How to stimulate SoSE engineers to develop soft skills? How effective is a lecture in Non-Verbal Communication?

The human content of system of systems (SoS) is significant. The inclusion of humans and organizations as part of a SoSs impacts the engineering process. The engineers need soft skills to operate effectively in the SoS arena. Most education focuses on the technical (hard) competences. We study the impact of a lecture in non-verbal communication as means to stimulate students to develop themselves in soft skills further. This lecture is part of a course in Reflective Practice, which is a core course in a master program in systems engineering in Kongsberg, Norway. The study finds that students have a quite limited knowledge of expressions of non-verbal communication. The guest lecture has the desired effect that students perceive an increase in awareness of non-verbal communication. We advocate for a higher priority of soft skills in education of engineers.