Soft Skills Training

It is said that good hard skills on your curriculum vitae will get you the job interview. It is the soft skills you have in presenting your answers, ideas, and arguments which will land you the job and that is why most recruiting managers and agencies look for both hard and soft skills in an employee. While hard skills are job-specific skills acquired through education and training, soft skills, on the other hand, are interpersonal skills which influence communication skills of a person, social graces and how you interact with fellow employees, management, and clients. For example, a professional corporate mc must have incredible soft skills to hold a room together at a conference.

Hard skills are easily quantifiable through certification and are quickly evaluated and defined. Soft skills are also known as emotional quotient are harder to define and assess, and this is why a soft skills training is required to ensure that all employees understand and polish the ones they have. This is important because, for effective application of hard skills, soft skills must be fine-tuned since the two go hand in hand. For instance, the ability to collaborate and work with colleagues well and to get things done through other people differentiates between a great professional and an average professional.

Soft skills training targets areas such as critical thinking, teamwork, communication, leadership and work ethic among others. Below is a short discussion of each ability;

Critical Thinking

Employers like employees who can analyze a situation and come up with informed decisions on their own without unnecessarily bothering the management. Critical thinking training covers areas such as creativity, flexibility, research, adaptability, problem-solving, logical thinking, troubleshooting, inventiveness among others.

Teamwork

The ability to negotiate and work with others peacefully while appreciating diversity is important in every organization. Soft skills training on teamwork covers areas such as empathy, dealing with office politics, disability, and diversity, collaboration, customer service, networking, persuasiveness, dealing with difficult personalities and situations among others.

Communication

Every job requires speaking with people whether via phone, letter or in person and this should be done respectfully and politely. Also being an excellent communicator requires being a good listener for you to be able to give adequate feedback. Communication skills training covers areas such as non-verbal communication, negotiation, verbal communication, listening, persuasion, presentation, public speaking, writing of reports and proposals, visual communication, storytelling and body language reading.

Leadership

Though your job description may not include a leadership role, employers would like to know whether you can rise to the occasion when duty calls. Leadership involves making of executive decisions and managing of people and situation. This training will cover areas like project management, conflict management, and resolution, meeting management, decision making, deal-making, talent management, supervising, inspiring, facilitating and mentoring.

Work Ethic

People with good work ethic tend to finish their assignments on time, stay organized and focused and follow instructions even though they can work independently. These people are the pride of their employers. Work ethics training will teach fields such as time management, discipline, self-motivation and monitoring, reliability, resilience, train-ability, persistence, independence and multitasking among others.

Since soft skills build on hard skills, for effective output by the employee’s employers should invest in these soft skills training for a dynamic workforce.

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from Adam Christing https://adamchristing.com/blog/soft-skills-training/

How Does Hiring a Keynote Speaker Help With Team Building?

Having a large team requires patience, focus, and the willingness to try new methods.

One of the most efficient options a business can have is to go out and hire a keynote speaker. This speaker is responsible for the team-building session(s) and will take the time to use his/her expertise for the betterment of your business.

Let’s take a look at what hiring a keynote speaker can do for team building in the long-run.

What is a Keynote Speaker?

A keynote speaker is a professional or specialist assigned to deliver a focused talk on specific subjects. In a team building environment, this will include various topics such as development, productivity, teamwork, and communication to name a few.

The keynote speaker acts as the focal point of a team-building exercise and is used to maximize the session.

Benefits of a Keynote Speaker

1) Creates Camaraderie

A professional keynote speaker will have a certain charisma to him/her that stands out. This is the type of charisma that’s ideal when it comes to building camaraderie among team members.

Being able to charm people and interact with them at a higher level is a skill. This is where a keynote speaker is able to stand out and illustrate why he/she is the best at making things work out. Building a positive setup takes skill especially with people of all ages sitting in one room looking to make things work. It’s all about engaging them and that’s a skill keynote speakers have.

2) Maximizes Stages of Team Development

There are various stages of team development and it’s important to have someone with an understanding of what they are.

A keynote speaker is something with several years of expertise and is going to help maximize the various stages along the way. He/she will be able to point out specific issues and guide the team members in a specific direction for their betterment. It’s a great way to keep things focused and ensure a team-building exercise results in successful changes over time. It’s these little details that matter when it comes to running any type of team-building exercise!

3) Increases Focus

Being able to increase focus within a group of people is one of the hardest things to do and should be taken seriously. There is no reason to go out and enjoy a solution that is out o focus as that will not help out at all. A keynote speaker is able to keep the group engaged and make sure everyone is participating for the betterment of the business. This can make or break how the team-building session goes. Having a focal point in any setup is important as that helps everyone focus on one thing instead of being all over the place. This is where a keynote speaker is able to make a noteworthy difference.

Hiring a keynote speaker is one of the best things a business can do in the modern age of team-building. It will improve the team-building session and make everything ten times easier.

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from Adam Christing https://adamchristing.com/blog/how-does-hiring-a-keynote-speaker-help-with-team-building/

Are You Tapping Into the Laughter Factor?

Whether you are a professional communicator, marketer, or sales person, making people feel good will help you build a positive relationship, and when it comes to making people feel good, laughter is magic. It’s the easiest way to improve your speaking, selling, teaching and persuading. Power Point doesn’t move the heart. Videos don’t create genuine human connection. Sharing a meal comes close, but in the end, when it comes to creating closeness to others, laughter is the most powerful way to connect.

I am a comedian, mc, and a keynote speaker. I have spent my entire career honing the 5 habits of humorous people. (Stay tuned for more on this topic). For more than 25 years, I have worked with more than 1000 companies and non-profit groups to entertain and empower people. I’ve made ‘em laugh in every state in the U.S.–except for Maine, I haven’t been to Maine yet!–in companies as diverse as Apple and the Associated General Contractors.

My mission is always to inspire laughter in audiences so they can improve their lives. It nearly always works in that sequence. Laughter first. Learning next.

One of my goals here is to teach you how to up your game when it comes to humor. Many authors who seek to do this, begin their books with E.B. White’s infamous warning:

“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. 
Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”

But then for some unknown reason, the author proceeds—as though an exception is being made in his case—to spend a hundred or so pages analyzing humor. The reader dies…of boredom. In my coming blogs about The Laughter Factor, I have put the lessons and quite a few laughs into a fable, instead.
My goal is to entertain you and empower you via stories and examples.

All success in your personal and professional life comes down to mastering certain behaviors. You will soon learn the 5 habits of humorous people, and you will discover that you don’t have to be a stand-up comedian to benefit from exercising your own unique style of humor. Keep reading here and you will begin to identify which of the humor habits that best fit your personality. And you will see how you can begin to use laughter to lift others…and yourself.

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Adam Christing is a popular Event MC and Funny Motivational Speaker. He is the author of Your Life is a Joke: 12 Ways to Go from Ha Ha to AHA! (For more information go to AdamChristing.com)

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from Adam Christing https://adamchristing.com/blog/are-you-tapping-into-the-laughter-factor/