- Is a SOLUTION. Because most believe that soft-skills training
- Because they genuinely believe that if their employees undergo a soft-skills session most of their projection & Communication issues that were either facing internally or with external Customers will get sorted out.
But like we’ve seen, Soft-skills is ONLY a part, a link to achieving SUCCESS.
Unless you address how perception works, how you are being perceived in terms of your Clothing Communication, grooming standards, Body language & how consciously use your COMMUNICATION as an outer-act, whatever you learn in terms of developing qualities such as time management, emotional intelligence or soft skills will remain at the theory or awareness levels & will lack the much required real-life application.
For Success to happen there is a BIGGER picture to be achieved & a SMALLER picture that is lesser known and not brought into one’s awareness.
There can be no LARGER GOAL than creating OPTIMUM VALUE for an individual & imparting TRAINING for SUCCESS. SUCCESS is not any one thing –it is achieved by creating a fine cocktail.
I hope this sort of answers your question.
“A ladder is only a medium to climb; your goal can either be the attic or the other side of the wall & accordingly you place the ladder. The ladder is KEY to your final GOAL but it is NOT the GOAL it-self”
Soft-Skills is exactly like that. More often than not, it is treated as an END in itself when it is only a tool.
In fact, Soft Skills is effective no doubt, but is not even the ladder, just one rung of a tall ladder.
Let’s assume the Customer Engagement personnel of your organization are now sensitized and made aware of soft-skills- what will happen?
They will now have some-what of a better idea that something like this exsts?
Is this all you want for your personnel out of planned a training session?
INSTEAD if we approach this from a SOLUTION, END GAME perspective, we would now introspect & ask truer, more compelling questions that could help us deliver the best to the participants in question.
Instead of looking for Soft-Skills only, let us ask pointed, Solution based questions as below
- HOW DOES A CLIENT LOOK AT A Proposition?
- Can ENHANCED Customer service lead to better Sales?
In order to achieve the above, we have to aim to create maximum VALUE instead of looking to just inculcate or enhance soft skills. We instead enhance their perceived VALUE in totality in the eyes of the customer. There is far more to GAIN in that.
HOW do WE do that?
- We must understand that there are two aspects here- the VALUE of the person or Self Value & the brand value of the product/service he or she is selling. You enhance his Self Value through his outer projection & he comes across as a Brand Ambassador to the customer.
- The customer first notices him/her through the OUTSIDE begins assuming his capability, class, cultural background. Logically we work on the outside first.
Now when we look at the soft-skill sub-set, we will use the non-verbal body language understanding & then finely understand the product/service not just as that but as an EXPERIENCE, as a proposition.
We attempt to inculcate a Solution Provider mentality rather a job driven Customer Service orientation. When you deal with the cultural, financial, intellectual & the other lesser known hidden lags that exit between a discerning new age customer & your front line employee, you give birth to a new resurgence & an empowered individual who now understands his role as a VALUE creator & also the CRITICAL last mile link responsible for Sales, up selling, side selling & enhancing Brand Value in multiple ways, because there is great Value in enhancing PERCEPTION.
Therein lies the difference between SOLUTION obsessed training & sub-set driven training.
