Top 3 new age personality development skills for millennials

personality development skills training

Do you think millennials really require personality development training? They all seem to be well groomed and carry themselves well in the new age corporate attire. They are smart and confident and know exactly what they want in life. They have big dreams and have already paved out the path to reach them well before they leave college. Then why do you think we would still be talking about personality development training for them?

Well, the fact is that personality is made up of two aspects. The outer personality which is made up of how we look and behave. And the inner personality which is made up of our attitude, motivation, values, fears, complexes and other thoughts and emotions. And while the inner personality is typically the one that we tend to ignore while working on changing our personality, its actually the one that contributes to 90% of our personality.

Now let me give you my top three areas which every personality development training for millennials needs to focus on. By the way, I am a millennial myself. So, I’am writing this through my own experience as well as feedback from others.  

1.       1.Openness to others

Though we are in a generation where we expect the world to be open to new ideas and opinions, very often we ourselves struggle to be open to other people’s ideas. We all want a society that is open to diversity and in fact often land up quarrelling with our own parents on their old school thoughts. But how open are we to accept their opinions and ideologies. After all, it’s a two-way street where openness has to be at both ends. Isn’t it?

                                                 

Openness is difficult and can be elusive for many. But if you really want to improve in this aspect, attend a good personality development training and soft skill training. It will show you the mirror and help you get aware when you’re not. 

2.     2.  Being ourselves but considering others

Yes, in this new generation we want to be ourselves and not be judged by the society. But sometimes there needs to be consideration for others. For example, consider the situation on the roads today. More and more young drivers are rash and break traffic rules. While we need to enjoy our drive and get to our destination fast, we also need to ensure that we are not causing inconvenience or danger to others. A quick check to ensure we are being sensitive and not hurting other’s feelings or bothering someone else can really help.

3.      3. Behaviour and focus

We live in a technologically advanced world. We all carry smartphones and smartwatches. No one can deny the influence they have had on us. While they have made life easier, they have also led us to move around in society with literally no clue who is sitting next to us or who has passed by! We no more smile, shake hands, offer seats or talk to each other. Everyone is engrossed in their respective phones. And that’s the precise reason why we no longer feel heard and our suffering from huge complexes. We need to realise what technology is doing and break out of its grip. Come back to being human and corporate training help to fully present in every instance that life presents to us.

So, these are my top 3 skills which are extremely basic, but I see missing in millennials today. And hence, I feel personality development training is definitely an option for them.

RISE OF CORPORATE TRAINING PROGRAMS IN METROPOLITAN CITIES

The number of corporate training programs that are being held across the country, especially in the domain of soft and behavioural skills, has risen tremendously. And that’s a change that we have been observing since when we started off around a decade ago.

Previously, organisations used to focus more on equipping their employees with technical skills. Therefore, most of the corporate training programs held were on hard skills. Now the scenario is changing. Companies have started realising the importance of soft skills and how they can make a huge difference to the success of an employee and the company. They have therefore started arranging soft and behavioural skills training programs at all levels, right from the blue collared staff at the bottom to the top management.

Another change we have witnessed is the increasing number of start-ups arranging corporate training programs for their people in the metros. Previously start-ups would focus more on work to bring the organisation up. Training would be a frill that an employee would get after the company had made good profits. Nowadays start-ups don’t wait for that stage to come. They realise that to reach success faster, they need to keep arranging corporate training programs for their employees. For its only when you have a well-trained workforce with you that you can become stable and successful faster.

Therefore; due to the rise in the number of start-ups in the metros and the changing mentality of organisations when it comes to training, there is a sharp growth in the number of corporate training programs held. Newer companies are now adding programs like communication skills, personality development and managerial skills to their training basket. Companies which have full fledged training departments are going on to conduct more advanced topics like situational leadership, transactional analysis, neurolinguistic programming and various others.

Training is finally coming of age and we are happy to see organisations moving towards development and having learning cultures. Employees are also becoming more tuned to keeping their learning going. They realise how this is that one thing that’s going to keep them relevant, creative, curious and on the top. It’s definitely the recipe for success!

CORPORATE TRAINING IS A NECESSITY FOR TRANSFORMING PEOPLE

Corporate training companies are preferred by big and small organisations over their internal developmental team. Why? Because, a corporate training company has solid experience and holds a neutral perspective towards the organisation and its employees.

Organisations today have understood the importance of training and development for their employees. They very well know, that for the organisation to grow and move to the next level, it is important that the capability of their people keeps increasing with time. For that, they need to be developed and their capabilities need to be enhanced on regular basis.

For a company to come up with new solutions and upgrade themselves to sustain in this rapidly growing and changing environment, new ideas are a requisite. And for new ideas to be generated, people need to be creative. Trainings help people learn new ways and methods to do things differently and more effectively. And learning even the smallest of things like an excel shortcut, can improves a personal effectiveness which will benefit the person himself and eventually the organisation.

Continuous development is therefore a must. And for that corporate training, a necessity.

Corporate training has proven to be a great way for developing and transforming people for better productivity and personal growth. Exactly, what corporate training companies work on. They help organisations in developing and transforming their people which eventually helps them in transforming the organisation for a better future.

And do you know why corporate training companies are so good at creating the desired change? Because they help you in finding out the exact challenge/s your people are facing and provide you with solutions for the same. And the best part of it is, that it is client specific.  Solutions are tailor made for each organisation to address their specific issues and remove the problem from the root!

Thus corporate training companies help big time in addressing various ground level issues that your people may be facing and are having a difficult time solving.

5 points to select ideal corporate training company in Pune

Corporate training company 

Pune has been an IT hub for quite sometime now. And has now also become home to a number of other industries. Many national and multinational companies have either established or shifted their base to Pune. This is also the reason why there are many corporate training companies in Pune that are currently on the roll.

If you are a company in Pune and are looking forward to finding a corporate training company for your organisation’s development, you have no dearth of options. In fact, it’s now become difficult to figure out which corporate training company is the best and will be able to cater to your needs! And that’s also probably the reason why you clicked on this article! So today I’m going to try and give you the top 5 things you should look for in a corporate training company before hiring them for fulfilling your training needs.

Here we go…

1.       Experience is important. There are very few corporate training companies in the market that have actually managed to sustain and survive over the years. Therefore, always check how long the company has been in the market. More the time, better will be the experience of having worked with different kinds of clients for different needs. You can ask the company to share the training sessions they have conducted in your sector if that is important for you.

2.       Quality of trainers and consultants. This is really important. At the end of the day, the trainers are the ones who will actually be catering to the developmental needs. Hence, always evaluate the trainers and consultants; their experience and the kind of work they have done in the past. And if you can, speak to some participants the trainer has trained in the past. That should give you some good insights.

3.       Presence across the country. If you have many offices at different locations PAN India, this will be important for you. If the corporate training company also has trainers across the country, it will be beneficial for you. They can provide you with local trainers at each of your offices; which saves travel, lodging and boarding costs. It also gives you a trainer who can speak the local language and connect at a better level with your employees.

4.       Doing a pre-work. Pre work is a necessity. Even if you have done your internal training need analysis, check if the corporate training company will do pre work for the sessions too. It adds a lot of value to the overall intervention. It helps participants connect to examples of their daily interactions at work, which the trainer learns of during the pre-work.

5.       Lastly, the post training support. We all know that in a one or two-day training, creating a vast change is difficult.  Such sessions are therefore more focussed on creating awareness.  Post training support is therefore important to increase retention and tackle challenges that may crop up during implementation. Post training support therefore helps carry forward the learning at the workplace.

Hope this helps you chose a great corporate training company for your organisation!

Importance of coaching skills training

Coaching skills training

Coaching skills training is very important for every Manager. And I got proof of that once again while conducting a Managerial Skills session.

The role of a Manager encompasses looking after his team along with getting the work done. Unfortunately, many Managers tend to focus on the latter while completely forgetting the former. They are so busy with deadlines and piles of projects that they forget that in order to get the best out of their team, they need to spend time developing them. They also need to understand that delegation is not just about dumping work on your team members. Its about supporting the team complete the tasks so that they learn through them and are able to go to the next level. And this is exactly where coaching skills training comes into the picture.

So why does a Manager need to have good coaching skills? Simply to support their team members. And why coaching skills specifically and why not training skills? Because some team members need support when it comes to their attitude and its coaching that will be able to fix that.

We all know how difficult it is to change our behaviour. So, you can well imagine how tough it would be to alter our attitude! And the depth of the intervention and attention required for the same can only be met through a suitable coaching intervention.

Coaching Skills training is therefore extremely important for every Manager.  He must have the right skills to be able to coach his team members. And what may be the right coaching skills you may ask? Well he needs to be able to listen well without interrupting, ask suitable questions and be comfortable being silent wherever required. He should be able to provide a safe space for the team member to open up and share his thoughts and emotions on the issue at hand.

The Manager also needs to be a facilitator and allow the team member to find his own solution rather than providing him with ready-made solutions. This not only increases their buy-in towards finding a solution, but also the commitment with which they take appropriate steps towards the solution. This in turn helps the team member think on his own feet, thereby making him independent and self-sufficient for the future.

Being able to coach his team himself also increases ownership and accountability of the Manager. Team Bonding improves with team members and the Manager works towards creating a strong cohesive team. It also increases the respect that team members have towards their Manager. It makes them more open and able to share not only professional issues but also their personal issues.  And you know who is the happiest person of all? The human resources manager. He can now focus on his work as all the Managers are capable of handling their own teams and do not need the HR to intervene every now and then.

In short, it’s a win-win for everyone. The Manager, his team, other teams that interact with this team, vendors, customers and the organisation on the whole. And how did we do this? By simply giving coaching skills training to our Managers. A magic wand that can really create wonders!

Hmm… So, have you taken your coaching skills training?

What are the top 5 soft skills for an ideal leader?

Soft skills training and behavioural skills training need to be on the cards for everyone, be it a leader or an entry level executive. And although it’s one of those skills that can make or break a person’s career at any level, its frankly the most neglected!

So today I’m going to list down the top 5 soft skills that a leader needs to possess. Here goes…

1. Communication Skills – Now that’s definitely a skill you will find in pretty much every soft skills training, but one that tends to get missed out in soft skills training sessions for leaders! Why? Because we often think that communication skills meant for those at the entry level. And that’s why you’ll always find it at multiple places in the training calendar of very organisation especially for lower level employees! However, its also one of those skills that takes time and continuous efforts to master. Which is why you will find many leaders still lacking in it.

Leaders need to be able to listen to their team members. They need to allow their teams to share their opinions in a safe and non-threatening environment. They also need to master the art of handling conflict and saying what they need to assertively, without aggression.

2. Emotional Intelligence – Yes another extremely important skill or should I say intelligence! Managing their own emotions and learning how to manage those of others is of prime importance for leaders especially in such stressful times. And for that, a leader must have a very high level of awareness. He must be able to manage his own reactions, thoughts and emotions and at the same time be empathetic towards others. And that is another skill that can take years if not lifetimes to develop!

3. Time Management – Leaders are always short on time. And as much as they may think that they don’t need soft skills training on how to manage their and their teams time better, they actually do. After all, there’s always a scope to do more in 24 hours, isn’t there?

4. Decision Making – Decisions don’t leave leaders. They follow them around until they take them!  Therefore, being able to take decisions after considering the larger picture and in the interest of the majority is very important. And that’s why leaders should learn the various decision-making tools. It will not only help them take those tough decisions but will also reduce the time they take to take them.

5. Influencing – Last but not the least, comes the skill to influence others around. And that’s an extremely important skill for a leader. People must look up to him and respect him. And for that, he needs to take actions that will earn him the respect rather than having people give respect out of fear.

So those were my top 5. What do you think? Are there any other important soft skills that leaders need to be have and be trained on?

Well that’s all from me today, but I would love to hear what you have to say. And I now better get down to creating the content for another soft skills training session that I need to deliver by the end of the week.

Wish you adieu and Happy learning!

Top 3 Benefits of leadership skills training

I was conducting a leadership skill training last week for a client. It was for a bunch of young leaders who were comparatively new to the role. And therefore, we had to go to the basics. After all, there’s really no sense in going to something very advanced when the basics are where you really need to work on!

I must say, the participants were also very open to learning. They were open to learning more on how they could practically ‘practice’ the basics rather than jumping towards ‘knowing’ the more complex. And so I thought I’d share with you some of the benefits they got from this leadership skills training. It may be of help to you too and give you insights into what you can do to be a better leader.

1. Self-Awareness: Most of us our so lost in our thoughts that we are unaware of all that is happening within us. Therefore, having a finger on our thoughts, emotions, feelings and reactions is of utmost important. Not only does it help us in staying in the present moment, it also helps us in becoming emotionally more intelligent. We can manage our emotions as well as the reactions that we tend to succumb to so often! And although most leadership skills trainings do not focus on this aspect, if you ask me, its absolutely essential.

2. Interpersonal Communication: A leader needs to be a good communicator; whether it be with his subordinates, peers or even with the top management. He must be able to say what he wants clearly and receive appropriate responses from those he communicates with. However, many leaders fall back on communication, especially due to their personality styles. Learning how to overcome such barriers for smoothening communication is therefore essential. It adds great value to the leader as well as the leadership skills training, he is attending!

3. Managing Tasks: Most of the times, leaders get overwhelmed by the number of tasks they need to complete. It’s difficult as they have to manage not only their own tasks but those of the teams they look after too. Therefore, delegation is a skill that forms an integral part of a leadership skills training. Leaders need to understand the best way to delegate to their subordinates, taking individual skill sets and their commitment into consideration. This can make completion of tasks a lot easier for them and their subordinates and also help them get more done in their day.

These were just some of skills that we sharpened during this leadership skills training. I would love to hear your experiences on the same. Do let us know what valuable skills you picked up from a leadership skills session you may have attended…

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS TO MAINTAIN A GOOD WORK ENVIRONMENT

We get a lot of enquires for conducting communication skills training for teams who specifically interact with customers or external stakeholders. After all, we all want the people representing our company to be great at communication while interacting with those outside the organisation. But what about communication within the organisation?

Most of the communication that takes place happens with those inside the organisation. It’s with our subordinates, managers, top leaders, peers and people from different teams and departments who all form a part of our ‘internal customers.’ And communicating with our internal customers effectively is equally important.

A major focus of most communication skills training is to help us communicate effectively with our own team members and with those from different teams. And this does not include only verbal communication. It also includes non-verbal communication such as written communication as well as body language and voice. These are parts of communication that we typically tend to overlook but are extremely important and can make a big difference.

For creating a healthy workplace, it is important to have a culture that promotes open communication across the organisation. One that encourages new ideas, fosters creativity, encourages people, reduces unwanted conflict and misunderstanding and increases trust among people. A communication skills training helps in doing all of these.

The best part about a communication skills training programme is that it is helpful in a person’s professional and personal life. We all interact with people at our home and in our society and really could do with having smoother communication with them!

It also helps you in being assertive and managing difficult situations smoothly, something that many of us need, right? And if we can learn these, we would not just have a great environment at our workplace but also every other place we operate in. And for that, communication skills training is the way to go!

5 Important features when it comes to Training the Trainer

A few days back I attended a Train the Trainer training. It was an amazing learning experience. It helped me unfold various aspects of being a better trainer. And so I thought, let me share my learning with you all today…

The first most important feature of a train the trainer session is understanding what training and facilitation is. In the current dynamic scenario, if you 'train' people, you will end up doing most of the talking! You will put in all you have to impart the required knowledge and skills, but do you think that’s all adults really need to learn? Is there something else a trainer can do to facilitate learning? Well there is. And it’s precisely that word, facilitate! Facilitation helps in stimulating the learner inside each one of us and creates a safe space where participants can find their answers rather being told them. It allows reflection and introspection through questioning which gives participants a chance to realise what’s happening in and around them.

Next is understanding the importance of preparation. For you to deliver a programme well, it’s important that you start preparing for it well in advance. Spend time in understanding the participants, their expectations, challenges and needs well. Select an appropriate methodology and tools to cover what you need to in a way that will increase learning for the audience. It’s only when your preparation is solid can your session go well. And we all know the importance of having a strong foundation! 

The third important feature of a train the trainer workshop is clearly understanding the context of the programme you are going to conduct. You must know who the audience is, why they need this session and what they need to be able to do so that you can cover the same in the session. This gives a trainer clarity and ensures that s/he is moving in the right direction.

The fourth thing is understanding the difference between objectives and outcomes. While the former focusses on what the session is aimed at, the latter points towards what the participants will be able to do post attending the session. Having both these clear helps us in designing a session that fulfils the needs of the learners.  

Last but not the least, is how to conduct an activity successfully. Every activity has a set of instructions which we call the brief and the reflection which is done at the end called the debrief. Being able to clearly give instructions to participants and then deciphering what has happened during the activity is an art in itself. And one that needs to be taught in every train the trainer session. Its also one that can take a trainer from training to facilitation and from being mediocre to a true mirror for participants. 

Train the trainer workshops have really evolved over time. They now cover a large number of modules which help trainers cater to the adult need for learning. They have come a long way from presentation skills to facilitation. And I’m sure with changing learner needs they will keep evolving.

Why business etiquette is important

I’m currently busy preparing for a business etiquette training. It’s for the manufacturing unit of a large Indian brand. And guess who the audience is? A set of engineers. Yes, my favourite. Being one myself, I do relate to them the best.

                                                    

I’m sure you must be curious as to what topics I’m going to cover in this business etiquette training. Well, it’s going to be a mixed bag. A little bit of face to face etiquette, meeting, telephone and email etiquette.

So, what is business etiquette and why is business etiquette training so important?

Well, business etiquette it simply our mannerisms in a business scenario. The way we present ourselves in our communication with various people we interact with like customers, colleagues, superiors, subordinates, vendors, suppliers, etc. The way we talk when meeting people, shaking hands, greeting, introducing ourselves, being polite; to how we talk while on the phone, opening and closing a call, putting it on hold, etc. It also covers how we start and end emails, how to write in clear and concise words what we mean, etc.; to how to behave while attending a meeting.

How does it help?

1. It firstly helps us improve our interpersonal relationships skills by treating everyone with respect. Whether it be a customer, vendor, supplier, subordinate or superior; who doesn’t want to be treated with respect and feel like an equal. We all do. And following business etiquette is an excellent way to ensure that.

2. Business etiquette training provides us with guidelines while communicating. And many of us would be at a complete loss if we had to communicate without them! It provides a direction and gives us a set of dos and don’ts that can help us in not only starting a conversation well but also completing it in a polite and courteous manner. Just imagine what it would be like to not know what to do when you go to meet a prospective client for the first time!

3. Professionalism is another area that business etiquette training really works on. Don’t you feel great when you receive a call from a vendor who never forgets to greet you and also conveys his message in a well-articulated manner! Truly, business etiquette is what really helps you create a great impression on people.

And what happens when professionalism and interpersonal relationships improve? We become more successful as individuals. And it becomes easier to achieve our desired goals and success faster.

And you know the best part? Not only does it affect us, it also rubs off on those around us. We actually start becoming a role model and people start following our ways. This not only improves them, but also takes the organisation to the next level and gives customers a whole new experience.

Yup, one training, multi-fold advantages!