Assessing Your Soft Skills Training Needs

Soft Skills Needs Apr/May 2017

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Assessing Soft Skills Training Needs

Dear <<First Name>>,

Does your team have the soft skills your company needs? The importance of soft skills is often undervalued. Whether your employees work directly or indirectly with customers, work on a team or as individual contributors, in today’s world they need good soft skills. This newsletter talks about how you can assess your team’s soft skills needs and get one step closer to bridging the soft skills gap.

How to Identify Your Soft Skills Gap

As mentioned in my previous newsletter soft skills are interpersonal skills that focus on attributes and personality traits. These skills have to do with one’s emotional intelligence and behavior.

In order to address and fill the soft skills gap, you first have to determine what the need is. Begin by conducting an assessment. There are at least two ways to do this: look at your team as a whole, and consider individual team members.

If your organization is experiencing low customer satisfaction, low productivity, or high turnover, these may well be signs that soft skills are lacking. While there may be other causes as well, a soft skills gap is frequently part of the problem.
It also helps to evaluate individual employees. For example, do you have a skilled help desk support person who is abrupt or rude? A team member who is often in conflict? Here are some other examples of employees lacking soft skills:

Struggling to communicate with their team members
Not able to manage interpersonal conflict
Displaying poor professional attitude or work ethic
Unable to adequately communicate their discomfort with changes in work routine

Perhaps you even have employees sabotaging their opportunities for advancement through lack of soft skills.

Identify Your Soft Skills Needs
Soft skills are an essential part of performance today. Do you know where you stand with soft skills? Brenda can help you understand how having employees with good soft skills can help to improve performance. Contact her at 866.233.1570 or email her at Brenda@bwmconsultingusa.com.

Bridging the Soft Skills Gap

Soft skills training is essential, starting with assessment. Once you’ve evaluated your soft skills, you can use workshops and other forms of interpersonal engagement to strengthen your team..

It’s a mistake to put all your resources into technical training. Learning and development leaders need to ensure that employees are well rounded in soft as well as hard skills. By building soft skills you strengthen your organization’s performance, and the individual performance of your employees.

Exciting News

Employer Forum on Soft Skills April 26.
This is an opportunity to learn directly from Brenda about soft skills. This forum will discuss and examine soft skills vs hard skills and help you to develop a heightened awareness of the importance of soft skills in your workforce to achieve greater effectiveness and increased productivity from well-rounded employees. The forum is hosted by CareerWorks in Brockton, MA. For more information contact Tom Hahesy at thahesy@donohue.mass.edu, or at 508.513.3436. Click here to register.

From Brenda,
Take action to improve Soft Skills. Training, coaching and mentoring are essential to building soft skills. But effective soft skills development calls for interpersonal engagement. Brenda Wornum Moore offers soft skills assessment, training, coaching and mentoring for individuals and groups. Contact Brenda to help you bridge your soft skills gap at 866.233.1570 or email her at Brenda@bwmconsultingusa.com.

Warmest Regards,

Brenda Wornum Moore
CEO/President, BWM Consulting, Inc.

brenda@bwmconsultingusa.com
www.bwmconsultingusa.com
www.linkedin.com/in/brendawornummoore

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BWM Consulting, Inc. · 105 Massasoit Ave, Brockton, MA · Brockton, MA 02302 · USA