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Navigating Soft Skills: Professional Life Skills with Sue Mackey and Laura Tonkin

Last year, I had the pleasure of reviewing Living Well, Working Smart, a book on personal and interpersonal life skills by Sue Mackey and Laura Tonkin. I was so excited by the granular, accessible structure of the book that I called them up and said: This should be a weblog! Navigating Soft Skills is the latest addition to the Gilbert Authors Network. The authors use the phrase "soft skills" to refer to all those critical skills that tend not to be taught, but are nevertheless learned: communication skills, social skills, personal discipline, problem solving, and so forth. These are skills that make or break relationships, careers, organizations, and coalitions every day. For example, in their recent post on positive and negative attitudes they point out quite rightly how even such a thing as attitude is subject to change through skills that can be learned. They are following in an ancient tradition here, of course, but they are putting this material in personal and organizational development terms. Given how fundamental attitude is to both success and happiness, this is a tremendous service. Posted: 1/24/08; 1:26:52 PM #