@charlesbutts
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Essential Soft Skills You Can Develop Through Training
Why Professional Development Training Misses the Mark Every Single Time
Just finished a coffee meeting where three different business owners moaned about wasted training budgets. Made me think about how utterly broken we've got this whole professional development thing in Australia.
I've been designing skills training programs for blue collar workers, office executives, and pretty much every industry you can imagine for the past nineteen years. Started back when people actually gave a damn about practical training. These days? Half the participants rock up because HR said they had to. The other half are there for the free coffee and to escape their desk for a few hours.
But here's what gets me really annoyed about this industry. We are calling everything "professional development" when most of it's just expensive box ticking.
Genuine development happens when someone walks away knowing how to do something they weren't able to do before. Not when they've sat through another PowerPoint about "workplace synergy" or "communication mastery." God, I hate that word synergy.
Take my friend Dave who runs a plumbing business in Ballarat. Clever bloke, employs twelve tradies, makes solid money. He came to me about twelve months ago saying his team needed "communication training" because they kept getting complaints about communication. Fair dinkum request, right?
Wrong approach entirely.
I spent a morning with his crew on actual job sites. Turns out the "communication problem" wasn't about how they spoke with customers. It was about how they explained technical issues to people who didn't understand plumbing. Entirely different challenge.
We didn't need practice exercises or communication workshops. We needed real world translation skills. How do you explain a blocked sewer line to a stressed out homeowner without making them feel dumb? How do you quote a detailed repair job so people understand what they are paying for?
Six weeks later, customer complaints dropped by 85%. Dave's business expanded because word got around that his team actually explained things properly.
That's professional development. Everything else is just expensive time wasting.
The trouble with most skills training programs? They are designed by people who've never done the genuine job. You get these trainers fresh out of university with their complex frameworks and abstract models. Little wrong with theory, but when you are teaching someone how to handle difficult conversations at work, you need to have had a few yourself.
l remember this one workshop I ran for a mining company up in the Newcastle area. Site manager demanded his supervisors needed "interpersonal skills training" because they were having troubles with contractors. Common stuff, you'd think.
But when I dug deeper, the actual issue wasn't conflict resolution. These supervisors were managing safety breaches and didn't know how to fix them without creating workplace drama. Completely different skill set needed.
Instead of standard conflict workshops, we worked on documentation, escalation procedures, and how to have accountability conversations that didn't destroy relationships. Practical stuff they could use immediately.
The generic training business loves selling cookie cutter solutions. Drives me mental. You shouldn't fix a manufacturing floor communication challenge with the same approach you'd use for a marketing team's collaboration problems. Different environments, different pressures, different people.
Bunnings gets this spot on, by the way. Their induction and ongoing training programs are targeted, role specific, and actually useful. You are not learning theoretical concepts about customer service. You are learning how to assist someone pick the right screws for their deck project. Practical, immediate application.
Yet most companies still book their teams into cookie cutter "communication excellence" or "efficiency enhancement" sessions that have no connection to their genuine work challenges.
Here's my contentious opinion that'll probably irritate some people : most professional development doesn't work because we are trying to fix the mistaken problems.
Companies send people to supervisory training when the actual issue is poor systems and processes. They book teams into team building workshops when the problem is vague role definitions or resource constraints. It's like putting a band aid on a broken leg.
I was working with a transport company in Sydney a couple of years back. Logistics coordinators were making errors, missing deadlines, general chaos. Management wanted collaboration exercises and pressure management training.
Invested one morning shadowing their coordinators. The "people problem" was actually a systems problem. Their coordination system was from the last century, requiring numerous different steps to process one shipment. Obviously people were overwhelmed and making mistakes.
No amount of professional development was going to fix that. They needed improved software, not better people skills.
But here's where it gets good. Once they resolved the systems issues, then we could focus on genuine skill development. How to handle when everything's urgent. How to explain delays without making customers go crazy. How to identify potential problems before they become disasters.
That's when training actually functions. When you are building skills on a solid foundation, not trying to mask basic operational problems.
The other thing that kills professional development success? The absolute disconnection between training and actual work application.
Someone attends a excellent workshop on Monday, goes back to their standard job on Tuesday, and by Friday they've missed everything because there's no support structure for using new skills.
I started insisting on follow up sessions about ten weeks after initial training. Not more theory. Practical problem solving based on what people actually attempted to apply. What was effective, what didn't, what got in the way.
Results jumped dramatically. People need time to practice new skills in their actual environment, then revisit and troubleshoot the challenges. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, but most training companies dont offer this because it's more work for them.
Australia Post does this well with their customer service training. Core workshop, then continuing check ins with managers, then revision sessions based on genuine experiences. It's not just a complete and move on event.
The most effective professional development I've ever seen took place at a independent engineering firm in Geelong. The owner, Kate, determined her project managers needed improved client relationship skills. Instead of sending them to outside workshops, she brought in real clients for direct feedback sessions.
Harsh but brilliant. Project managers heard directly from customers about what was working and what wasn't. Then we created training around those particular issues, Genuine problems, real solutions, instant application.
Eight months later, client retention was up 45%. Not because we taught them fancy techniques, but because they understood what their customers actually required and how to deliver it dependently.
That's the gold standard right there. Development that's tied to real outcomes, assessed by tangible results, and regularly improved based on what works in reality.
Most businesses are still caught in the outdated model though. Calendar based training budgets that have to be used by June 30. Cookie cutter programs that sound impressive in board meetings but dont change anything important on the ground.
The tragedy is there are brilliant trainers and coaches out there doing outstanding work. People who understand that authentic development is complicated, continuous, and deeply contextual. But they are competing against polished sales presentations and attractive training catalogues that offer easy solutions to complicated problems.
If you are in charge for professional development in your organisation, here's my advice : start with the real problems your people encounter every single day. Not the problems you think they ought to have, or the problems that match neatly into convenient training packages.
Shadow them for a morning. Ask them what bothers them most about their job. Find out what skills they wish they had to make their work more effective or more effective.
Then build development around that. It might not appear like traditional training. Might be guidance, job shadowing, practical learning, or bringing in experts to address specific challenges.
But it'll be infinitely more beneficial than another cookie cutter workshop about synergy.
Professional development functions when it's actually professional and actually creates something. Everything else is just overpriced time away from useful work.
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