Employee Soft Skills Training Topics

I have to admit, I feel a bit uneasy talking about this soft skills stuff. It’s not that I don’t think there is a lot of value, and that soft skills are quite important to employee and managerial success, but there is a lot of debate and, how should I phrase it, “ambiguity” about soft skills which make the topic a bit hard to pin down.  Well, soft skills training topics are important, whether I like working with them or not, and it seems that in this digital world of opportunity, a lot more people who really aren’t social flowers are finding themselves in a situation where these soft skills are being required of them. So, you’re going to find yourself worrying about including the most important soft skills training topics in your overall training regimen. These are widely documented, so you can learn right alongside me below. #1 – Dealing with Angry People Angry people are difficult people who do not see the world with the same level angle that you might. This is especially important for sales and customer service and support people. They already feel put upon by the need to contact support or service, and any flaws in your customer support (hold times, phone trees etc.) is going to add to this. They can be short-fused, easily offended and kind of spoiling for a fight by the time someone gets ahold of them. Knowing how to calm down angry people and reason with them (as well as work empathy to achieve this) is extremely crucial. #2 – Networking Skills This isn’t the IT definition of this, but with the philosophy of every connection counts being widely adopted as a standard mindset, the skills of all employees to network and build connections and relationships is very, very important. On top of helping form a wider array of relationships, it also reinforces the nature to form interconnecting relationships within the organization, providing more solid teamwork and unity among all components of the system. #3 – Incentive This one’s hard to teach, but incentive to fill roles that are left unattended is an important soft skill to teach. You see, teaching a mindset to maintain “if I see a job not being done, I should do it” and the concept of strategically finding voids to fill where available time and effort can be provided is severely important, because it reduces slippage and stalling when roles can’t be filled for one reason or another. Of honorable mention are the bleedingly obvious things like leadership, communications and group-centric goal mindsets, all of which we’ve talked about before in other contexts. Of course, there are a ton more soft skills training topics that you can research and work on. I think these are probably the most important ones, though, that aren’t absurdly obvious. I encourage further research, though, before deeming yourself entirely on top of this. Soft skills are important, so while they’re obnoxious to train for, you can’t afford to slack off on this.