Soft Skills Up-Skilling Events
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The document outlines a soft skills training program consisting of 3 modules covering interpersonal skills like communication, networking, negotiation, and relationship building. Module 1 focuses on first impressions, confidence, assertiveness, emotional control, body language, and rapport. Module 2 covers networking, questioning, listening, negotiation, influencing, and customer service. Module 3 addresses difficult situations, problem-solving, creativity, risk-taking, identifying opportunities, and personal branding. Each module contains 6 sessions that use activities and discussions to help participants strengthen their soft skills.
Soft Skills Up-Skilling Events
- 1. Soft Skills Up-skilling Events The Importance Of HOW Soft Skills CAN Make A Difference The Power Of You – Building Your Personal Brand For Business Owners, Graduates, Students, Corporate Workers… THE LEARNTERTAINMENT COMPANY TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING CONSULTANTS
- 2. Modules 1-3 – Overall Programme Architecture Handouts & Core Subjects – Module 1 Core Subjects - Module 2 Take-Aways First Impressions Last Networking Skills – You DON’T Get A Second Chance Your 15 Seconds Of Fame Or Shame Top Ten Tips Communicating Effectively – Guides (for each Self-Confidence Tips ‘N’ Tricks Questioning & Listening Techniques skill area) Negotiation Skills Assertiveness Techniques That Work How Not To Buckle Under Price Pressures A3 Doodle Sheets Self-Regulation – Influencing Skills Controlling Your Emotions Knowing when to Push and Pull e-Guides (PDF Body Language Awareness – Relationship Management Versions Of It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Look Building & Sustaining A Strong Pipeline Handouts/Tips) Building Rapport & Trust – Going The Extra Mile Key Skills For Winning New Business Providing World-Class Customer Service Core Subjects – Module 3 Handling Difficult People & Situations - Managing & Diffusing Conflict Problem-Solving & Decision-Making - Getting More Structured In Analysing The Situation Creativity & Innovation - Thinking Of Different Ways To Maximise The Use Of Your Products & Services Taking Calculated Risks - Spotting Opportunities ‘Outside The Box’ Opportunity Knocks - Taking Advantage Of Potential Warm Leads & Contacts
- 3. High-Level Design – Module 1: Sessions 1-3 Session 1: First Impressions Last – You DON’T Get A Second Chance This session focuses on the importance of the first impression. The participants will be made aware of how people can make up to 11 perceptions in the first 7 seconds of meeting someone. This session also covers the importance of perceptions using the basic psychology of communication and the ‘games people play’. Session 2: Self-Confidence Tips & ‘Tricks’ This session uncovers the fundamental values and beliefs that people have and the impact they have on how they can across to others. Simple messages such as the most important thing about CONfidence is the first three letters of that word i.e. it’s a CON and how to sound, look and feel confident. Challenging automatic negative thoughts , mistaken personal beliefs, the ‘fine line’ between confidence and arrogance and how to feel more confident are also covered in this session. Session 3: Assertiveness Techniques That Work This session demonstrates to the participants that assertiveness and self- confidence are interdependent. It will cover the differences between aggression, passive/submissive, manipulative and assertiveness. Also covered in this session are saying no positively, coming across in an ‘adult’ manner, avoiding using neutral (e.g. ‘maybe’, ‘might’) and negative (‘can’t do it’, ‘I’m not the best person’) into positive powerful language strategies.
- 4. High-Level Design – Module 1: Sessions 4-6 Session 4: Self-Regulation – Controlling Your Emotions This session focuses on one of the most important aspect of an individual’s emotional intelligence, controlling your emotions. Essentially, this is your behaviour under pressure e.g. time constraints, aggressive customers and anything that ‘hits’ your ‘emotional hot buttons’ (anger, fear, sadness). This session looks at how to keep a firm grip on your emotional, physiological and physical signs of behaviour when under pressure and ‘in the firing line’. Session 5: Body Language Awareness – It’s How You Look This session takes a light-hearted but poignant look at the non-verbal signs that customers ‘feed-on’ (consciously or subconsciously) when working with you. Body language can impact the effectiveness of communication by over 50% in business (and personal) situations and may weaken the individual’s ability to look persuasive as it often affects the tone that the individual uses. The power of eye contact and body language ‘irritators’ are the core components of this session. Session 6: Building Rapport & Trust This session demonstrates to the participants that the ‘foundations’ of establishing contacts and potential/actual work is not just being assertive and appearing to be confident, but it’s also about building commonality and being personable to new and existing customers. This session will explore techniques and questions to enable the participants to build rapport, which leads to an instilment of trust. Essentially, techniques and how to ‘win’ trust and build effective rapport are the fundamental outcomes of this session.
- 5. High-Level Design – Module 2: Sessions 1-3 Session 1: Networking Skills – Your 15 Seconds Of Fame Or Shame This session focuses on the differentiators between face-to-face and online networking and how to maximise your presence. The participants will be encouraged to practise their ‘elevator’ pitch’ (15 seconds to get their business and themselves promoted confidently and ‘packed with a punch’). The session will also cover how to spot ‘interesting’ people and to find potential customers and partners. The session also covers a how to use professional and social networking sites to promote their business. Session 2: Communicating Effectively – Questioning & Listening Skills This session demonstrates the fundamental importance of the basic psychology of communication – questioning, listening and checking understanding. If these are used well, and people/customers remember you for asking relevant (and not random) questions and demonstrate verbally and non-verbally that you are listening then this goes a long well to keeping the ‘communication loop’ going strong. Clarifying and checking understanding (very under-utilised skills) are covered in this session too). Session 3: Negotiation Skills–How Not To Buckle Under Price Pressure This session explains a simple eight-stage model of effective negotiation practices, including bargaining, trading concessions (and not giving them up first), closing, negotiation tactics and not going beyond your bottom line. Although the model is theoretical, the session includes how to negotiate in a practical way through using negotiation tactics of your own. The essence of this session is to create a ‘win-win’ outcome, something that is in danger of being sacrificed to the new business owner, creating a ‘lose-win’ scenario.
- 6. High-Level Design – Module 2: Sessions 4-6 Session 4: Influencing Skills – Knowing When To PUSH and PULL This session covers the two main styles of influencing – ‘push’ and ‘pull’ strategies. A practical look at the different influencing spectrum from effective proposing and reasoning through to closing the deal. The session also explains that influencing is a lot to do with personality, hitting the right ‘emotional hot buttons’ with those they are trying to influence. Therefore, the concept of using ‘power levers’, such as personality, expert, knowledge and information power is covered to show how this results in impactful influencing. Session 5: Relationship Management – Building A Strong Pipeline This session explains the importance of managing, but most important retaining, a strong relationship with your customers. The session also covers how to build a retention strategy, a compatible with the scale and nature of your business’s customer management system. Other areas included in this session are scheduling catch-up calls/meetings, email marketing, keeping the customer ‘warm’ and planting seeds for future growth and business opportunities. Session 6:Going The Extra Mile–Providing Excellent Customer Service This session talks about a much used phrase, ‘going the extra mile’ but demonstrating through strong examples and stories of what this genuinely means. Based on the FISH! Philosophy, made famous by fishmongers in Seatlle, this session takes American ideologies into Scottish hearts and embeds four core customer-obsessed/customer-focussed practices into every organisation. This session also covers what the individual business owner can do to differentiate themselves from any competitors/competitor forces.
- 7. High-Level Design – Module 3: Sessions 1-3 Session 1: Handling Difficult People & Situations – Managing Conflict This session discusses how to handle common difficult people types and explore different strategies for dealing with them. This builds in an assertiveness model called A.G.R.E.E. and handles the subject of dealing with objections, initial disinterest and repacking your business and verbal proposition. Secondly, this session helps the participants understand that there’s one more than way or strategy to manage conflict and to build an understanding of when to use each of the five conflict handling styles. Session 2: Problem-Solving & Decision-Making Based on an effective six-stage problem-solving and decision making model, this session discusses the following key stages when effectively identifying a problem down to effective implementing the solution. Often, we jump to implied causes and solutions too easily and this session discusses the following core topics: identifying the problem, diagnose the problem, generating solutions (including creative, dynamic ones), select the solution, implement the solution and monitor/evaluate its success. Session 3: Creativity & Innovation Techniques This session encourages the participant’s to think of their business as having more applications, features, benefits and applications than they believe it currently has. Creativity comes from having the awareness to apply six different ways of thinking, described as ‘six thinking hats’ and enables the ability to be rational, logical as well as creative and emotional all at the same time. The innovation session encourages the participant to think of different situations to apply unique interventions and ‘off the wall’ solutions.
- 8. High-Level Design – Module 3: Sessions 4-6 Session 4: Taking Calculated Risks – Opportunities ‘Outside The Box’ This session focuses on taking risks in business, often a ‘taboo’ subject. The practical nature of this session suggests that potential business opportunities come along, like making an expensive telephone call to China that results in new business outweighing the cost of this, then this may be a risk worth taking. If it’s changing a component part, type of paint, whatever, sometimes it’s important to think of new opportunities in the spirit of continuous improvement, making your business less complex. Session 5: Opportunity Knocks – Taking Advantage Of Warm Leads This session focuses on maximising the opportunities that exist in the marketplace and to develop strategies for dealing with leads that the participant has picked up in a networking meeting (face-to-face or online). As warm leads can also be word-of-mouth, friend-of-a-friend, Facebook contact etc., the participants will establish techniques on how to start the conversation with the lead and ‘follow through’ on the contact, what benefits there are and most importantly make if WIIFY (What’s In It For You). Session 6: Putting It All Together – Building Your Personal Brand This session wraps-up the three modules on interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and asks the delegates to complete an exercise on building their personal brand, now that they are going to feel and be as successful as they possible can and realise that they are the brand image of their organisation – ‘they are their organisation’.