Nida’a K. AbuJbara and Jody A. Worley
This paper aims to highlight the importance of soft skills for leadership and offers recommendations for soft skill development training for the next generation of leaders.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight the importance of soft skills for leadership and offers recommendations for soft skill development training for the next generation of leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
An integrated review of current research literature was conducted on management, leadership and soft skills to develop recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership development training protocol.
Findings
A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for soft skills development or measurement. Each soft skill is defined differently and should be assessed based on different behavioral actions. Progress in this area of measurement development will make a great impact on the use of soft skills. The development of assessment tools for the different soft skills across professional disciplines is assumed to enhance other aspects of transformational leadership such as coaching and mentoring.
Research limitations/implications
Current strategies for the assessment and measurement of soft skills present an obstacle for including these skills in current leadership training models.
Practical implications
The paper includes implications for the development of soft skills for the next generation of leaders and offers recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership training programs.
Originality/value
This paper fulfills an identified need to study how soft skills can be measured and assessed. This is important given that specific skills vary across professional disciplines and organizational contexts.
Details
Keywords
Jodi Kearns and Brian C. O’Connor
The purpose of this paper is to consider the structure of entertainment media as a possible foundation for measuring aspects of visual presentations that could enhance or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the structure of entertainment media as a possible foundation for measuring aspects of visual presentations that could enhance or interfere with audience engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Factors that might account for the large number of negative comments about visual presentations are identified and a method of calculating entropy measurements for form attributes of presentations is introduced.
Findings
Entropy calculations provide a numerical measure of structural elements that account for engagement or distraction. A set of peer evaluations of educational presentations is used to calibrate a distraction factor algorithm.
Research limitations/implications
Distraction as a consequence of document structure might enable engineering of a balance between document structure and content in document formats not yet explored by mechanical entropy calculations.
Practical implications
Mathematical calculations of structural elements (form attributes) support what multimedia presentation viewers have been observing for years (documented in numerous journals and newspapers from education to business to military fields): engineering PowerPoint presentations necessarily involves attention to engagement vs distraction in the audience.
Originality/value
Exploring aspects of document structures has been demonstrated to calibrate viewer perceptions to calculated measurements in moving image documents, and now in images and multimedia presentation documents extending Claude Shannon's early work communication channels and James Watt and Robert Krull's work on television programming.
Details
Keywords
Megan A Quinn, Jodi L Southerland, Kasie Richards, Deborah L Slawson, Bruce Behringer, Rebecca Johns-Womack and Sara Smith
Coordinated school health programs (CSHPs), a type of health promoting school (HPS) program adopted by Canada and the USA, were developed to provide a comprehensive approach to…
Abstract
Purpose
Coordinated school health programs (CSHPs), a type of health promoting school (HPS) program adopted by Canada and the USA, were developed to provide a comprehensive approach to school health in the USA. Community partnerships are central to CSHP and HPS efforts, yet the quality of collaboration efforts is rarely assessed. The purpose of this paper is to use Himmelman’s strategies for working together to assess the types of partnerships that are being formed by CSHPs and to explore the methodological usefulness of this framework. The Himmelman methodology describes four degrees of partnering interaction: networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating, with each degree of interaction signifying a different level of partnership between organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected as part of the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 CSHP annual Requests for Proposal from all 131 public school systems in Tennessee. Thematic analysis methods were used to assess partnerships in school systems. Descriptive analyses were completed to calculate individual collaboration scores for each of the eight CSHP components (comprehensive health education, physical education/activity, nutrition services, health services, mental health services, student, family, and community involvement, healthy school environment, and health promotion of staff) during the two data collection periods. The level of collaboration was assessed based on Himmelman’s methodology, with higher scores indicating a greater degree of collaboration. Scores were averaged to obtain a mean score and individual component scores were then averaged to obtain statewide collaboration index scores (CISs) for each CSHP component.
Findings
The majority of CSHPs partnering activities can be described as coordination, level two in partnering interaction. The physical activity component had the highest CISs and scored in between coordinating and cooperating (2.42), while healthy school environment had the lowest score, scoring between networking and coordinating (1.93), CISs increased from Year 1 to Year 2 for all of the CSHP components. Applying the theoretical framework of Himmelman’s methodology provided a novel way to quantify levels of collaboration among school partners. This approach offered an opportunity to use qualitative and quantitative methods to explore levels of collaboration, determine current levels of collaboration, and assess changes in levels of collaboration over the study period.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides a framework for using the Himmelman methodology to quantify partnerships in a HPS program in the USA. However, the case study nature of the enquiry means that changes may have been influenced by a range of contextual factors, and quantitative analyses are solely descriptive and therefore do not provide an opportunity for statistical comparisons.
Practical implications
Quantifying collaboration efforts is useful for HPS programs. Community activities that link back to the classroom are important to the success of any HPS program. Himmelman’s methodology may be useful when applied to HPSs to assess the quality of existing partnerships and guide program implementation efforts.
Originality/value
This research is the first of its kind and uses a theoretical framework to quantify partnership levels in school health programs. In the future, using this methodology could provide an opportunity to develop more effective partnerships in school health programs, health education, and public health.