Employability Skills

Class X Employability Skills

Unit – 1 Self-Management Skills
INTRODUCTION
Self-management skills are those abilities that allow an employee to feel more productive while
doing daily routine tasks regardless of the working environment. Well-developed self-management
skills will help you efficiently communicate with co-workers, senior management, and customers,
make right decisions, maintain a work-life balance, and keep your body and mind healthy.
The skills that are needed for self-management:
❖ Self-awareness: You should be self aware of your positive and negative traits. Look at your
personality insight and work proficiencies.
❖ Responsibility: Taking responsibility of what we do is very important. Taking responsibility
is a way to move towards self-development.
❖ Time management: Make priorities of the task list we have to do. Remove unnecessary
and duplicate work. Make a time table and follow it diligently.
❖ Adaptability: Always stay updated with the current changes and practices and read only
new information available.
SESSION 1: STRESS MANAGEMENT

1.1 STRESS
A famous psychologist and professor Richard Lazarus explained ‘Stress’ as a condition or feeling
experienced “when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources
the individual is able to mobilize.” This means that we experience stress if we believe that we don’t
have the time, resources, or knowledge to handle a situation.

1.2 NEED FOR STRESS MANAGEMENT

Effective stress management is important for all of us as it provides the following benefits:
❖ Improves health
❖ Makes you mentally strong
❖ Improves productivity
❖ Boosts immune system
❖ Improves mood

1.3 STRESS MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

The techniques that are useful in handling and minimizing the physical and emotional effects of
pressures and tensions in everyday life are stress management techniques. Most common and
useful stress management techniques are as below:
❖ Physical exercise: Physical exercise can be a key method for bringing you out from stress.
Physical exercise not only promotes overall fitness, but also helps you to manage emotional
stress and tension as well.
❖ Healthy Diet and Lifestyle: To keep our body and mind stress free, healthy eating habits
and healthy diet play an extremely important role.
❖ Yoga: Yoga is bringing together the mind, body and spirit. The controlled breathing,
meditation, physical asanas and stretching relax us and provide relief from stress and
increase productivity.
❖ Meditation: Meditation is being relaxed inside and outside and clearing our mind of all
thoughts. The mind stops following every new thought it comes across.

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❖ Taking Breaks and Good Sleep: Taking break from your regular routine is a useful
technique of lowering stress, especially if the stress is being caused by your work or
routine.
❖ Positive Thinking and Outlook: Positive outlook and thinking refers to looking for the
good and opportunities in a situation, rather than the bad.
❖ Organising Life: For you students, one major cause of stress is your mismanaged studies.
For keeping yourself stress free, make sure that you are always organized in terms of your
belongings(books, notebooks, other material) and never delay your work and learning.

1.4 INDEPENDENT WORKING

Proper stress management helps you develop an important ability if working independently.
Important things about independent working are:
❖ You should take initiatives.
❖ You take full responsibility of the work.(Full commitment)
❖ You take the ownership of it, i.e., you make yourself accountable for it.
❖ You are ready to do unsupervised work, i.e., you do not require constant supervision.
❖ You are capable of completing the work within stipulated time and budget and that too as
per stated objectives and deliverables.
❖ You should maintain work life balance.

1.5 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the
emotions of others. It is generally said to include at least three skills:
❖ Emotional awareness: The ability to identify and name one’s own emotions.
❖ Harnessing emotions: The ability to harness and apply emotions to tasks like thinking and
problem solving.
❖ Managing emotions: The ability to regulate one’s own emotions when necessary and help
others to do the same.

SESSION 2: SELF-AWARENESS - STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS ANALYSIS

Self-awareness is the ability to see ourselves clearly and objectively through reflection and
introspection. If we are self-aware then we can identify our strengths and weaknesses.
Self-awareness will help you in converting our weakness into strength and strength into an
exceptional talent.

2.1 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS ANALYSIS

Understanding who we are means looking outside our usual characteristics, such as your name,
qualification and interpersonal relationships. Being self-aware actually means knowing our inner
strengths, hidden talents, skills and even weaknesses.

SESSION 3: SELF- MOTIVATION

Self-motivation is the force inside you that drives you to do things. Self-motivation is what forces
us to achieve our goals, feel happy and improve our quality of life. It is our ability to do the things
that need to be done without someone or something influencing us.
Self motivation is our internal drive to achieve, produce, develop and keep moving forward. When
you think you are ready to quit something, or you just do not know how to start , your
self-motivation is what pushes you to go on.

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3.1 TYPES OF MOTIVATION
There are multiple reasons, which motivate people. The reasons could come from within or from
outside. So, motivation can be External or Internal.
❖ If an external factor, such as a reward, is responsible for motivation, it is called External or
Extrinsic Motivation. Some other factors responsible for external motivation are incentives,
promotion, punishment, criticism, failure etc.
❖ If an internal factor, such as having peace of mind, is responsible for motivation, it is called
Internal or Intrinsic Motivation. Some other factors responsible for internal motivation are
love, joy, belonging, fear etc.

3.2 THE TRAITS OF SELF-MOTIVATED PEOPLE

There are some traits or qualities, which the self- motivated people have. These are:
❖ Belief:
(i) Self Belief: Self-motivated people believe in their ability to achieve their goals.
(ii) Self-Aware: They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and
triggers, along with what they want and what is really important.
❖ Grounded and Focused:
(i) Live in Reality: They stay real and have self-belief without arrogance, ego or
excuses.
(ii) Focused: Self-motivated people never lose focus.
❖ Keen Learners:
(i) Ever ready to learn: They are prepared to acquire the knowledge, skill or resource(s)
necessary to achieve their goal.
❖ Consistent Action:
(i) Dedicated: They take action dedicatedly, every single day towards their goals.
(ii) Tiny Steps: Even if they don’t feel like it, they still take a step, no matter how tiny,
towards their goal, every single day.

3.3 BUILDING SELF–MOTIVATION

There are four steps for building self-motivation, which are as given below.
❖ Find your strength: We should know our positive points.
❖ Set and focus on your goal: We need to set our goal and focus it with concentration.
❖ Develop a plan to achieve goal: We need to make a road map to our goal.
❖ Stay loyal to your goals: We need to be dedicated towards our goal for achieving it.

SESSION 4: SELF- REGULATION – GOAL SETTING

Self-regulation is concerned with how you control and manage yourself and your emotions, inner
resources and abilities. It also includes your ability to manage your impulses.
Self-control is NOT masking or hiding your emotions but recognizing and controlling them
appropriately.

4.1 SETTING GOALS

Goal refers to an objective that you wish to achieve within some specific time. Goal-setting is the
process of planning and taking active steps to achieve the desired outcome.

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4.2 SMART GOALS
SMART is an acronym used for goal setting. To make sure that the chosen goals are clear and
reachable, they should be SMART, i.e.,:
❖ Specific (simple and sensible)
❖ Measurable (meaningful)
❖ Achievable (attainable)
❖ Relevant (reasonable, realistic)
❖ Time bound (timely)

Let us discuss what each of the SMART term means:

❖ SPECIFIC: Goal should clearly specify what is to be achieved or accomplished.
To set a specific goal you must answer the six “w” questions:
▪ Who: Who is involved?
▪ What: What do I want to accomplish?
▪ Where: Identify a location.
▪ When: Establish a time frame.
▪ Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
▪ Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplish the goal.
Example: A general goal would be, “Get in shape”. But a specific goal would say, “Join a
gym or yoga class and workout 3 days a week.”
❖ Measurable: Goal should have concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the
attainment. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as….How much?
How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?
Example: “I should lose weight of 4-7kgs in 45 days”.
❖ Attainable: Goals should be attainable and achievable.
Example: “To lose 4-6kgs, my daily aim of losing weight is 250-300g”.
❖ Realistic: To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both
willing and able to work.
Example: “I should lose weight of 4-7kg in 45 days.”
❖ Timely: A goal should be grounded within a time frame.

SESSION 5: SELF- REGULATION – TIME MANAGEMENT

Producing expected results in a timely manner determines the success of our effort. Time
management is an extremely important self-management skill that makes an employee to be more
productive.
Self-regulation allows us to manage our emotions, behavior and body movement when faced with
tough situations. Self-regulation is not only controlling yourselves but also managing time so that
you can do smart work. “Time management” is the process of organizing and planning how to
divide you time between specific activities.

5.1 SIGNIFICANCE OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Time management is important as it gives these benefits:
❖ It improves performance.
❖ It delivers better work quality.
❖ Timely delivery.

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❖ Brings more efficiency
❖ Reduces Stress

5.2 STEPS FOR EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT

Effective time management can be summarized in the form of following four steps:
❖ Organize: Planning out your time in advance is the most important element of good time
management. In this step, you divide your project in tasks, subtasks and activities and then
plan out a time for them.
❖ Prioritize: In this step, you need to look at this list prepared in step 1 and determine what
tasks are the most urgent and important and make those your top priority for the whole day.
❖ Control: This step is about controlling and monitoring how the tasks are carried out as per
the plan and priority.
❖ Track Time: For efficiency and enhanced productivity, it is important to monitor and track
how time is spent and this final step is about tracking time.

PRACTICE SESSION
1. _________ refers to ‘self-control’ means the ability to control one’s emotions, thoughts, and
behavior effectively in different situations. (Ans. Self-Management)
2. Which of the following is one of the self-management skills?
❖ Motivating Oneself
❖ Setting Goals
❖ Work Independently
❖ All of the above
3. Asking about honest feedback, gathering personality traits, think about daily interactions are
related to which of the following skills?
❖ Responsibility
❖ Adaptability
❖ Time management
❖ Self-awareness
4. If an employer has assigned a task to an employee with a specific timeline. But due to a few
reasons, the employee couldn’t complete his work. The employee must
❖ Ignore to report
❖ Must report it
❖ Remains absent for that day
❖ Ask for additional time without a report
5. When an individual is prioritizing the work, it is considered as ___________ (Ans.
Time-management)
6. Staying with the current situation with new updated information and preparing yourself for new
challenges is called _________.
❖ Responsibility
❖ Adaptability
❖ Time management
❖ Self-awareness
7. _________ can be defined as our emotional, mental, physical, and social reaction to any
perceived demands or threats. (Ans. Stress)
8. Stress can be impacted positively also in our life. (True/False)
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9. Which of the following is the most effective technique of stress management?
❖ Healthy Diet
❖ Exercises and Yoga
❖ Positivity
❖ Time Management
10. Which of the following technique help you to become more active physically?
❖ Exercises and Yoga
❖ Sleep
❖ Healthy Diet
❖ Sleep
11. Which of the following technique provide you with the strength to do your daily work
efficiently?
❖ Healthy Diet
❖ Sleep
❖ Holiday with family or friends
❖ Completing work on time
12. Which of the following help to recharge your brain and your body to function better?
❖ Healthy Diet
❖ Sleep
❖ Holiday with family or friends
❖ Completing work on time
13. Becoming self-aware, self-monitoring, and self-correcting, knowing what you do, taking
initiative rather than being told, recognizing your own mistakes, not blaming others, and the
ability to learn continuously referred to as ____________.
❖ Self Dependent
❖ Ego
❖ Self Controlled
❖ Emotional Intelligence
14. The ability to understand and identify their own emotions and other emotions as well is known
as emotional intelligence. (True/False)
15. The ability to identify and name our emotions is called ____________
❖ Emotional Awareness
❖ Harnessing Emotions
❖ Managing Emotions
❖ All of the
16. The ability to apply emotions to tasks like thinking and problem-solving is referred to as
harnessing emotions. (True/False)
17. Managing emotions refers to the ability to regulate our own emotions when necessary and
help others to do the same. (True/False)
18. Being emotionally intelligent enhances your chances of failure and an imbalanced life.
(True/False)
19. Which of the following technique help you to keep calm?
❖ Meditation and Yoga
❖ Watching TV and Web Series
❖ Playing mobile games
❖ All of these
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