785 Soft Skills courses

Much of what you achieve will depend on your ability to persuade other people. In many respects, persuasion is the highest form of communication. This course looks at the ability of persuasion and negotiation in producing successful outcomes and the skill required in moving towards a convergence of opinion and understanding. Like much of leadership, negotiation depends on your attitudes in approach, as well as your ability to devote time to planning.

What you achieve at work is dependent on the contributions you make to your team. This is the sum of the skills that you willingly give to others or you add towards a common goal or result. This course looks at the key areas of contribution that you are required to make in order to achieve team objectives

Each team has a unique 'team personality' made up from the individuals that form it. It is this aspect that determines how effectively the team works together, the quality of their performance and what they are capable of achieving. This course looks at how teams work together to achieve common results, referred to as team objectives. Effective teams have a common 'team spirit' which directly impacts on their results.

To achieve optimum performance and long-term success all organisations have to respond and adapt to the external environment. Similarly, all job specifications within an organisation are conditioned by the plans that need to be followed in order to change. This course addresses the ability you require in having the knowledge and understanding of your organisation’s objectives, strategies and plans as well as your knowledge of the external environment in relation to political, social, financial and market competitive forces that affect your organisation.

Your ability to think is probably your greatest asset at work. Everything you say and do will be touched in some way by what is going on in your mind. Most certainly, performance and achievements are a direct function of your thinking abilities. This course looks at the skills of mental agility, conceptual and analytical thinking. Together, these skills allow you to conceive and form ideas in a practical sense and draw the right conclusions.

Personal character is the sum of your moral and ethical qualities. It is these same qualities that provide the foundation for your working relationships. This course helps you to reflect on your work behaviour and how this manifests itself in terms of integrity. Without this it is impossible to lead and manage a team with any degree of lasting success. Nor is it possible to survive in an organisation, which is not dedicated to ethical relationships.

Leaders and managers are powerful people who are able to exercise considerable influence over the way in which an organisation operates and its employees. Ethical leadership involves the way that managers and leaders carry out their decision-making in terms of moral issues and choices. It is concerned with right versus wrong, good versus bad and the many shades of grey in between. Moral implications spring from virtually every decision, both on and off the job, requiring the ethical leader to have more imagination and the courage to do the right thing, from an ethical standpoint. This course examines the role of the ethical leader and the influence that he or she can exert in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and improving an organisation’s ethical climate.

This course looks at the step-by-step process of decision making from problem definition to implementation. It highlights the importance of qualitative information in decision judgement and the impact of unstructured decisions. It emphasises that judgement takes a higher priority when the impact of the decision is greater, more complex or the potential risk is higher.

Transforming leadership is about leaders having a transforming approach to their work and lives. They operate from a set of core beliefs about people that when displayed and operated upon, motivate them to perform effectively and contribute to the development of the organisation. This transforming approach simultaneously impacts the personal development and corporate productivity of all involved. This course explores seven key areas to help you become more effective as a leader.

Much of management is about finding creative solutions to problems and identifying the appropriate course of action. Creativity and originality explores the power of the mind in bringing things into being from original thought or basic concepts. This course sets out to demonstrate how the power of imagination can build on original thoughts to create solutions and plans, which contribute to workplace performance.