is affected by the barriers of communication.

Barriers to effective communication can result in confusion which can lead to incorrect information
being conveyed or miscommunication which can lead to loss of business.

Following are some of the barriers to effective communication:

1. Semantic barriers

2. Psychological barriers

3. Organisational barriers

4. Cultural barriers

5. Physical barriers

6. Physiological barriers

Let us study in detail about the various types of barriers to effective communication.

Semantic barriers: Semantic barriers are also known as language barriers. These barriers are caused
due to improper communication between the sender and the receiver. The following instances of
semantic barriers can be witnessed in communication.
Poor quality of message: Message when communicated should be precise and easy to understand,
that makes it easy for the receiver to grasp the information conveyed.

Sometimes, due to the lack of clarity or complexity of the way of providing information from the
sender, there can be a case of semantic barriers.

For e.g. A manager is conversing in English to a group of workers who understand and speak Bengali.
It will create confusion among workers as they will not be able to understand what is being conveyed
by the manager.

Technical language: Language barriers also arise when the sender of the message is speaking in
technical terms while the receiver is unaware of the terms. It creates confusion and
misunderstanding between the sender and receiver by acting as a barrier to effective
communication.

Psychological Barriers: Psychological barriers play an important role in interpersonal communication

as the state of the mind of the sender or the receiver can make it difficult to understand the
information that is conveyed, which often leads to misunderstanding.

Here are some instances where psychological barriers to communication can be seen.

1. Premature evaluation of information by the receiver even before it is transmitted can lead to
barriers in communication, as it will create premature conclusion to the message, which withholds
the original message.

2. Inadequate attention from the receiver’s end at the time of communication can lead to barriers of
communication as the information conveyed by the sender is not properly received by the receiver.

3. When information is passed within multiple sources, the final information is distorted as the
receivers of the message are not able to retain everything that was conveyed. This can cause
communication barriers.

Organisational barriers: Organisational barriers are those barriers that are caused due to the
structure, rules and regulations present in the organisation. The various types of barriers that can be
encountered due to superior subordinate relationships where the free flow of communication is not
possible.

Sometimes the complexity of organisational structure and multiple managers make it difficult to
convey information properly, and the information gets distorted leading to miscommunication.

Cultural barriers: Cultural barriers are those that arise due to lack of similarities among the different
cultures across the world. A term that can be harmless in one culture can be regarded as a slang in
another culture. Moreover, various beliefs can differ from one culture to another.

Physical barriers: Physical barriers to communication are those that arise due to certain factors like
faulty equipment, noise, closed doors and cabins that cause the information sent from sender to
receiver to become distorted, which results in improper communication.

Physiological barriers: Physiological barriers arise when a sender or the receiver of the
communication is not in a position to express or receive the message with clarity due to some
physiological issues like dyslexia, or nerve disorders that interfere with speech or hearing.

This concludes our article on the topic of Barriers to Effective Communication.