The importance of soft skills in leadership
Leaders don't need to worry about soft skills, right? Wrong. Fiona Lander elaborates. Technical know-how is all well and good, but it is emotional intelligence and self-awareness that will differentiate traditional managers from the star leaders of tomorrow. In recent years, there has been an influx of new leadership development methods; and it is no coincidence […]
Soft skills: Practice makes perfect
You've got the skills, you just need to hone them. Emma Oakley from RADA in Business tells us how. Soft skills – for many these are some of the hardest skills to acquire, teach and quantify. Effective communication, conflict management, personal impact, influencing and selling – these are all essential business skills and we tend […]
Soft skills for a hard new world
Emma-Sue Prince kicks off soft skills month with a look at their importance in the modern workplace. Soft skills get a bit of a bad rap. The term itself is, at best, vague and non-specific and there are varying views about what these skills actually are – as well as how you go about 'getting […]
Ten top tips for courageous conversations at work
Chartered psychologist, and author of ‘Positive Psychology at Work’, Sarah Lewis has 10 tips to help produce a good result when you have a difficult conversation to tackle. Many people, at some point in their working lives, have to have a difficult conversation with someone. It might be about a performance issue or something more […]
Disciplinary – it’s all in the preparation
The Employment Act 2008 places greater emphasis on the employer to ensure disciplinary issues are dealt with in accordance with new statutory procedures and guidelines. A.C.A.S. says: "Those responsible for using and operating the disciplinary rules, including managers at all levels, should be trained for the task". Prepare effectively and the manager is well on their […]
What would be the one piece of advice…
…you would give to yourself when you were 20 which you wish you had received? Recently I posted a discussion onto a Learning and Development group on LinkedIn with the above title. Due to the overwhelming response I received I decided to sum up the key points that arose from the discussion. Confidence The most […]
Seven top tips to build rapport with your audience
Julie Kertesz offers seven top tips to ensure you build great rapport with your audiences – whatever the occasion. We’ve all sat through them – those presentations where the speaker just doesn’t connect with the audience, leaving you feeling detached from the experience, that your time has been wasted, and more than likely, frustrated as […]
Is Crowdsourcing the new 360 Degree Feedback?
In this article from HBR online, the writer suggests replacing traditional performance appraisal with 'crowdsourced' feedback. Crowdsource your performance reviews Crowdsourcing is about using the 'wisdom of crowds' to make decisions, the idea being that a larger population will provide better data, create better products and produce better results that a small group or an […]
Can soft skills be taught through elearning? pt3
Elearning is a method not often applied to soft skills training; Ian Luxford concludes his contentious feature. The improvements in assistive technologies can also make it easier for people with certain disabilities to participate in this type of training than previously – my view is that we have more work to do here, but there […]
People management and soft skills: The missing link
Stephen Walker looks at the differences between traditional command and control style and people centred management. Let me be bold. Management is the management of people. The management of objects is administration. Planning the functions and throughput of a machine is simple. The set-up time, the run time to process each item and the downtime […]
Can soft skills be taught through elearning? pt2
Elearning is a method not often applied to soft skills training; Ian Luxford continues his contentious feature. Another challenge is about the kind of activities which are used to teach these types of skills. To develop the skills to interact productively with other people, it seems reasonable to assume that the learner will need to interact. With […]
Can soft skills be taught through elearning?
Elearning is a method not often applied to soft skills training, but Ian Luxford thinks that with a bit of planning and analysis, it might be possible. For many professionals in the field of training and development, the first ten years of the 21st Century will be seen, for some time into the future, […]
Why are soft skills important?
How are you feeling today? Paul Matthews explores the link between emotion and soft skills. We start learning soft skills from almost the day we are born. Within a short while, we are successfully managing our parents. Some would even say manipulating them with tantrums and smiles, and crying and giggles to get them to […]
Soft skills and engineers: Google’s Project Oxygen pt2
John Sadowsky concludes his feature about a recent project at Google that highlights how soft skills can influence managerial style across an organisation. In their bosses, do engineers value soft skills more than hard technical knowledge? It was in a second phase, when the Project Oxygen team began ranking the eight elements by level of […]
Soft skills and engineers: Google’s Project Oxygen pt1
John Sadowsky turns to a recent project at Google to highlight how soft skills can influence managerial style across an organisation. As someone who has consulted for numerous high-tech companies and who has taught business students and engineers the past two decades, I read with considerable interest an article in the New York Times in […]
Transactional Analysis (TA) Training – video clips
I’ve been asked to add into a Transactional Analysis training course for Managers some video clips to help them spot Parent, Adult, Child behaviour and communication in action. My problem is the first session is Wednesday next week and I haven’t the time to study lots of films to find good examples – anyone know […]
Liggy Webb: “Our coping mechanisms are being challenged”
At a recent event we caught up with workplace wellness expert Liggy Webb to talk about modern life skills. For more information on Liggy and her new book, click here At a recent event we caught up with workplace wellness expert Liggy Webb to talk about modern life skills.For more information on Liggy and her […]
How to use elearning effectively for soft skills development and CPD
Francis Marshall looks at e-learning’s role in developing soft skills and for continuing professional development. E-learning has come a long way in the past decade. While it may not have lived up to its initial hype, creating somewhat of a Marmite effect with users either loving or hating it, it is now one of the […]
How to work with mixed ability groups
Alan Matthews provides the community with some great pointers on how to get the most out of a group of mixed ability. Many years ago, when I was a primary school teacher, it was normal to work with classes or groups of mixed abilities. This presented a challenge to the teacher, how to pitch the […]
Do toys and smelly pens really make a difference?
Alan Matthews makes the case, not just for training accessories, but the training that follows them. Have you been on a training course recently (or run one yourself) where there have been some little toys on the table – springs or bendy men? Or sweets? Or music playing when you went in? Or those smelly […]
