4 Must-Think-Abouts for Soft Skills Training to Really Work, at Work

Forbes reveals that 98% of managers feel that managers themselves need more training. Yet universities don’t teach you how to be an effective manager. There are no all encompassing courses on it and it can be hard to know what skills you actually need to be a great manager. So if we don’t learn how to be a manager at university, when do we learn?

Most companies are offering learning and development budgets for their staff, but often the training is focused on job specific topics or isn’t actionable. For businesses that don’t offer L&D at all - beware, lack of training in the workplace is one of the most common reasons people leave companies. A sad fact when you realise that professional development isn’t just about the training and development provided by the company itself. Professional development should be split into a 70-20-10 divide to be most effective, where 70% is an individual's own self learning, 20% is learning through others, and 10% is from taking courses. So the solution to ineffective managers is not just to send them on another theoretical course, but guiding them to self learning the soft skills they need to excel in their positions.

There are four key factors you need to consider when helping your staff learn the soft skills they need to be a great manager;

1. Who your employees should learn from. Is the latest author/coach/trainer the right person to learn from? Yes, they might have been featured on blogs and media, and maybe even with your competitors, but do they have the managerial experience to teach transferable skills to your staff? Why not a really successful manager instead? Someone who has been through the same problems, someone with years of experience and who has proven to be a very effective leader?
2. How your employees should be taught. Is sending your employees on a 2-day offsite workshop once a year the most effective option? Probably not. There are a range of other options available that allow ongoing learning that forms habits rather than short intense bursts which are quickly forgotten when you get back to your desk the next day.
3. Choice of system. Should your knowledge offering be purely from internal sources or should external sources be considered too? Keep in mind that your internal Learning and Development system may become quickly outdated both in terms of the content itself and how staff want to consume it. It may not be engaging nor available on-the-go, leading to less engagement with the content. We live in a generation where people are constantly on the move and you should look to adapting your learning experience to fit that norm - not trying to make your employees fit an old system. Make it easy for people to learn.
4. Allocation of investment. What is the return on investment from spending 50k on one week long intense off-site versus spending 50k across a longer time period with more actionable and curated training? Consistency should always be of higher priority than intensity when it comes to learning - because that’s how our habitual brains are naturally wired. L&D budgets can also be put to better use when you know the right things to be investing in for each and every individual, and not putting everyone in the same box. For instance, you can do internal surveys to identify the soft skills your employees lack or want to develop, and then grouping them together by these soft skills - not by department or seniority level, but rather by what skills they need. You can then curate the learning paths for these groups of individuals more effectively.

Consider these four elements when you are implementing soft skills training and leadership development for your company to ensure learning isn’t just a one hit wonder, but an effective ongoing success.