Soft Skills Training

Soft Skills Training

If you are looking to up the skills of your workforce then these Training Programmes can do just that. Collaborating with people can be challenging, especially when you want to carry out a good job.

Training is ideal for all sized companies. Maybe you don’t have an in-house training team! Or you have a new starter, who needs to learn certain soft skills. Or you have a team that needs a refresher. 

The training supplies up to date information learning new skills, revisiting old skills, building confidence, and developing competence in using learnt skills. You can send your team with quiet confidence, knowing they will return to you equipped to fulfil their role and go the extra mile.

Follow the link below for course outline

Assertiveness

Assertiveness and Confidence Skills

Do you find yourself saying yes when you would like to say no? Do you always avoid conflict situations? Have friends described you as a pushover? Would you like to state your points of view without hurting people or making unacceptable compromises?

If you need help with the situations above, then this is the course for you:

This assertiveness and confidence building course will provide course participants with the underpinning knowledge and skills to be more assertive and confident, both in their personal and professional lives. You will learn how to be assertive as opposed to aggressive; you will learn to deal with difficult situations in an assertive way and gain the confidence/skills to say no!

What the course will cover:

What is assertiveness?

  • The difference between submissive, aggressive and assertive behaviour and recognising the body language
  • Why do people behave as they do?
  • Our own personal communication style
  • Self confidence & esteem
  • The benefits of being assertive
  • What are the barriers to assertiveness?
  • Getting our thinking right:
  • Confronting our inner dialogue
  • Useful techniques of assertive communication, including: broken record, fogging, using body language to convey your message, reflecting back technique and Looking for a win-win scenario
  • How Transactional Analysis can help your communication
  • Practical exercises to build up your confidence
  • Saying no assertively

Dealing with Difficult Behaviour

In an idea world everyone would be friendly and reasonable. In reality we often come across difficult people and behaviour. Avoiding the issue and hoping it will go away doesn’t work. Do you come across angry/difficult people and want to know the best way to deal with them? Is it important for your work to be able to communicate with a variety of different people? So how can you best deal with these situations without becoming stressed and angry? This course will provide you with the tools with which you can deal with difficult or aggressive behaviour.

Aim: To enable participants to deal with difficult situations in a professional and assertive manner and to treat difficult people with a positive attitude

We will learn how to:

  • Identify difficult situations at work
  • Work with conflicting goals and reach a negotiation
  • Be aware of different beliefs and attitudes
  • Analyse and understand different behavioural types
  • Discern the causes of conflict, looking at our needs, desires, beliefs and attitudes
  • Recognise the reasons for friction with others
  • Analyse what happens to us when we see a threat
  • Recognise non-verbal communication and how to remain safe
  • Develop effective forms of communication including: active listening, building empathy and questioning, so as to defuse conflict situations
  • Use Transactional Analysis to bring out the best in people
  • To look at effective forms of communication and active listening, building empathy and rapport
  • Keep calm – managing your own emotions 
  • To look at improving our Emotional Intelligence

Developing Resilience 

Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after misfortune, resilient people are blessed with such an outlook that they are able to change course and soldier on. Source: Psychology Today

Whilst some have a predisposition towards positivity and the ability to bounce back, it can be a skill you learn. Understanding yourself and challenging your thinking will help you develop resilience. This workshop will give you the tools you need, the rest is up to you. 

By the end of the workshop you will be able to:

  • Define resilience and explain its importance
  • Differentiate between positive and negative thinking
  • Challenge the way you think, reducing anxiety at home/work by identifying:
    • Top ten thinking errors
  • Use tools that help you build resilience
  • Understanding how stress levels develop 
  • Finding solutions to manage your stress levels
  • Being aware of the Amygdala Hijack and how to guard against damaging reactions
  • Develop key Emotional Intelligence skills including: 
  • Self-awareness
    • Self-management
    • Relationship Management 
    • Social Awareness
  • Being kind to yourself
  • Improving personal boundaries
  • Managing your time according to your priorities 
  • Help others to build resilience

Effective Communication

We all need excellent communication skills to become more efficient. We need to be able to communicate, build relationships and work with individuals at all level. Their behaviour and interpersonal skills can affect others both positively and negatively; consequently, this is an important element of working with others. 

This Communication Skills training enables delegates to enhance their personal and team productivity by improving their working relationships. The programme will give delegates a greater awareness of the effect their behaviour has on others and increase their options when dealing with difficult staff, conflict or work-related problems.

This course will cover how to:

  • Communicate clearly and correctly to avoid misunderstanding and get your message across
  • Develop and use your listening skills to solve problems, diffuse conflict, teach, and be more productive
  • Choose the most appropriate media for communicating your message
  • Gain a greater understanding of your personal behavioural style and the effect it has on the performance of your team and colleagues. 
  • Communicate and negotiate with others in a more persuasive and compelling style
  • Give and receive feedback
  • Use the Transactional Analysis communication theory to help you communicate better with others and not get pulled into unproductive arguments
  • Identify the styles that others are using, and bring out the best in them
  • Develop a range of responses to deal successfully with difficult people and conflict whilst maintaining effective working relationships.

Managing Stress

Feeling Stressed? At the end of your tether?

Is anxiety keeping you awake at night? Are you finding that you are losing concentration? Are you more emotional than usual? Then this course will give you the tools to become resilient to stressful situations and manage your emotions and pressures better.

During financial lean times or during change, we sometimes feel that we are struggling to cope emotionally. Why not equip yourself with these important life skills?

 You will learn how to: 

  • Recognize  the signs and symptoms of stress (in yourself and others)
  • Gain an understanding of the effects of both short term and long term stress on your health
  • Address destructive thinking and make your thought life work for you!
  • Analyse your own personal stressors
  • Practice some quick stress reduction techniques
  • Establish healthy coping strategies & preventative methods
  • Set clear boundaries around you to strengthen control over your life
  • Improve your time management and organisation skills including watching out for the time stealers 
  • Clear guidelines and tips on what to do when you are feeling stressed

Prepare for that Presentation

This course will provide course participants with the necessary skills to deliver a confident presentation. This is a very practical hands-on course.

You will learn how to:

  • Prepare and be ready for the presentation
  • Tame the Tiger – and manage your nerves
  • Choose the right visual aid
  • Structure a presentation to meet the needs of the audience
  • Make the most of your body language and eliminating your ticks
  • Use the 4 P’s of Pitch, Pause, Power and Projection
  • Spice up your content and keep it well balanced
  • Prepare good presentation notes to remind yourself
  • Use stories and hooks to capture the imagination
  • Which media to choose including PowerPoint tips

Putting People First 

  • Do you create a positive image of your organisation?
  • Do you get lots of positive feedback about your Customer Care skills?
  • Is your internal customer important to you? 

This highly interactive course aims to equip you with the skills necessary to present an excellent image of the organisation and your department.  

 As a result of the seminar, participants will be able to:

  • Improve your service internally as well as externally
  • Understand what customers need and how your actions impact their perceptions
  • Build good customer relations, with improved communication skills such as listening, asking questions, understanding body language and good rapport

What today’s customer expects?

  • First impressions creating a professional image
  • The raised expectations of customers through the ages

How to make good customer service excellent

  • Going the extra mile, understanding the difference your performance can make to a good customer experience
  • Turning the complainers into loyal customers

Building rapport with excellent communication skills

  • Understanding the subtleties of body language
  • The importance of good listening face to face and over the phone

Asking the right questions

  • Pacing your customer for better rapport
  • Using Transactional Analysis to improve your communication style
  • Improving the self esteem of yourself and your customer

Taking that call

  • Understand the importance of good telephone manners
  • The difficulties of telephone communication and how to overcome them

Action plan

  • Putting your learning into practice!

Time Management

Overview

Do you find there’s not enough time in the day?

This one day workshop session is designed to give you the tools and techniques to manage your time more effectively.

Who is it for?

Ideal if you:

  • Feel time seems to disappear and you don’t feel you have done anything
  • Constantly find you’re chasing around fire-fighting
  • Have tight schedules you can’t meet because you over promise your time away

What is it about?

This interactive workshop will cover

  • Top time stealers
  • Preventing disruptions and minimising distractions
  • Identifying priorities and planning your time
  • Setting SMART goals
  • Using planning tools e.g. Outlook and calendars
  • Knowing your limits and communicating them
  • Rewarding yourself for a job well done

What will I get out of it?

  • How to manage your time more effectively
  • How to make meetings work successfully
  • Increase your effectiveness and reduce stress

Train the Trainer (2 days)

Are you required to train others as part of your role?  Would you like to learn how to make this engaging? Do you want to ensure that your learners are able to retain and transfer what they learn back into the workplace?

This practical Train the Trainer course will equip you with a number of skills to enable you to train others in an interesting and memorable way.

The aim of this course is to provide the learner with the core skills and understanding on what makes a successful trainer. We will cover areas such as:  learning styles, the learning process and using the right media to communicate your message.

The second day of the course allows the learner to create their own training courses and looks at content, timings, transfer strategies and how to present effectively.

You will learn how to:

  • Create a lesson plan
  • Assess learning to ensure learning has taken place
  • Writing a role play
  • Prepare a PowerPoint presentation that is eye catching and memorable
  • Plan and deliver a short 10-minute training session
  • Action planning for the future
  • Plan a training session (using mind mapping)
  • Write the aims and objectives
  • Set up a learning contract
  • Describe the qualities of a successful trainer looking at:
  • Examples of good and bad practice
  • Run an icebreaker or energiser
  • Identify the principles of adult learning including the different learning styles, Kolb’s learning cycle and the barriers to learning
  • Identify the barriers to learning and find solutions to help overcome them
  • Recognise group dynamics and how to facilitate discussion and feedback sessions using good questioning skills
  • Manage the group dynamics  including the challenging participant,  building self-esteem in course participants, handling their resistance and responding to the impossible question
  • Use different methods and mediums in your training including activities, case studies, simulations, games, stories, role plays, discussions, simulations and quizzes
  • Improve retention through different methods including writing mnemonics
  • Coach and provide qualitative feedback to help build self esteem of course participants
  • Create a lesson plan
  • Assess learning to ensure learning has taken place
  • Writing a role play
  • Prepare a PowerPoint presentation that is eye catching and memorable
  • Plan and deliver a short 10-minute training session
  • Action planning for the future