"After completing the Kolbe and True Colors assessments, Gary helped me to interpret the results and therefore have a bettering understanding of my natural communication style. As a writer, this gave me valuable tools that I can apply when marketing my skills."
Marnie Hughes, Communication Artistry
The objective at The Soft Skills Expert is to help others discover their natural abilities (DNA) in order to become more successful in business and in life. Here at The Soft Skills Expert we are following a lifetime passion for helping others identify and understand their natural strengths so they can achieve more.
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WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT |
Have you reached a plateau in your performance? To successfully perform a job function, you can reach a plateau in your performance when based exclusively on the technical aspects of the job. In order to stand on that plateau and rise to the next level, the understanding of your natural abilities and implementation of soft skills is crucial.
Are you having trouble getting others to buy into your ideas? Do you understand their natural abilities? If you understood their natural abilities you would be better enabled to frame your communication to them in the form they would most readily accept.
If you can’t communicate your ideas in a way that is clear and will get others to buy into them, this may actually work against you. Any individual on a personal level, and certainly any organization wanting to maximize employee performance and satisfaction, would be wise to develop soft skills.
Organizations, particularly ones involving face-to-face customer service, are scored higher on surveys when their employees master soft skills. With an increasingly service-oriented and culturally diverse business community, effective interpersonal and communication skills are more important than ever for ensuring a smooth functioning and highly productive workforce.
A company that enjoys success in recruiting and retention will match necessary abilities for a role with a candidate’s natural abilities. This type of accurate match-up results in low or no turnover and substantial cost savings from interviewing, retraining, and down time. Improved hiring practices will mean that the organization has accurately placed an individual in a position to which they are naturally suited and further savings will be enjoyed in the areas of reduced absenteeism and increased job performance.
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WHAT WE DO |
Soft Skills Expert provides programs that help organizations build a winning culture based on natural strengths. These programs include administering assessment questionnaires from the Kolbe, True Colors and Myers-Briggs systems. We then work with the client to take the results report produced and assist in the interpretation of the natural abilities discovered. Soft Skills Expert help the client to make the links between what the assessment says about them and what elements of their behaviour and personality they apply to. We then work with the client to develop an improvement plan that will get the right combination of skills in place for maximum efficiency and productivity.
Soft Skills Expert helps improve the quality of communication internally and externally for overall corporate improvement. We will review the client’s communication processes and offer suggestions and alternatives to perfect them. We target communication obstacles between employees as well as the company’s external communication tools such as marketing materials, information documents, website content, and business letters and reports.
For organizations operating under a team structure, Soft Skills Expert will help assemble winning teams that incorporate individuals who display strengths in different areas. We will also use this formula to diagnose and treat underperforming teams.
Soft Skills Expert will share with the client their efficiency model of delegation and will teach the client how to get things done through the appropriate designation of tasks to the individual most capable of timely and accurate completion.
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HOW WE DO IT |
Initially we will recommend a Kolbe assessment for our client to obtain a wide range of information in areas including personal performance, delegation, hiring, team success and communication. True Colors is added once the company becomes comfortable with the Kolbe system and results.
Both programs can be administered individually or through a group workshop spanning one half or full day. There are a number of follow up consultation options available depending on the group and individual grasp of the material and concepts and ability to apply what has been learned.
HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
- Client takes assessment – (Kolbe A , True Colors , Strengths Finder , Myers-Briggs , DISC) Each person completes the assessment which includes answering a series of questions about themselves honestly. This process takes about 20 to 30 minutes.
- Report is generated – Once the assessment is complete, the individual is introduced to the results in the form of a report detailing their assessed natural ablilities and their likely approach to certain scenarios.
- Internal challenge – Initially, the individual may deny or challenge the results. In some cases, they don’t want to believe that these are their natural abilities. We work with them to validate those results.
- Ah Ha! – When the person actually realizes that the results are accurate and their natural abilities have been defined.
- Acceptance – This is what happens after the ‘ah ha’ moment when the person stops resisting the results, and accepts their natural abilities for what they are.
- Embrace (Zone of Excellence) - The person decides to use this information about their natural abilities to empower their life by consciously choosing how they can perform a task in a way that is naturally more efficient for them and to reduce the number things they are not naturally good at.
- Connect with others / Integrate all skills (power zone) - During a workshop members of teams become aware of not only their own natural abilities, but also the abilities of their coworkers resulting in effective teamwork, better communications, and management based on strengths.