OECD: Social and Emotional Skills

We’ve incorporated the OECD’s socioemotional competencies into Power Skills. In the article, we’ll delve into the concept of this framework.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has established a set of social and emotional skills that are considered fundamental for success both in personal and professional spheres. These competencies encompass a variety of aspects such as open-mindedness, collaboration, and interpersonal engagement.

The OECD recognises the crucial importance of developing these skills to address contemporary challenges, which include the need to adapt to constantly evolving work environments, the ability to cope with stress and the pressures of everyday life, as well as establishing and maintaining healthy and productive relationships.

These competencies are often referred to as socioemotional skills, and the OECD emphasizes the need to integrate them into the educational curriculum from the early stages of schooling. Moreover, they are considered an intrinsic part of human development throughout life, not limited solely to the school environment.

Research conducted by the OECD has been based on samples of young students from various countries; however, it is important to note that the proposed framework is not exclusively intended for young people but also for adults.

Big Five

The OECD Social and Emotional Skills framework presents an intrinsic relationship with the Big Five theory, a widely recognized model in psychology that describes five major dimensions or personality traits. This theory aims to elucidate and categorize the fundamental characteristics of human personality.

The five main traits of the Big Five are as follows:

• Extraversion: Refers to the degree of sociability, energy, and assertiveness of a person. Extroverted individuals tend to be more sociable, energetic, and assertive, while introverts are more reserved and inward-focused.
• Neuroticism (or Emotional Stability): Refers to the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, and irritability. Individuals with low levels of neuroticism tend to be emotionally stable and calm, while those with high levels of neuroticism are more likely to be emotionally unstable and prone to worries and anxieties.
• Agreeableness: Refers to a person’s tendency to be kind, cooperative, and compassionate towards others. Individuals who score high on this dimension are altruistic, friendly, and trustworthy, while those with low scores may be more competitive and skeptical towards others.
• Conscientiousness: Refers to the organization, responsibility, diligence, and self-discipline of a person. Conscientious individuals are reliable, methodical, and disciplined in their actions, while those with low scores may be more careless, disorganized, and impulsive.
• Openness to Experience: Refers to a person’s willingness to explore new ideas, values, and experiences. Individuals with high scores on this dimension are creative, curious, and open to new perspectives, while those with low scores tend to be more conventional, conservative, and resistant to change.

Additionally, it is important to highlight that these main traits unfold into six other subtraits, providing a more comprehensive view of personality.

The OECD maps social and emotional skills directly from the Big Five traits, recognizing the importance of this theory in understanding and developing the competencies necessary for personal and professional success.

Development of Socioemotional Competencies

The OECD has identified and grouped socioemotional competencies into six distinct categories:

1. Task Performance: Refers to behavior that contributes to the production of goods or the provision of services. Favorable organizational behavior includes persistence in time-consuming tasks and personal support for colleagues. Counterproductive work behavior involves intentional actions harmful to the organization, such as absenteeism, insults, theft, or substance involvement. Conscientiousness is highlighted, with the highest correlation, as key to all performance criteria in the workplace.
2. Emotional Regulation: Refers to the ability to regulate and control one’s own emotions. It involves the recognition, understanding, and adaptive and constructive management of emotions. Individuals with good emotional regulation effectively deal with challenging situations while maintaining emotional balance.
3. Collaboration: Involves working together with others to achieve a common goal. It requires cooperation and contribution from different individuals to reach a shared objective. Applies in various contexts such as work, education, and community projects.
4. Open-mindedness: Refers to the willingness to consider new ideas, perspectives, or information without bias. It involves exploring different viewpoints and accepting diversity of thought.
5. Engagement with Others: Refers to the ability to actively engage in social interactions constructively. Includes effective communication, active listening, empathy, and positive collaboration to develop healthy relationships.
6. Composite Skills: Are combinations of two or more individual skills, forming a more complex skill. An example is self-efficacy, combining skills from the Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Extroversion categories of the Big Five model. These composite skills are useful for understanding complex aspects of behavior, capturing the interaction and interdependence of individual skills.

Conclusion

Integrating these socioemotional competencies into the concept of Power Skills provides a holistic and accurate view of people’s social and emotional capabilities, which are essential for addressing complex situations that require a combination of these skills.