Managing soft skills for personality development.

Jain, Neetu

Managing soft skills for personality development, B. N. Ghosh (Ed.), Tata Mcgraw Hill Education Private Ltd., New Delhi, 2012, Pages 286.

The fundamental purpose of this book is to acquaint the readers with different facets of personality development that are compatible with soft skills development. The significance of personality development transcends beyond the individual domain and is now recognized as a critical component of corporate success. Personality development starts with the idea of discovering one's own potential and the goal and purpose of life. Although soft skill development is now formally introduced as a subject at the MBA, Engineering and other professional courses, there are hardly any organized, balanced and complete reading material available in the market. This book presents the different aspects of personality development in a very organized manner.

For different types of professions, goals are different and personality traits should also be different. Once the goal of life is known, one should constantly work to achieve that goal through some instrumentalities. These instrumentalities in the scheme of personality development are : interpersonal relations and communication, presentation abilities, good etiquettes and manners and so on. Once the personality becomes presentable and acceptable to the society, one needs motivation, decision making skill and time and stress management skill to lurch forward for achieving the goal. All these topics have been dealt at length in this book. Following chapters or topics are written on personality development in this book.

The broad areas covered in the book are:

* Soft skill development : An introductory overview

* Self discovery and goal setting

* Belief, Values ,Attitude and Virtue

* Positive thinking and attitude

* Motivation

* Interpersonal relations and communications

* Public Speaking

* Group discussion: Honing the decision making skill

* Body language

* Teamwork and Leadership quality

* Towards an effective interview: Getting the best of both worlds

* Presentations

* Etiquette and Manners

* Time management

* Personality development

* Decision Making

* Conflcit and conflict management

* Stress management

* Leadership

* Developing Emotional intelligence

Each topic is written by an expert in the area. The services of a cross-section of professionals including economists, political scientists, psychologists, physicians, management specialists, professional trainers and entrepreneurs have been utilized for this book. The book is balanced in terms of both depth and range. Each chapter of the book has summary, key terms, test your knowledge questions and a list of further readings. The presentation of the matter of every topic has been made lucid, simple, precise and incisive. Each topic uses many sub-headings to make the presentation attractive and scintillating. A simple reading of the book will not automatically transform one's personality pattern. It will need constant practice, conscious endeavor and determined efforts to get the best result out of this book.

Neetu Jain

Assistant Professor

FORE School of Management