Soft skills are essential interpersonal communication tools that ultimately help in the workplace regardless of what field you find yourself in. Each job will require some sort of communication aspect or dealing with others on a daily basis, so soft skills assist a person in these dealings. Hard skills, on the other hand, are job-specific and provide the knowledge needed to complete tasks. While both are important, it is easier to obtain hard skills, as they come with education, training programs, and other kinds of on-hands learning. 

Training soft skills are often complicated, as they are deeply embedded in a person’s personality traits, attributes, and abilities to pick up on social cues. This being said, they are easier to manage and ingrain when done physically and hands-on. When conducted online, the proctor must remember certain aspects of soft skills to touch base on in order for the session to be successful. The points are as follows:

Remember the Practical Applications

Soft skills are often learned through real-world experiences and applications. These skills are not honed through mastering textbooks or studying for them, they have to be practiced and made a habit. To be successful, your online sessions should have simulations and other immersive activities that test the abilities and push the comfort zones of those attending. Stepping out of comfort zones invites the possibilities of mistakes, which you can see and attend to in order to improve your participants’ confidence by learning from shortcomings. 

Accept Feedback from Attendees

There is no way of knowing what skills certain attendees may need to get from your session unless they explicitly say so. This way, you can gather data via physical means or interview means to be able to come up with a module that can hit all points and tackle what they find to be pressing issues.

Shift and Maintain Focus on Relevant Skills Education

When doing a module on, for example, how to improve communication, focus on that concept, and the surrounding secondary abilities like active listening and non-verbal communication. This ensures that those attending will learn relevant skills to what they signed up for. When you see that many are ready, you may try and gather more resources and create a new module for an advanced lesson by itself. 

Facilitate Knowledge Transfers Through Peer-Based Support

Peer-based support not only reduces costs by cutting the development for support resources in half but getting peers to interact with one another provides invaluable first-hand experience. Social media platforms can be utilized as open forums and live Q&As to provide people with an interactive environment.

Utilize Calculated Risk-Taking 

Providing attendees with the opportunity to fall flat and make mistakes in a safe space is something that is invaluable, as they can see where they went wrong without any real losses. This way, they will be able to see the real consequences of some actions that they may not be aware of are detrimental to growth. It also offers a nothing-to-lose and everything-to-gain scenario that is a great way to teach people skills. 

Conduct Follow-Up Sessions

People do not master skills like soft skills overnight, which is why follow-up sessions exist. To master a skill is to repeat it and practice it anytime you can. These can come in the form of live seminars, video demonstrations, and online sessions to pick their brains for information and keep them stimulated.

Maximize Marketing Techniques

Even if you have an impressive library of modules and training sessions, if nobody knows about it, they are practically gathering dust. With the rise of social media, it becomes so much easier to get the word out, and this can be done through a good social media marketing presence. Free sessions will attract viewers and always make sure to have an updated database of new learning materials that keep people coming back. 

Conclusion

With almost everything available online with a simple search, there are endless possibilities to conduct training sessions for those willing to learn. Soft skills may be hard to teach and strengthen online, but it is not impossible. Having a well-developed module can prove to be extremely beneficial and informative if done correctly.

Here at Skill Builder Pro, we utilize cutting edge techniques for online learning sessions to assist in team building for a better organization. Contact us to find out more about our growing library of over 300 courses that can be deployed to strengthen your business’ integrity and presence.