Developing soft skills in your company?

Soft skills are becom­ing impor­tant com­pe­ten­cies with­in com­pa­nies that have an inter­est in rais­ing aware­ness and train­ing their employ­ees to enable them to evolve in their envi­ron­ment. In this arti­cle, we come back to the con­cept of soft skills, why they are so pop­u­lar and how to train your employees.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are per­son­al and inter­per­son­al qual­i­ties that play an impor­tant role in a com­pa­ny. Thanks to soft skills, employ­ees can bet­ter under­stand the pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­ment around them.

Soft skills to have in a company

To give you an idea of the dif­fer­ent soft skills that are present in com­pa­nies, Jérôme Hoa­rau and Julien Bouret, authors of the book Le réflexe soft skills, les com­pé­tences des lead­ers de demain (The soft skills reflex, the skills of tomor­row’s lead­ers), have iden­ti­fied 15 soft skills to be mas­tered by 2020.Problem solving

1. Con­fi­dence
2. Emo­tion­al intelligence.
3. Empa­thy
4. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills
5. Time man­age­ment
6. Stress man­age­ment
7. Cre­ativ­i­ty
8. Entre­pre­neur­ial spirit
9. Bold­ness
10. Moti­va­tion
11. Vision, visu­al­iza­tion
12. Pres­ence
13. Sense of teamwork
14. Curios­i­ty

How to train your employees in soft skills?

If most of these skills are inter­per­son­al and intu­itive, it is pos­si­ble to devel­op them. There are three ways to help your employ­ees devel­op these new skills.

• The train­ing

Train­ing cours­es allow you to devel­op cer­tain soft skills such as cre­ativ­i­ty and time man­age­ment. E‑learning cours­es will allow you to intro­duce these skills pro­gres­sive­ly on a dai­ly basis. Sol­unea can assist you in the devel­op­ment of your cus­tomized soft skills train­ing. Depend­ing on the spe­cif­ic needs of your com­pa­ny and your employ­ees, Sol­unea will cre­ate a per­fect­ly adapt­ed train­ing pro­gram. Thaleia can also help you cre­ate your own soft skills training.

• Coach­ing

Cor­po­rate coach­ing also works very well for the devel­op­ment of soft skills. After an analy­sis of the needs of your employ­ees con­cern­ing soft skills, coach­ing ses­sions will allow you to work on key com­pe­ten­cies in a col­lec­tive or indi­vid­ual way.

• Prac­ti­cal workshops

Putting into prac­tice the notions seen dur­ing the e‑learning cours­es or the coach­ing ses­sions is the stage that per­fect­ly con­cludes the devel­op­ment of soft skills in a com­pa­ny. Dur­ing these work­shops, you can bring your teams togeth­er to par­tic­i­pate in role-play­ing games which con­cern, for exam­ple, empa­thy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, team spir­it, etc. You can also set up a real project that will require the use of all these skills such as the cre­ation of a micro-busi­ness (fic­ti­tious or real) with­in the com­pa­ny in order to mobi­lize all the soft skills men­tioned above.

Pho­to by Natalya Letuno­va on Unsplash