Communication skills are the key to success for teachers and students as well. Being able to communicate well takes some time and effort but the outcomes bring mutual understanding and satisfaction. Generally, there are two types of communication which are intrapersonal and interpersonal. Intrapersonal refers to the thoughts and conversations that occur within oneself. This kind of communication is extremely private and restricted to us. Sometimes this process of communication is conveyed verbally with others or stays as mere thoughts. The advantages of intrapersonal communications are increasing self-awareness, self-regulation, and confidence. These skills help us prepare and organize our thoughts/emotions appropriately before we start to communicate verbally to someone. However, the disadvantages of this form of communication is over-thinking, misconceptions, and incorrect decisions. Adopting intrapersonal communication skills is significant to self-management and thinking of our reaction before losing control over our actions. Overthinking of other person’s reaction leads to incorrect decisions. Thus, positivity in our thoughts and analysis enhance planning, reflecting, and organizing ourselves successfully before future events.

Whereas, interpersonal communication is a form of communication that occurs between two or more people. It happens when two individuals want to exchange ideas and each takes the role of sender and receiver to communicate clearly. Humans adapt or adjust their verbal and non-verbal communication during this face-to-face communication. When messages are produced and certainly influence the behavior of the receiver. In other words, if a teacher takes the role of a sender, he/she could receive feedbacks on how the information is received. 

Small group communication refers to communication between two or more people. They usually gather together to discuss one issue or topic. Examples of Group communication include press conferences, board meetings, and team meetings. Unless there should one common goal to communicate collectively, small group discussion could become hectic and problematic to achieve the goals of the meeting. During small group communication, participants must have the chance to contribute to the group so as to provide strong feedback and possible solution or procedure. The characteristics of group communication are exchange information, feelings, and active listening in order to give the sense of belonging to the group. 

Public communication is one of the significant types for teachers which needs time, practice, and skills to enhance our ability to communicate effectively in public. It is used when one person addresses a larger audience to deliver a message or information on a specific topic. This form of communication needs to involve the audience through good non-verbal communication such as eye contact, hand gestures, body language, tone of voice, etc… The first type of public speech are speaking to entertain which refers to engaging, interesting, amusing listeners, including information about occasion, or storytelling. Secondly, speaking to inform involves increasing listeners' understanding and awareness. The third type is speaking to persuade listeners' behavior, beliefs, or attitude. We can conclude that, what all these types of public communication share in common are effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills. 

In order to be an effective communicator some significant attributes must be adopted such as active listening and showing interest (active listening will help on constructive feedbacks), adaptability, clarity, confidence in speaking and assertiveness, constructive feedback (giving and receiving it), identifying and managing your emotions as well as other people’s emotions, empathy, interpersonal skills, interpretation of body language, show and seek understanding, consider different perspectives, proper non-verbal communications, and story-telling. 

For the next session Mr. Miran and Dr, Karwan assigned group presentations about entrepreneurial skills. Each group was given a video to watch and prepare a PowerPoint on the video and summarize the main points in it.

Mr. Miran started the session and asked the trainees for a revision of the previous session. Then, Mr. Miran demonstrated the main elements of the presentation which consisted of firstly, the context (equipment, size of hall, weather, light), secondly, method (the method of presenting), and thirdly, the presenter should be well prepared and have wide knowledge on the subject, tone of the voice, body language and posture should be adapted depending on the message, situation and the audience. The most important elements of the presentation are the message and the audience. These two elements are the foundation on which we fully depend to plan our presentation. While we plan the direction of our presentation, we must have a goal and learning outcomes for this goal, structure (the steps of our presentation), and clarity in conveying ideas and thoughts. The audience is our circle of influence as such a presenter should have knowledge of the type and level of his / her audience.

Next, Mr. Miran explained some tips on overcoming panics before presentations. The tips were practicing and rehearsing our presentation multiple times before we present it to our audience. Furthermore, well preparing refers to reading and collecting information on the subject. additionally, attend other speeches, arriving early and meeting / greeting people will help reducing stress. During the presentation, we need to transform nervous energy into enthusiasm, adjust to our surroundings, show and accept different perspectives, smile, body language, character, and appearance, drink water and don’t fight the fear. These tips will help to present effectively and successfully. 

Later, the groups were, allowed to present their presentations. Our group was the first group chosen by the facilitator. Emotional intelligence was our topic of the presentation which I think is the necessary skill and a problematic topic to demonstrate in only twenty minutes. Emotional intelligence also Known as EQ is our ability to understand, evaluate, use, manage and express our feelings and emotions positively so as to relieve stress in our lives. EQ will help to build good communication with people around us and overcoming all the challenges and conflicts in the relationships. Emotional intelligence will help you to build a stronger relationship with people and even turn negative feelings into a positive attitudes. Those people who adopt EQ and make use of it are successful people in their careers and achieve positive results in their daily life. For sure, people who can manage their emotions and feelings are people who can handle their thinking, behavior and make the right decisions.

There are six criteria to evaluate emotional intelligence skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, relationship management, empathy, and intrinsic motivation.

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize your emotions and strengths, weaknesses, and limitations and use them for your own benefit. Highly emotionally intelligent people understand their feeling, emotions, moods, and reactions would affect other people. while self-regulation refers to the ability to handle the emotions and control the strong emotions such as frustration, excitement, anger, or embarrassment. Additionally, social skills mean the ability to have long and meaningful interactions with people. This happens through building strong connections through understanding people by means of active listening, verbal and nonverbal communication, and persuasiveness. Moreover, emotionally intelligent individuals wisely choose those who surround themselves with because they realize the power of spending time with fun, positive and energetic people lead to improved mood, uplifting, productivity, and well-being. Another important emotional intelligence skill is empathy which means understanding and sharing with other people’s emotions and feelings. As long as humans are naturally emotional beings, this skill drives social relationships. Empathetic people can put themselves in other person’s shoes and respond appropriately. Lastly, EQ people are intrinsically motivated which means passion drives them to achieve personal needs and goals. The inner drive helps people enjoy achieving their goals and they find satisfaction in self-improvement.

We can conclude that EQ is an important and criterion to realize how an individual is successful in his / her career. While IQ measures a persons’ reasoning ability. In other words, it tells how a person can use information and logic to make predictions or answer a question. IQ alone won’t determine someone’s success and happiness in life, EQ rather has a critical role in people’s fare in life. 

Another topic of the presentation was entitled “Great Leadership Starts with Self-leadership” leadership as the group elaborated were three main formulas needed for great leadership which was time, people, and power. Moreover, leadership starts with spending enough time with the people which we are leading. When there is not just enough time for the things we are doing leads to chaos and unawareness and this will impact other people. Thus, great leadership starts with caring about other people, and even tiny things are worthy of discussion. Finally, power is something innate in us as humans which must be used appropriately and always take care of it.

So, what should we do to be a self-leader?

The group answered that we should spend investing 40% of our time in self-leadership before we can lead others. After all, if we could lead our actions and have control of our lives, people will naturally see us as their leader and ready to change. There are three main strategies which make leaders a great leader which is self-awareness helps to check your character traits through writing the strength and weaknesses and focusing on the strong qualities to remove the weak behaviors. Secondly, self-reflection is the process of observing your own actions, thinking, and understanding your values will help the direction of your thinking and doing. Writing daily reflection will help self-awareness. The last point to be a great leader is the ability to self-regulate. This refers to understanding and managing our behavior and feelings when we are excited, angry, frustrated, or embarrassed. Self-regulation needs reframing our thoughts and actions and deciding on the right reaction at certain times.

Another presentation was “how to speak so that people listen to you?”

Firstly, there are certain habits that we should avoid if we want to be effective speakers which are gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, excuses, lying, and dogmatism. Consequently, how can we speak powerfully to make a change in the world? There are certain attributes that make a person a powerful speaker which are honesty while we speak, authenticity in our character, integrity means doing what you say, so you can be a person people can trust. Finally, love people and wishing people well. 

Before the session, Mr. Miran sent a video so the students can watch and discuss the main points at the beginning of the session. The main idea of the video was to give the opportunity to our students to develop certain skills such as problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and communication outside the classroom. These aforementioned skills cannot be learned in a classroom but we have to expose the students to projects and independent work so as to learn real-life skills. 

Market Oriented Education

Mr. Miran started demonstrating this theme with a quote which I would like to share: “If you are waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you will never make it” (Criss Jami, Healology)

As usual, Mr. Miran explained the learning outcomes of this theme. Then, market-oriented education is defined as a type of education that shows the relationship between education and a career in all fields. One of the objectives of market-oriented education is to enable the students to get job opportunities easily in the labor market after graduation. Therefore, market-oriented education should become a central principle for the academic institution in universities to allow the students to tackle opportunities through project-based learning and informal learning. A curriculum designed focused on market-oriented education should enable the students to gain skills and competencies. 

In the Bologna process, there is a school with certain degrees depending on the needs of the labor market. This kind of reform should be made in Kurdistan universities because the first goal of universities is to fill/find gaps in the job market.  

Entrepreneurship and Edupreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a study of how a new business is created or an actual process of starting a new business. At the same time, an entrepreneur is a person who has an idea and sets up a new business to create a product or a service that has financial profits, often an organization is built to support those sales. On the other hand, edupreneurship is a practice of entrepreneurship in the education sector. For that reason, edupreneurship must start from the education sectors and built the mindset of independence in financial aspects. In other words, universities and all the educational institutions start their business to financially become an independent sector. The entrepreneurial skills that we need consist of: 

Creativity (helps you to find the gab and think out of the box), critical thinking, problem-solving (the type of the task we give to our students should unleash these potentials, communication (verbal and non-verbal communications skills), and entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, adopting these skills needs time, thinking, and research to become an entrepreneur.

The characteristics of an entrepreneur are:

-Motivator, self-confident, problem solver, initiator, risk-taker, goal setter, long-term involvement, communication ability, technical knowledge (specialized and deep knowledge in his / her field of study), human resource ability, decision-maker, and adaptability.

Who can be an entrepreneur?

-          Someone who can take risks.

-          Who has the ability to work hard.

-          Who feels the need for achievement.

-          Who has a desire for responsibility.

-          Who has some financial strength.

-          Who seeks the opportunity.

-          Who may have previous experience.

-          Who has a desire for independence. 

Building an entrepreneurship framework directly affected by cultural, political, and country circumstances and bring creative ideas into reality. Providing an opportunity for the youngsters to build an entrepreneurial mindset will help to develop themselves and their community as well. Entrepreneurship parts consist of an idea, market research, prototyping, and production.

This was the last theme in the Edupreneurship module. Mr. Miran defined the term intellectual capital as an asset or all the abilities, skills, competencies, and all the informational resources a company has that can be used to create new products, drive new profits, or otherwise improve business. 

The major categories of intellectual capital are human capital, structural (or organizational) capital, and relational (customer) capital. Though, there are other categories including business capital, strategy capital, social capital, innovation, research, and development capital, process capital.

Classifying intellectual capital will assist an enterprise to make a decision about the actions that needs to be performed, and about the implementation of programs that allow maintenance, leverage, and building of that knowledge that can be converted into more valuable assets. 

 

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do” Steve Jobs

First of all, human capital refers to an individual’s knowledge, professional skills, competencies, and experiences that employees possess to make decisions and solve problems. Results of having human capital are: it increases performance, success and competitive advantages of the organization, strategic renewal, positive effect on financial performance, and source of creativity and innovation. Mr. Miran noted that in developed countries research and development departments are essential in most companies. The role of research and development departments is to keep a competitive business by providing new knowledge and business contexts or to improve existing ones. 

Human capital could be measured in terms of attitude, motivation, competence, skills, capabilities, creativity, innovativeness, experience, expertise, individual personal characteristics, knowledge, and efficiencies. 

Relational capital is defined as the company’s relationships, and interactions with its owners, employers, stakeholders, customers, suppliers, the community, and the government. Besides, Customer capital is one of the main components of relational capital because it is fundamental in assessing how successful an organization is in turning a customer relationship into a sustainable competitive advantage. In other words, companies in the new business environment must change from being product-centric to being customer-centric. This shift affects the productivity of every business process.

Generally, relational (customer) capital can be measured depending on the following criteria such as customer complaint (e.g. considering students’ feedback about overall courses), customer satisfaction, customer retention rate (is the percentage of keeping the customers with the company, this will help to understand what keeps the customer with the organization and can be used as a feedback to improve customer service), customer database (is all the information that is collected from each person which is used to analyze and create an appropriate marketing plan for a service), and customer’s needs identifying (working on all the feedbacks, data’s and graphs so as to provide the customers' needs). Assessing and process of feedback in customer capital include surveys and a series of questions that can answer the existing gaps within the organization. Relational capital categories could be assessed in terms of customers, stakeholders, corporate identity (how an organization is identified to the customers), internal issues (communication within the organization), market presence, and business contracts (this includes sharing, advertising, marketing, and being familiar in the market) and suppliers.