19 April 2024
In this blog, we are going to focus on both soft skills and people skills so you can help your clients identify the qualities and traits that can enhance their everyday interactions. This is seen as especially important right now as the economic crisis is being fully understood and some people are left wondering what the future will hold if their job, business or industry is unable to continue as they once thought it would.
And as a professional coach, you have access to a range of different tools that can be used to fully support any conversations you feel would be helpful for members of your own family, any friends who may be in need or any clients who are finding it difficult right now. Especially if any of them are struggling to look to the future and focus on the positives, so offering your help to review their soft and people skills and either uncover something new or remind them exactly where their passions are could be just the motivation they need to go out and find a new role or start a new career.
If you are aware of your soft and people skills, you can use this to your advantage when you need that little extra boost so you stand out when a hiring manager is shortlisting candidates for a role. However, it is also important to remember that employers are looking for people who can demonstrate a nice combination or balance between both personal and interpersonal skills. They feel it helps us positively contribute to the working environment, can support us to communicate effectively and really enable us to work well with others.
We are seeing a trend in clients wanting to uncover their own personal and interpersonal skills because it can be critical to their success in many different roles. So you may wish to introduce a simple tool or technique into your coaching sessions so you can help your clients identify their soft and people skills and pinpoint the key strengths they can use when updating their CV or Resume.
One way you can help your clients identify the balance between their soft and people skills is to review a list of each during a coaching session. Talk them through a list one skill at a time and ask them to clearly set out examples for each one to help bring them to life. Then use a tool like our skills compass to give each skill a score from 1 to 5. This score is then used to identify strengths and talents or areas they may wish to focus on at future coaching sessions. The results of the skills compass can then be plotted onto a spider graph and act as a benchmark so you can track progress as your client works on or develops each skill.
When looking at each skill, it may be helpful to ask your client to think of any similar situations they have been in and use that experience to support the score they gave themselves. And if possible ask them to consider what they could do differently if they are ever in the same situation again. This will enable them to role-play or practice their response in a safe space and could also be a good exercise to play back to friends or family who may challenge the score they gave themselves and open up a supportive discussion on how others see them.
To fully support you in your coaching sessions, we have published an exclusive ebook – Coaching Personal and InterPersonal Skills. It has a simple-to-follow step-by-step guide on how to use a skills compass to coach individuals to identify their soft and people skills and any strengths or areas that may need to focus on or give some attention.
Please note – Please include a reference and link back to this original blog if you wish to copy or share anything we have written: (cc) MyCoachingToolkit.com – 2022
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