How can we accurately assess and measure the development of soft skills? What tools and techniques can be used to provide meaningful feedback to students and track their progress? Federica Pazzaglia: “We use psychometric assessments in our modules. These are debriefed with the students, so there is an element of reflecting with them on what has emerged. Even with all the inherent limitations of psychometrics, this gives us something to use as a conversation starter. Also, it’s about observing certain reactions and encouraging good behaviour; letting a student know that you were impressed with what they did in a specific situation. “There is certainly a role for a more kind of objective, evidence‑based system of assessment, but there is also an element of keeping your eyes open and generally listening, so there is behavioural reinforcement of sorts. I think both have a place, although in different ways.” Tom Lindholm: “One key thing for us is our personal development process that goes through the whole programme; at the outset, students’ personal learning goals are set and there are soft skills-related targets defined in there. Those are then discussed and followed up on during the process. We also have individual coaching sessions, where the coaches help participants to identify which soft skills they need to develop. “This can be done through self-reflection, or with the help of 360-degree assessments, or by using a lot of other different tools, providing feedback to participants both from their peers and faculty. I’m not convinced that the most important thing for an executive MBA student to know is that a particular soft skill has increased from 5.1 to 5.3, however. I think the point is to see how that skill has grown and how they have developed as an individual.” Tessa Melkonian: “This is the reason that we created an academy of leadership because management is as much a science as it is an art, in the sense that having pure cognitive knowledge is not enough to make you good in practice. We also use 360-degree feedback tools to help students learn how to talk about leadership skills, as well as experiential learning and personal development courses. “In France, one of the cultural differences compared with other countries is that the concept of leadership is essentially viewed as being innate. People generally think that a leader is charismatic by nature, so they have a tendency not to bother so much about training. We try to counteract this kind of entrenched behaviour through research, as well as using the testimonies of high-ranking managers, who come to the academy and elaborate on their daily challenges as human beings in the workplace.” Bruno van Pottelsberghe: “I had lunch with the head of KPMG here in Budapest recently and he passed on a very interesting fact when I asked him about his recruitment strategy. Apparently,
apart from Corvinus, there is another university from which they like to recruit graduates because they have a high share of students who are the first members of their family to go to university. Generally, they have observed a higher degree of resilience [in these first-generation students] and they appear better able to cope with stress. I’m currently pondering on how to translate that into our pedagogical strategy. “I think our own individual experience is also an important factor. If you have a young athlete who knows what it means to work, to strive to improve their performance, you will [be dealing with] a completely different behaviour than someone who doesn’t. Soft skills are difficult to measure and I’m not sure we absolutely want to measure everything because, at the end of the day, we might spend our time measuring instead of doing.” Hannah Holmes: “It’s very difficult to measure these things – you have to get the balance right when it comes to spending time on assessing skills accurately, versus the importance of instilling them in students. My preference around soft skills is a non-deficit
20 Ambition • ISSUE 2 • 2025
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