Abstract:

Professional activities in various sectors require specific skills. These include technical skills and social skills. The employee, ideally, should have developed them prior to exercising their functions. However, the lack of these socioemotional competences has been emphasized in the recent years from business sector and graduate students, drawing attention to the need of its implementation in educational programs.

Socioemotional competences include the popularly known five core competences: self-awareness, self-management, decision-making, social awareness and other relationship skills. These competences incorporate a wide set of soft skills, abilities and knowledge that help people to develope a higher performance, improve the efficiency of teamworking and, complemented by hard skills, achieve their goals.

Public and private institutions, both in the academic and professional fields, have glimpsed shortcomings in the educational sectors for years, mainly linked to professional skills, social skills and leadership. Among these institutions are public and private educational centres that have tried to address the issue without clear results so far. Many professional associations in the specific field of architecture and construction, like CSCAE, CAE and NAAB, recall that architects and other stakeholders are demanding these specific trainings in relation to socio-emotional competences. Meanwhile, organizations for the selection, hiring and training of personnel, as well as other entities’ human resources selection processes, show in their intersectoral studies that the vast majority of employees lack the attitude and motivation that employers require. Shortcomings have been detected as well in the client’s management, team organization and successful achievement of objectives, among other areas. These are mainly linked to business, customers and project management.

University education programs should aim to develop socioemotional skills in students, along with the specific technical skills that graduates will need in the labor market. Companies face a century of high volatility and continuous uncertainty (VUCA) in which social media, customer relationship management and corporate image are key success factors for business development. In many cases, graduate students lack of socio-emotional skills that allow them to perform their job effectively. This fact has serious implications for success in life and at work, giving rise in the last decade to huge efforts towards the integration of new methodologies in Spanish educational sector in order to achieve the development of socio-emotional competences in student graduates.

All these shortcomings and needs detected from various points of view in the sector make us see that specific training is needed within the academy. Architecture degree and master Curricula should incorporate new education models. But, Why is it needed by business? This publication seeks to show the relationship between different social skills, business models and their development in Spanish architecture degree and master students through teaching methods. It seeks to value the competence development of assertiveness, organizational capacity and verbal reasoning, among others, through specific learning techniques.

Keywords:

Soft skills, professional skills, teaching techniques, case-study, architecture studies.