Seven top tips to build rapport with your audience
Learn seven essential techniques to build genuine rapport with your audience, including using personal stories, strategic pauses, vocal variety, and authentic belief in your message to create memorable connections during presentations.
Is Crowdsourcing the new 360 Degree Feedback?
Crowdsourced feedback offers immediate, frequent performance insights from many colleagues through online tools, contrasting with traditional 360-degree feedback. While it excels at sharing knowledge and fostering open feedback culture, crowdsourcing may lack the structure and depth needed for robust competency assessments or consistent skill measurement across teams.
Can soft skills be taught through elearning? pt3
Elearning can effectively teach soft skills when technology is properly leveraged, particularly through interactive tools like speech recognition and contextual feedback. While real-world practice remains essential, digital platforms offer valuable support for developing communication skills in modern electronic environments.
People management and soft skills: The missing link
Effective people management requires soft skills that inspire enthusiasm and engagement, not just command-and-control administration. Traditional hard-nosed management treats employees like machines, while people-centered managers use soft skills to align workers with organizational goals and create genuine commitment.
Can soft skills be taught through elearning? pt2
Elearning presents significant challenges for teaching soft skills, as these require interaction with real people rather than computers and practice with unpredictable, emotional interactions. This article examines why traditional online modules may struggle to develop interpersonal competencies effectively.
Can soft skills be taught through elearning?
Soft skills training through elearning is possible with proper planning and analysis, though it requires viewing elearning broadly as part of a comprehensive learning solution rather than a standalone tool.
Why are soft skills important?
Soft skills are essential competencies we develop from childhood, yet many people underestimate their proficiency because these abilities operate at an unconscious level. Understanding and consciously improving soft skills like communication, empathy, and motivation can significantly enhance workplace performance and personal relationships.
Soft skills and engineers: Google’s Project Oxygen pt2
Google’s Project Oxygen research revealed that employees value soft skills in managers far more than technical expertise, prioritizing bosses who are accessible, fair, and invested in their subordinates’ development and personal growth.
Soft skills and engineers: Google’s Project Oxygen pt1
Google challenged its hands-off management approach after discovering that managers significantly impact employee satisfaction and performance. This article explores Google’s Project Oxygen and how soft skills can transform engineering management across organizations.
Transactional Analysis (TA) Training – video clips
Transactional Analysis training uses video clips to help managers recognize Parent, Adult, and Child communication styles in real-world scenarios. This post seeks recommendations for films or YouTube videos that effectively demonstrate these TA behavioral patterns for an upcoming course.
Liggy Webb: “Our coping mechanisms are being challenged”
Workplace wellness expert Liggy Webb discusses how modern life is challenging our traditional coping mechanisms and explores essential skills needed to navigate today’s complex world.
How to use elearning effectively for soft skills development and CPD
E-learning has become essential for soft skills development and continuing professional development (CPD), offering cost-effective, self-paced learning alongside traditional methods. Modern e-learning focuses on engaging learning experiences and clear development objectives to help professionals improve leadership, communication, and management skills.
How to work with mixed ability groups
Managing mixed-ability training groups requires identifying skill levels early, acknowledging differences openly, and using discovery-based activities that allow participants to learn at their own pace. Alan Matthews shares practical strategies for ensuring all learners benefit regardless of experience level.
Do toys and smelly pens really make a difference?
Training accessories like toys and scented pens can support learning by creating a positive environment, engaging multiple senses, and maintaining focus—but they’re only effective when paired with thoughtful training design based on how people actually learn.
The Difference between Training and Comms
Training builds capability and changes behavior through learning and practice, while communications simply delivers information for awareness. Understanding this distinction helps organizations allocate resources effectively and measure impact appropriately for each function.
PAVA: The four ways to approach diversity training
Explore four distinct learner types—prisoners, auditors, vacationers, and adventurers—and discover tailored approaches to make diversity training effective and transformative for your organization.
Cardboard cop-out
The Apprentice candidates face a camping equipment design challenge, with teams tasked to create a prototype and pitch to major retailers. One team’s collapsible cardboard wardrobe idea proves impractical for the realities of wet, damp camping conditions.
Body language demystified: Profiling your delegates
Learn how body language profiling using the DISC system helps trainers and communicators understand delegate personalities, adapt communication styles, and identify individual concerns during training courses or presentations.
20 reasons to invest in sales training
Sales training is a strategic investment that drives increased revenue, improved employee skills, and stronger team motivation while reducing staff turnover. Discover 20 compelling reasons why ambitious companies should prioritize sales training to achieve both tactical and strategic business goals.
Soft Skills: Hard results
Soft skills training delivers real business value when programs include reflection, workplace application, and line manager oversight. A structured approach—where learners identify key takeaways, managers approve implementation plans, and results are tracked—transforms training investments into measurable organizational outcomes.