Soft skills training

Almost every organisation we have ever worked with, including the very best, tend to have patchy scores for management ‘soft’ skills – with this tending to be more pronounced when it comes to supervisors and especially when related to safety. Often, more senior management get soft skills training and at a high level (coaching for example) but even then often the embedding and follow up is less impressive than the courses themselves.

Follow up and embedding needs a combination of appraisals and formal and informal feedback mechanisms including coaching and mentoring. We have some formal and ‘hand-held’ items based on the key aspects of ‘transformational leadership’ with a proven track record.

The following list is the content list of the soon to be announced NEBOSH qualification that we wrote and agreed with NEBOSH product development staff.

• Individual strengths and weaknesses
• The key mindset factor that links both good team members and great team leaders (humility)
• The second key mindset for success (practical positivity)
• Problem solving in teams
• Ten classic mistakes of thinking
• Practical empathy techniques and mindsets (active listening based on ABC and Just Culture principles).
• Assertion – how to stay adult to adult at all times …
• Influencing skills – basic and advanced …
• Understanding how to apply nudge theory to influencing skills … (including question sets)
• Delivering empowerment (delegation, coaching and the basics of motivational interviewing etc).
• Feedback (praise, negative feedback – BIFF & BIFFO etc)

And

• Formal verbal communication skills (IE presentation basics – also available as a stand-alone course)

As with general consultancy, one of our most frequently requested services is to review how any existing material is trained. Ideally, role plays and discovered learning exercises will feature highly.