How We Do It

A New Approach

Soft skills are crucial 21st-century skills, essential in the workplace and for personal wellbeing. But education and exam systems worldwide are almost entirely based on a model devoted to developing and measuring hard skills – knowledge and technical aptitudes.

While young people are painfully aware of the importance of getting good grades and under incredible pressure to achieve them, the life and character skills considered key to success in their working lives are at risk of being overlooked.

Dame Martina Milburn, Chief Executive of the Prince’s Trust

Soft skills are developed in a completely different way from hard skills. Old methods designed solely for hard skills aren’t fit for this new purpose. Soft skills require a bespoke approach if they are to be adequately managed and measured.

Teaching kids to embrace the unknown while maintaining their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them an equation in physics or the causes of the First World War.

Yuval Noah Harari, author of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Barrier Breakers Methodology for Soft Skills Development and Evaluation (BBM) was designed to address this problem. Based on extensive research, the method was first published in 2002 in a report written and researched for the RSA, “How To Access And Manage Creativity In Organisations.”

Since then, BBM has been developed and refined through its use in thousands of individual and organisational change programmes in corporate, public, education, and charity sector settings.

The feedback from the session was astounding. Keep up the good work – it makes a huge difference to people’s lives.
Ali Yusuf, Careers and Enrichment Manager, Waltham Forest College