Here's what we think are the 4 essential Project Management soft skills:

1/ Communication

So many issues arise during projects due to bad communication. This may be the Project Manager misunderstanding the requirements of the Project Board or team members not being given clear instructions.

Make sure you have the ability to both listen and explain. Listening really means active listening; not assuming based on past experience or pretending to accept their way while secretly planning to continue with your own methods.

Simple words at first and then more detailed points go along way when trying to explain a course of action or reason for one to team members. Nip any misunderstandings in the bud by asking for feedback. Get them to offer any problems they see or clarifications they require, upon explanation rather than days or weeks later, when some damage may have already been done.

Communities are your best social media tool when starting a business.

Stop shouting into a void and start communicating; they are a great way to engage with potential customers, investors and brand advocates.

Offline networking is still a powerful tool but online communities can give you a global reach and are often more time and cost effective for your limited resources.

In this post you'll find out why communities are so vital and how you can start using them.

To learn more about using social media & communities to grow your business and engage with consumers and influencers, come on our Social Media workshops and Blogging courses. Together they will give you a powerful toolset to boost your brand online.

Why It's Important

You've started new business with a new idea. How do you get people to care? 

You could spend money on advertising, but it would have to be a very good campaign to convince prospective buyers to take interest in a company they've never heard of.

Social proof is a strong selling point; it's not surprising why social media platforms are trying to take advantage of it with social ads (your friend X like our product) and why consumers are so protective of how their actions are used as social proof.

Recommendations are most valuable when they come naturally. It's easy to tell the difference between a genuine review and one prompted by a promotion or giveaway.

If you can create a community around your business or convince an existing community to take notice of your business then they will do a lot of the hard work for you, giving you the initial investment that you can later use on advertising to grow outside of the community.

There are many techniques used to provide good customer service. Our blog writer John A G Smith is a fountain of knowledge and using his experience tells us about just one of these. if you want to learn more enquire about one of our private customer service courses.

No problem. When you stay in ‘Business Hotels’ this is a familiar scenario. Each morning, in a very short time span, a hundred business people arise from a hundred (or maybe fewer) beds and head for the showers. The hot-water storage tank gives up its contents in short order and those at the back of queue, or the top of the building, go cold. But good hotels, understanding this high demand, will have boilers that can cope so within a few minutes a heater with the power of a small thermonuclear device will restore the status quo and my day’s business will be back on track.......

Congratulations you got the promotion, you are now a manager but what does this mean?

Everyone has the intention of being good at their job and with the correct training and support every manager old or new can be a great manager!

Image courtesey of Wikipedia

Join one of our Management Skills for New Managers and gain the skills to take you forward in your career.

You've been here before, the last time you and the client spoke you didn't exactly see eye to eye. Now months of negotiations are at risk and potentially big figures in profit too.

Stop.

Don't make that call. Re-evaluate where you are in negotiations and see what you can take from these killer tips to close that deal.

Negotiations are all about your relationship with the client. If you're seeing your role in negotiations as an opportunity to make money at the expense of the client then you're looking at it all the wrong way. Negotiations are professional relationships. Benefits should and can be mutually profitable whilst retaining a relationship with a client that will last years.

Our Negotiation Skills training will give you the knowledge and tools necessary to be able to conduct any negotiation as a competitive and collaborative negotiation.

A good deal might not revive a bad relationship, but a good relationship can revive a bad deal.

Effective personnel management is one of the hardest tasks for any manager but it's also one of the most important.

Managing large teams can feel like a never ending task. The minute you think you have a grasp of the team's availability and capabilities, something changes and it can feel like going back to square one.

You need to approach the different aspects of personnel management in the right order, at the right times, for the best chance of success.

In this post I outline my 5 Steps to Effective Personnel Management. Read through and see how they compare to your processes.

We've summarised the video below with some great tips on how to plan your own session.

These are edited highlights of this section of our workshop. We cover a lot more besides on out 2-day train the trainer course here in Brighton, Sussex - so why not come along and hone your training technique?

We've drawn on the experience of our Assertiveness trainers and the content of our life-changing Assertiveness & Confidence Building Course to put together our free Confidence Building Exercises eBook.

Download the eBook for free and begin the journey to a more confident attitude at work and at home.

Continue your self-improvement with our 2-day Assertivness Course and start taking action.

Whether it’s at an interview, the first day of a new job, after receiving criticism or when given additional responsibility - sometimes you just need to take a bit of time to address your confidence levels and take ownership of improving them.

In this free Assertiveness eBook you can learn 5 exercises to get an instant boost of confidence and take control of situations.

Even if you don’t want to try all these exercises at once, you can pick and choose depending on the situation. The main thing is that you do take action. Knowing that you’re taking responsibility for improving your confidence will – guess what – start improving it.

Exercises covered in the eBook:

• Exercise 1: List your strengths
• Exercise 2: Practice confident body language
• Exercise 3: Record your achievements
• Exercise 4: Challenge yourself to compliment others regularly
• Exercise 5: Practice speaking up

?For more help with self-improvement at work, see the Personal Development category on our blog.