Formación de habilidades blandas en comunicación y resolución de conflictos en estudiantes Training communication and conflict resolution soft skills in students

The aim of the work was to establish the level of communication and conflict resolution soft skills of students and to create a programme for their training and development. A set of diagnostic techniques aimed at diagnosing communication skills, features of interpersonal interaction and conflict resolution strategies was used for the study. Survey and training methods, as well as quantitative data processing methods were used. Steady changes in the level of communication soft skills, empathic abilities and styles of interpersonal interaction in the study group were found. A change in the choice of conflict resolution strategies was established — students have begun to give preference to compromise and cooperation. There has been a significant increase in empathic abilities. It was found that the level of such interpersonal styles of interaction as authoritarianism, aggression and selfishness decreased. Instead, tendencies toward friendliness and altruism as styles of interpersonal interaction have grown. The prospect of further research is clarifying the peculiarities of training and development of other groups of soft skills, in particular, those focused on self-development and self-organization, which will outline a more integrated portrait of the modern student.


Introduction
The practice of dividing the competencies provided for in the curricula into competencies of two types has established within the competence approach. The first refers to professional-specific knowledge, skills and abilities (hard skills). The second is the competencies related to personal development, human values (goal setting, self-presentation, business communication, teamwork, leadership, public speaking skills, emotional intelligence), which labour market development experts call soft skills (Muraviova et al., 2021;Wilson & Marnewick, 2019). Researchers also note supra-professional competencies, namely: multilingualism and multiculturalism; interdisciplinary communication skills; customer orientation; ability to interact with other people, communicate with them; ability to manage projects and processes; work under the conditions of high uncertainty and fast change of tasks; creativity (Gaines & Mohammed, 2013); ability to work with teams, groups and individuals; programming of IT-solutions/management of complex automated complexes/work with artificial intelligence; system thinking; lean production skills; ecological thinking (Mitchell, 2015). At the same time, experts emphasize the importance of soft and supra-professional competencies in the context of globalization, increasing competition, automation, intensive use of programmable devices, increasing complexity of management systems, blurring disciplinary and sectoral boundaries, increasing ecological thinking (Devedzic et al., 2018;Mozhova et al., 2020).
It is becoming clear that the subjects of basic higher education programmesare primarily aimed at training professional competencies that are defined in educational standards, while employers want to see a graduate who also has soft skills. Of course, the development of soft skills is currently assessed as a process of dynamic transformation of the individual throughout his/her life. Communication skills and the ability to resolve conflicts are especially important for the future specialist, as the future professional activity of students is built on interaction with people. The following soft skills are the most important for the development in the student age: communication skills, creativity, interpersonal skills, teamwork, flexibility and adaptability. The aim of the work is to study the training and development of conflict resolution and communicative soft skills in students. Research objectives are the following: 1) development of a training program for the development of the above-mentioned soft skills; 2) verification of the effectiveness of this programme; and 3) finding out the features of the development of soft skills in students, which are aimed at communication and conflict resolution.

Literature review
The most complete list and categories were formed by the World Economic Forum in the Future of Jobs report (Wheeler, 2016). They include: the ability to solve complex problems, critical thinking, creativitythe ability to think creatively, people management, coordination, emotional intelligence, decision-making, customer orientation, the ability to negotiate, cognitive flexibilitythe mental ability to switch from one thought to another, and reflect several things at the same time.
Researchers are focusing on training the soft skills of not only employees but also students as future specialists. The need to take into account the development of soft skills in the process of obtaining subject knowledge and professional competencies is indicated by the results of significant research conducted in different countries (Druhanova, 2021;Sharma, 2017). By its part, Mozhova et al. (2020) research also states the fundamental importance of the student's emotional and communicative qualities (and not only academic success, as previously thought) for his/her further life and professional success. In an attempt to summarize different classifications and identify the most important soft skills, we distinguish the following vectors for the development of soft skills.
Basic communication skills that help to establish communication with other people, to make decisions in difficult situations. These include the following abilities and skills: the ability to listen, persuade and argue; building communication networks (networking) and supporting their development; self-presentation; negotiation, public speaking, the ability to organize teamwork and work in a team, focus on people (Clark et al., 2018;Muraviova et al., 2021).
Self-management skills that help to effectively control and manage one's own emotions and psychological states, the organization of their activities, in particular, time management. These include emotion and stress management, planning and goal setting, organizing one's own development, time management, initiative and perseverance, reflection, the ability to use feedback (Cantón & Garcia, 2018;Onnis et al., 2018). Effective thinking skills, namely building successful thinking strategies. These include such characteristics of thinking as consistency and creativity, its logic and structure, search and analysis of information, decision-making (Capretz & Ahmed, 2018;O'Mahony et al., 2017).
Management skills: business planning, financial modelling, understanding of marketing strategies, reputation management skills (Clark et al., 2018;Dluhunovych, 2014). Most researchers report that conflict resolution and communication skills are key groups of soft skills (Drozdova & Dubinina, 2020;Robles, 2012). Their indicators are persuasion and argumentation skills, which consist in understanding the point of view of the interlocutors and adequately responding to them. It also includes the ability to negotiate and understand ways to avoid mistakes; understanding the interlocutor's needs (Muraviova et al., 2021;Prihatiningsih, 2018). Other indicators are the ability to formulate their needs and communicate them to colleagues, compare with the needs of others (Gibert et al., 2017).
The scientists distinguish the following traditional methods of development of conflict resolution and communication soft skills: 1) Self-study, independent learning of information from books, articles or blogs, audio trainings or webinars; 2) the use of feedback from friends, colleagues, managers or experts on the relevant area about the need to develop certain skills and the success or failure of the progress of their development; 3) studying the experience of others by identifying models of desirable and successful behaviour of a person who has a high level of the required competencies; 4) trainings and special assignments that develop certain skills or help to level the development of negative habits; and 5) development in the course of workimproving the quality of their work by learning new and more effective decisionmaking and behavioural models (Devedzic et al., 2018;Börner et al., 2018;Pezer, 2015).
The most popular psychological and pedagogical techniques used for the development of soft skills: the technique of creating a subject-developing environment, the technique of collaborative learning and traditional techniques, as well as project work, are actively described in the research. However, group training is the main way to develop soft skills, as a common and one of the most effective ways to develop them (Valentin et al., 2015;Fernandes et al., 2021).

Methods
The development of soft skills in students was studied in extracurricular time. The electronic form of the survey using Google forms was chosen with a view to the peculiarities of quarantine restrictions and distance learning of students. Students who agreed to take part in the survey were sent a link to the electronic form and asked to fill it out in a week. All responses were processed only in generalized form.
350 students aged 18-22 were selected to find out their communication and conflict resolution soft skills of students. The subjects were selected by random sampling. Students study at Drohobych State Pedagogical University of Ivan Franko and Zhytomyr Medical Institute of Zhytomyr Regional Council. The respondents were selected from the first to the fifth years of study. Distribution by place of study: Institute of Musical Arts (Drohobych University) -45% of students, Department of Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities (Zhytomyr Institute) -55% of students.
A training programme was developed to train the communication and conflict resolution soft skills of the surveyed group. This programme was tested on 80 students in the period from November 2020 to January 2021. The programme was implemented for the surveyed group in the period from February 2021 to June 2021. The programme contained 8 topics, which included one lesson on each topic. The duration of one lesson was 3.5-4 hours, including an introductory part, discussion of preliminary results, exercises and a final discussion. Meetings were held by professional practicing psychologists once a week in a group of 12-15 people. A brief description of the programme is provided in Table 1.

Table 1 Programme of development of communication and conflict resolution soft skills in the respondents (author's development)
Topic 1. Basic model of communication Participants, communication triangle (COP, setting, adjusting, maintaining) "Contact cycle", structure, stages, complexities Types of business communications (barriers and their overcoming) Specifics of telephone conversations Meta-message is the image and impression we make Communication with an individual, a group, a large number of people Training exercise "Build a house -stages of communication, emerging difficulties and problems" Analysis of cases by the participants Topic 2. Orientation in the partner, establishing trust Classification of types of interlocutors in negotiations (features and difficulties) "Pyramid" of needs The concept of representative leading systems, reference systems, public access keys, predicates, internal strategies. Persuasion patterns Practical contact skills. Paraphrase method. Reframing Technologies for finding new solutions when creating a partner's world map Hidden and explicit motives and purposes of communication NLP in interpersonal communications: -"Non-verbal adjustment" techniques -"Verbal adjustment" techniques -"Paraverbal adjustment" techniques Topic 3. Building partnerships, removing barriers to communication Determining the interlocutor's interest, motivation, position, negotiating goal: -active listening in the course of constructive dialogue; -types of issues that affect the interlocutor's point of view; -SPIN-questions technique Exerciserole-playing game "Find out the interlocutor's purpose", work with the partner's "hidden motives" Topic 4. Goal setting as a basic skill of personal success Definition of the purposes and tasks, competent formation, the preventive control Building a goal tree, conflict of goals "Strategic cardboard" Balance and consistency of corporate and individual goals Dependence of achievement of results on correct formulation of the purpose (activity map) Exercise. Setting goals and their evaluation according to the SMART format Topic 5. Techniques for conveying information to the interlocutor Rules for conveying information to the interlocutor (5C) Listener's actions in the process of negotiations Transition from a topic of interest to the interlocutor to a topic of interest to me Methods of attracting attention Persuasion, argumentation techniques Development of interaction tactics and key phrases Development of an individual style of interaction with the interlocutor Exercise -role game "Infect with your IDEA" Topic 6. Improving personal and professional performance through time management Optimal use of available resources Pareto principle Time management matrix Principles of setting priorities, their impact on achieving results Rationalization through grouping of tasks Bringing the most important affairs to the result Exercise -workshop "Goal setting according to DISCO" Topic 7. Typical problems and errors that occur during the stages of communication Objection: types, reasons and overcoming techniques: Customer's objection as a hidden need Algorithm for working with objections True and false objections Private forms of response to objections Obstacles to a mutually beneficial agreement and ways to eliminate them Nonconstructive partner's behaviour Interlocutor's personal "difficulties" Hidden and conscious conflicts, conflict resolution strategies Problems of business communication with subordinates, with colleagues, with management Exercise -business game "Responses to customer objections", analysis of cases from participants

Statistical analysis
The third stage of the research involved the processing of questionnaires, as well as the use of quantitative and qualitative methods of data processing. The comparative Student's t-test was chosen among the statistical methods of data processing, which allows identifying differences between the same traits in different groups of subjects. Also, the survey was completely anonymous and voluntary, with a short questionnaire containing only questions about students' gender, age and educational institution.
The study does not differentiate between the peculiarities of the development of soft skills of students by specialties and areas of training, does not take into account the impact of the specialty mastered by the student on the motivation of his choice of specific communication strategies. The proposed training program is universal, focused on students in general, but does not provide professional content. Professional orientation of individual components of the program may further affect the outcome of its implementation.

Results
The results of the subjects will be analyzed in detail, obtained before and after the implementation of the training program. In the first stage of the study, students have a predominance of conflict resolution strategies such as confrontation and avoidance. They prefer to defend their own needs and goals, trying to achieve them fully, regardless of the appropriateness of such actions in a certain period of time or the needs of others. Along with this result, high avoidance rates look somewhat contradictory. We can assume that respondents, assessing a certain conflict situation, decide whether they can achieve the desired (through a strategy of rivalry), or better avoid the situation.
This approach is quite pragmatic and atypical for young people.
The results obtained after re-slice indicate that most of the subjects are not conflicting individuals. They are more likely to choose other conflict resolution strategies instead of confrontation and avoidance. It is recorded that at the first stage of the study, some students, namely 22.5%, strive to achieve goals without exacerbating conflicts, by choosing a strategy of compromise. Only 27.5% of respondents are often inclined to choose a cooperation strategy.
Respondents began to give preference to more effective ways of resolving conflict situations. Compromise and cooperation now prevail among their choices. A significant reduction in the use of avoidance strategies is also worth noting, which indicates a more conscious attitude of the subjects to interpersonal communication. It is also an additional sign of the development of soft skills. The following results were obtained from the analysis of the L. Michelson's Test of Communicative Skills (Table 3)  Analysis of the results of Boyko Empathy Test revealed that in general, the subjects have a medium-low level of empathy, which indicates certain difficulties in communicating with others. The effectiveness of empathy decreases when the subjects try to avoid personal contacts, consider it inappropriate to show interest in another person, convince themselves to be calm about the experiences and problems of others. Such sentiments sharply limit the range of emotional sensitivity and empathic perception. Researchers cannot create an atmosphere of openness, trust, sincerity.
The ability to empathize helps to establish contact with people, support them, better understand their needs. As we can see from the results, this part of the students' soft skills needs significant attention and development. We record significant changes in the development of empathy of the study group after the training programme. Respondents began to pay much more attention to the needs and interests of others, became more sensitive to other people's emotions. Analysing the results of the T. Leary's questionnaire, we can note a high manifestation of the values of aggression and selfishness. Young people (we noted that students were the surveyed group) are too self-centred, strive to lead and stand out, without focusing on the needs of others. They will argue with others just to stand out and show their ability to lead and achieve This result on the "suspicion" parameter is somewhat contradictory to the previously described indicators, as criticism involves the perception of others, social phenomena, some isolation and self-centeredness, which is associated with signs of aggression and selfishness. Instead, a low rate of submissiveness, which reflects modesty and emotional restraint, wimpishness, is a logical continuation of high rates of aggression and selfishness. According to T. Leary's method, the predominance of such interpersonal tendencies in communication as friendliness and altruism was revealed after the second test.

Discussion
A comparison of the results of the subjects before and after the training indicated significant changes in the development of soft skills of the study group. The aim of the study was to find out the features of the development of soft skills of the research group before and after the implementation of the training program.We will note the changes in conflict resolution strategies. At the beginning of the study, the confrontation and avoidance were the main strategies for resolving conflicts. Effective coping strategies such as compromise and cooperation prevailed in only a quarter of the surveyed. The indicators of empathy according to Boyko's method have also changed -32.5% of the respondents showed a high level of empathy (no high indicators were recorded before the training conducted through this method), and only 12.5% had a low level of empathy.
In this case, Clark et al. (2018) note that only 15% of success in career growth is provided by hard skills, and the main part of success is related to the development of soft skills.
In particular, Scaffidi (2018) notes that communication and conflict skills are necessary for all professions, regardless of specialization. He points out that in the IT field, employers also pay considerable attention to the development of these soft skills groups.
By its part, Devedzicet al. (2018) and Rana (2018) consider the relationship between different types of personality skills and points out that the development of both professional and soft skills is important for professional growth. The researcher focuses on the interaction between people, noting that the ability to create effective dialogue is the key to the development of the team and its members.
Researchers note that a significant proportion of graduates clearly realized the lack of soft skills during the first year after graduating from university in their first job (Stewart et al., 2016;Taptyhina, 2018). Susilawati et al. (2020) described the experience of assessing these skills in medical school graduates not even by the leaders of their work teams, but by the consumers of their servicespatients, and also noted that graduates lack certain soft skills.
The works of scientists confirm the opinion of employers about the need for technical specialists and the representatives of creative professions to have soft skills (Heather, 2020; Mozhova et al., 2020). The studies of some scientists who found that soft skills are more developed in students majoring in the humanities than those who study technical sciences are of interest.
Other scientists established a direct relationship between the level of soft skills and academic performance. The theoretical consequences of the study are the actualization of modern concepts of soft skills development, highlighting the most relevant soft skills that students need.
The practicality of the results of the study is the creation of a training program for the development of soft skills, which can be recommended for use in other higher education institutions in Ukraine.
The main limitations of the study are the difficulty of verifying the results over a long period of time, in order to determine the effectiveness of the program. Some of the respondents completed their studies at the university after completing the study, which makes it difficult to retest the group. Also due to quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, data collection was somewhat complicated (because the electronic form of the questionnaires was not convenient for all respondents) and the testing of research materials in the real educational process was difficult. Future research should be aimed at developing various competencies of future professionals. Special attention should also be paid to the formation of separate, specialized competencies that are necessary for the training of specialists in various fields.

Conclusions
The