Serious Soft Skills

Self-reflection, while not a soft skill, plays an important role in how we develop our soft skills over time.
Introduction
Bob Graham (‘0:20'): Hello, I am Bob Graham and with me as always is Dr. Tobin Porterfield. We teach college, we research soft skills and we help our students develop these skills and have seen how they play out in a variety of work settings. We'll show you that eye for soft skills in a second when we start talking about self reflection.
Graham (‘0:39'): Self reflection itself is not a soft skill, but rather a tool to help us develop our soft skills. Toby, can you explain that to us in general?
Dr. Tobin Porterfield (‘0:52): I can and our timing is great. The Harvard Business Review just this week has an article on the power of self reflection. I am getting the feeling that they folks there are listening to our podcasts and are buying into what we are doing.
Graham (‘1:12'): I love that. It's a great leap.
Another Voice on Self Reflection
Porterfield (‘1:15'): No, seriously, I do feel like it's just an affirmation of how powerful self reflection is and typical of the Harvard Business Review, they are looking to CEOs and how they dedicated large periods of time to quiet thought on their own to evaluate what's going on in their lives, what's going on, where the opportunities are. We look at self reflection a little differently. We are looking at it and saying the people we work with aren't able to carve out two hours of their day. I know there's value in self reflecting and spending that quiet time, but if I am going to spend two hours a day on that, I am going to have to get up around 3 AM. The realities for many of us in our workdays don't support that. We stay so busy. That's the pitfall of not self reflecting. It's a great opportunity to grow, and that's where we have endorsed it from a soft skills standpoint. You need to self reflect and in that time self evaluate on where you are with a couple of these soft skills and where are you growing. What were you going to try to improve from last week? You need to really be rating yourself and moving toward improvement. While it's funny to look at the HBR side, but the reality that self reflection is a powerful tool.
What Is Self Reflection?
Graham (‘2:43'): Are we talking about self reflection in terms of journaling or is it just taking some moments to be mindful of what we've done and what we are trying to achieve? Or is it interacting with someone else and being accountable? Or is it all three of those or something else?
Porterfield (‘3:00'): We have to be open to how that self reflection takes shape in each of us individually. The No. 1 core element is dedicated time. There are great examples in the Harvard Business Review article, where some people say I do an hour of self reflection every day. Some people say I do six hours, but I spread it across the week, with one or two hours here and there. I have to get out of the office so I won't get interrupted. I get up from my desk and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I take 45 minutes and go down to the coffee shop, put my earbuds in so I don't get interrupted and work on my self reflection. I go through my list.
Porterfield (‘3:37'): For many of us, self reflection has to have a writing component, where here were the things I was working on, here's what I was going to do, did I do them? What am I going to do to make sure they happen next time? As you know, I am a person who journals. I find that productive because it introduces a personal accountability so I can look at last week and see th...