Multimodal Communication and Soft Skills Development

Introduction: Multimodal Development of Your SELF

“One cannot not communicate” says the Austrian psychoanalyst Paul Watzlawick (Watzlawick et al. 1967, 49). This is one of his five axioms of communication, which reminds us that everything we transmit to our audience, be that verbal (with actual words), non-verbal (facial expressions, gestures, posture, ANS clues – Autonomic Nervous System: heart rate, skin temp, sweating, breathing, swallowing, blushing, pupil dilation etc.), or para-verbal (voice, tone, pitch, frequency, pauses), everything sends a message which can be interpreted. We communicate even when we say nothing at all.

Multimodality is the notion which stands behind the most fertile investigations in communication and language studies nowadays. Although the practice of multimodal communication is as old as communication itself, some of its aspects have rather been hinted at than thoroughly discussed. Forceville & Uriós-Aparisi (2009) offer great insight into the evolution of theoretical and analytical approaches to multimodal meaning construction. The generosity of the concept, its wide scope of omnipresent meaning-making via synesthesia, has offered various academic disciplines the opportunity to pursue their own multimodality research agendas, so much so that “[r]‌esearch into multimodality is therefore marked at this point by a broad degree of eclecticism” (Ventola et al. 2004). Meaning resides in the orchestration of the modes by the producer and the recipient’s ability to decode them all – narrative voices, images, sounds, music, symbols, actions, body language, even evocative silence act jointly to shape the meaning.

Soft skills represent a prerequisite for the understanding of multimodal representations. For instance, Bürgi & Roos (2003) highlight the idea that multimodal depiction of various organizational dimensions, such as strategy-making, enriches people’s understanding of such abstract notions, making them more human. Even before children learn to talk they activate their soft skills or life/human competencies, as they are often called, and they employ multimodal communication pertaining to the use of “prelinguistic communication skills such as gestures and vocalizations to participate in social interactions” (Roberts & Hampton 2018). Mittelberg (2013) enlarges upon the concept of ‘exbodiment’ ←7 | 8→when researching gestural manifestations as a means of reifying mental imagery, action patterns, and emotions.

Due to the fact that we are living in a globalized society, the need for social skills has increased considerably. If earlier the focus was on cognition and on technical skills, also named “hard skills”, now it is all about social skills, or so-called “soft skills”. Companies want employees with efficient soft skills, who are able not only to execute their tasks properly, but also to easily adapt to new situations and environments, successfully face a crisis, positively and effectively communicate, build strong relationships, mediate, persuade and take their companies to new levels of success. “Every job requires different strengths and capabilities, but soft skills form the backbone of any successful career”, White (2021) asserts in the Introduction to his latest monograph The Soft Skills Book.

We live in an era of speed. Everything is faster. While the machines handle most of the hard skills, it’s up to us to take care of the soft skills, in order to keep up with the rapid technological development. The machines enable us to move faster and the companies need people to keep up with the machines. They need employers who work more, think faster, act immediately and react accordingly to the high demands of the market. The machines take care of the tasks, but the people are the ones who take care of people. So we let people’s skills to people and hard skills or technical skills to the machines. At a job interview it no longer matters if you have the technical skills to accomplish your tasks. What matters is the personality you’re bringing. Daniel Goleman emphasizes the importance of the EQ (Emotional Quotient) in obtaining success throughout your life and points out that the IQ is only 20 % responsible for your success in life. The other 80 % consists of other factors, one of which is also the EQ. In order to prove the importance of the EQ in obtaining success, studies were made across the globe; They showed that young adults with very good academic accomplishments and those with a well-developed EQ but without academic accomplishments were not that far apart in their careers as one will think. Moreover, studies show that young adults with a high IQ but with a low EQ have ordinary lives and have not achieved extraordinary results in their careers. This shows that a high IQ does not necessarily guarantee for one’s success in life. Possessing soft skills not only increases productivity at work, but it also enhances personal satisfaction and happiness.

Many companies seem to have understood this in the last decades; otherwise one cannot explain why personality matters in getting a job. Nowadays it’s all about personality. Employers want not only to see if your technical skills match the job but if you also bring the right personality. Please do not get us wrong; this doesn’t mean we do not need hard skills anymore. It’s just that hard skills are not enough anymore. Look at the soft skills as complementary to the hard skills. ←8 | 9→Constant development of the three main soft skills clusters (Goleman 1998; Boyatzis 2009), namely cognitive competencies (critical and creative thinking, problem solving), emotional intelligence competencies (self-awareness, self-management such as emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation), and social intelligence competencies (organizational awareness, empathy, conflict management, teamwork) will later on make the difference between employers within an organization and their employees.

Setting a great example has always been considered the key to effective leadership. Parents understand that children will follow them and sooner or later they will adopt their behaviour. Teachers are aware that students’ coercion to learn does not lead to improved performance. Employers invite their employees to weekly meetings and yearly team buildings to brainstorm their thoughts, ideas, and concerns regarding their jobs. Governments seek ways of enhancing cooperation among countries, promoting the benefits that their own policies may provide to the others. Thus, everybody seems to acknowledge that compliance with the norms, rules, laws, and procedures may be successfully ensured by the influence of their example. Nevertheless, people lose their confidence at times and feel the need to bring in their ‘heavy artillery’ and act accordingly.

Why should soft skills gain importance nowadays? Which is the impact of soft skills development upon people’s lives? Which is the relationship between soft skills and multimodal communication? How should semiotic resources and modes of communication be exploited in order to shed new light on various ways of meaning negotiation? These are some of the questions our edited volume aims at answering. Without anticipating the times of turmoil we are passing through when this volume is published, we now deem our endeavour a timely intervention that will contribute to people’s emotional recovery after three difficult years of coronavirus pandemic, when the imposed social distancing and all the other restrictions have impeded even our run-of-the-mill behaviour, not to mention proper dialogue and plain interpersonal interaction in open and authentic conversational environments. What social psychologists have always postulated has just turned into a worldwide reality. It takes more than innate ability and sparkling cognition to achieve your daily tasks, let alone your lifetime goals. The social environment substantially impacts the individual’s cognitive and creative performance and productivity (Amabile & Kramer 2011).