What challenges arise when evaluating the impact of soft skills training?

Remember: what you put in at the start influences what you get at the end. Soft skills are not easy to measure – a course with, say, ‘active listening’ in week one, ‘empathic communication’ in week two, and so on, culminating in an exam or quiz is unlikely to produce meaningful, long-term effects. Soft skills are also subjective, and hard to transfer. Someone whose EQ makes them a great manager in one context might struggle to apply that sense of empathy in a new role, especially if it’s in a different country or culture. Therefore, you need to show the organization(s) you are working with that you are competent and trustworthy, so that you can get the data you need. You can’t define your objectives until you get that information.

The first thing you need to ask is how accurate your assessment of it being a soft skills issue is. If you want a number-backed effect after the intervention, you must be able to produce a number-backed cause going in; a particular business metric, for example. If NPS is down, or CSAT is, how did you make the attribution to poor soft skills? If customers mention it verbatim in the surveys, is the impact on the metrics proportional? That informs your learning objectives, design, and evaluation of the intervention after the fact. Having said that, there are anticipatory or preventive soft skills interventions, and they come in all shapes and sizes too, but make sure the attribution, if insisted upon, is congruent.

Soft skills are difficult to measure because they are not a goal, they are an enabler. Some other business output will be affected by them - but probably not in isolation. Again, that makes it harder to measure. Start by ensuring your activity does have meaningful and measurable goals. Break this down into key components. e.g. sales conversion is dependant on presentation success which is dependant on product knowledge and discovery. Discovery is dependant on relationship building, which is dependant on good listening skills and trust. Knowing your business and working with your stakeholders will help you determine which elements to target. Now you should have something measurable that helps you demonstrate soft skills ROI.

Evaluating the impact of soft skills training can present several challenges due to the nature of these skills and the subjective ways in which they manifest. Here are some key challenges: Subjectivity Long-term Effects Contextual Application Self-Reporting Bias Integration with Job Performance Metrics Defining Success Criteria Measuring Behavioral Change Quantification of ROI Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive and multifaceted evaluation approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. This may involve a mix of self-assessments, peer and supervisor feedback, behavioral observations, and, where possible, linking soft skills development to specific performance outcomes.

To be candid, I'm not a fan of the term "soft skills" but I also understand the challenge. They are fuzzy and difficult to measure in quantitative terms that most leaders are accustomed to. Nonetheless, there can be meaningful ways to gauge them. For example, when measuring for employee engagement we can identify indices for employee engagement and factors that drive it, such as leadership engagement. Frequency and quality of leadership meetings with staff can serve as a proxy for leading indicators of employee engagement.

If you’re working with a large organization, their HR team may expect needs assessment forms, a notional syllabus, and such. Those things may be useful, but you need to observe what’s really going on at different levels to identify the soft skills gaps and how training will have on-the-job applications in this specific context. If you can, study and learn from the approaches of social scientists such as ethnographers, who spend time closely observing people and their behaviour. Get permission to ‘shadow’ staff members. Conduct open, honest interviews. The “Hawthorne Effect” should be reduced, while employees may appreciate someone taking a real interest in what they do and that they can speak without negative repercussions.

This process may reveal things the management team – who asked for your assistance in the first place – are not aware of. It may require you to adapt your original proposal. However, if you have spotted an urgent performance issue that can be resolved by soft skills training, you’ll be able to explain what it is and how it affects your client’s bottom line. That’s the outcome to aim for. If they seem hesitant, ask how they tried to resolve these issues before. The answer is likely to sound like: “we hired a consultant who showed us a good-looking course outline, and everyone participated in the weekly lessons, and they all passed the final test”. Hmm... Bring the conversation back to the outcomes you can produce, and they'll 'get it'.

Gilfoyle says 'a feature, not a bug'. I would flip the presentation and ask that if we can indeed identify things that can influence the soft skills of the learner, why try to 'isolate' after the fact? We need to work them in. If it can influence the outcome, it should be in the design of the training, to the extent tenable. Even if we are not able to enhance some greatly, we can likely prevent the diminishing. Ensuring readiness and motivation is not external to pedagogy. Support and reinforcement can be integrated. Learners can benefit from leaders' personal stories of how soft skills proved essential to their growth. Learners don't need to be protected from the environment, they need to be provided with skills they can adapt to it.

Assessing the efficacy of soft skills training presents multifaceted challenges. The intangibility of these skills makes measurement subjective. Establishing causality between training & improved performance is intricate due to external factors. Long-term impact evaluation is arduous, as soft skills evolve slowly. Effectively reporting & utilizing evaluation findings in soft skills training can be hindered by complexity, ambiguity, poor communication, & sometimes even biases. Establishing feedback mechanisms, conducting timely follow-up sessions, and action plans to facilitate ongoing improvement and informed decision-making based on the evaluation results can help ensure that the training program evolves & achieves its intended outcomes.

If feasible, give two or more teams different sets of learners; ask them to develop, implement, and document an approach; and have them report back in two parts: (a) Effectiveness and efficiency of their own approach, and (b) A critical evaluation of the other teams' approach based on their documentation and learner & stakeholder surveys. Documentation, of course, remains key to the whole exercise and its reproducibility.

The ROI of soft skills training has long been established in a number of empirical studies. Also, anyone who has ever worked with people in any setting can very well tell the difference in trying to deliver results together with people who have high EQ vs. those with low. The real problem is when companies expect a magical transformation after a one day training. Learning soft skills is like learning to be a human - it's a continuous process.