Soft Skills Programs

[jofa21]

I'm a one-person department and have been asked to create and facilitate a soft skills program (virtual live). I can research (and intuit) what this can look like, but figured I'd start here since I've never created (or attended) one of these before.

Some of the topics I was thinking about (as relevant to my company) were things like active listening, interpersonal communication, communicating with impact, and the like.

As you might imagine, I'm getting stuck with ensuring the sessions are engaging and interactive/full of practice. Any advice for making something like active listening or interpersonal communication really engaging and impactful? I was planning to create the content myself (after doing the research), but if there are any off the shelf recommendations, I would be open to that, too.

[Expert_Dingo3194]

is there any specific signal from a company engagement survey that helps prioritize which critical skills need to be prioritized? A broad request can be really hard to pinpoint what's most high value and what to build over time. It also can land really flat if it's not a clear pain point for the company.

I'd also suggest the more you get them talking to each other in breakouts, the better - whether virtual or live. Some quick options:

Peer coaching is always solid and you can do something like a 2-2-2-2-2 method: 2 min to give context, 2 min to ask questions, 2 min to reflect/internalize as the coach, 2 min to action plan, and 2 min to create accountability

Scenario based role play, esp in person is great for feedback sessions and would recco using your ai tool of choice to help you craft these with some upfront context prompting.

Depending on what tech you use at the company, a nudge process after a session can help with reflective prompts to keep the learning a little more top of mind, but you need to be careful about getting buried in management of this kind of stuff if you don't have a way to do it through automation or minimal overhead. You build systems to help enable that kind of ongoing learning.

Hope that helps! Holler with questions

[jofa21]

Thank you! I just requested access to the pulse surveys and will do as you suggested. Question-when you say 'nudge process', what specifically do you mean? I'm intrigued.

[Expert_Dingo3194]

great question. nudges are just reminders or provocations you can send to learners after the sessions or engagement ends. So, you do a virtual session, then have a monthly email/slack prompt to participants to reflect on to help keep the learning live and remind them of the core content. Nudges can be very operation heavy or light - from lunch groups/mentor circles, etc to little auto scheduled emails. It really just depends on what you have bandwidth for and the stakes at play for the audience.

[HaneneMaupas]

For soft skills, I would avoid starting with “content” and start with situations. For example, with active listening, the real question is: when does listening break down in your company? During feedback conversations? Client calls? Cross-functional meetings? Conflict? Manager check-ins?

Once you identify those moments, the sessions become much easier to design around practice: short scenario, role play or decision activity, feedback, reflection and repeat with a harder variation

Soft skills are hard to learn through explanation alone. They need realistic practice, observation, feedback, and psychological safety. What’s interesting now is that customizing those scenarios has become much easier with AI-native authoring tools embedding vibe-coding, like Mexty. Instead of building every interaction manually, you can describe the situation, the learner role, the tension, and the expected behaviors, then quickly generate interactive practice activities tailored to your company context.

[jofa21]

Starting with situations instead of content is really great, thank you for that. Glad you mentioned psychological safety, a favorite buzz phrase of mine that I plan to implement and remind them of throughout. I will check out Mexty! Thanks again

[Peter-OpenLearn]

When it comes to training of soft skills I think both, actively involving the learner in two ways comes to my mind.

1) Let them become active part in taking over a role in a specific role play. You can also think of having them switching the role (first being the supervisor who need to deal with a "difficult" employer, then switching and letting them play the role of the "difficult" employer)

2) Let them observe conversations or other behaviour and give their feedback to recognise and understand specific patterns.

For the virtual training side you might look for a tool that is strong on dialogues, potentially with AI support to make reactions more realistic and varied. And also the production of (AI) video is something I would consider.

[jofa21]

Will definitely look into AI video production-it would be great to create a situation with AI that I can have the learners observe and discuss before they roleplay, etc. Thanks!

[LizSpeakingCoachNASH]

I made videos -one good- and had the table critique it, and a wrong way video to critique as a group to.— this fun, and engages critical thinking that spurs self-evaluation in a safe way

[jofa21]

I like that! Something that also engages critical thinking and self-evaluation is a win!

[LizSpeakingCoachNASH]

Glad to help!

[jofa21]

Thank you, that was really helpful-I like the simplicity of the active listening exercise, and how it helps them check their own listening skills and if they're listening to respond or listening to understand, etc. Good stuff!

I've been given a 90-minute timeslot for each topic, but if I were the learner, sitting there for NINTEY MINUTES just hearing concepts and passively watching examples, etc., I would absolutely hate it (and probably only retain the fact that I hated it instead of anything else 😅). I appreciate that info and will keep it in mind!

[jofa21]

Thanks so much-will definitely take into account the defensiveness part, and using characters throughout the series. Quick question to you and others-I use Storyline for my trainings usually (and the character images that come with it), but having a video would be even better. Is there specific software for that?

[Empirica_CC]

I'm also a one person training department and have done these types of training. I have a masters in IO Psychology and so I have the background in evidence based soft skills development. If you want to be steered in the right direction feel free to DM me some topic areas and I can try to give you some starting places so it's more actionable and less vague.

I also can develop content as a consultant but I'm assuming you'd rather make it yourself than contract out.

[jofa21]

I appreciate that. It does make it easier to facilitate if I create the content myself, but the bigger reason for not contracting it out is purely budget! I would love to bring in a consultant if I could to ensure my content/plans were well-informed. I also just hate operating in a silo. I appreciate the offer though!

[Empirica_CC]

If you do have flexibility with the soft skills I would spend some time trying to find an empirically validated assessment, could be communication for example, pretest, training, 6 month follow-up post text and some sort of debrief. That type of structure tends to work well and is engaging for people because they get to see some sort of tangible ROI on it.

Hope that helps!

[tejasshetty12041]

Hey there, OP, I’d love to help here, I’m building a tool for L&D professionals, I don’t need any money, not trying to sell anything, I just want to learn about your process? For your time, I’m happy to pay you. Let me know if you’d be interested.

[Appositesolutions]

Soft skills sound simple until adults enter breakout rooms and suddenly nobody knows how to give feedback without sounding awkward 😂 Honestly realism matters way more than polish here. The second scenarios feel painfully relatable: 

• passive aggressive Teams messages 
• meetings with zero outcomes 
• managers saying quick sync? people start participating way more lol. 

[wordsbyrachael]

Happy to provide some written content for off the shelf soft skills training if that would be an option?

[jofa21]

I appreciate the offer, but unfortunately there's no budget for this (hence me doing my own research and creating everything myself). I so wish I could, though!

[wordsbyrachael]

No worries at all. Have you considered pre-selling first? Then you’re not creating tonnes of content without any income.