Name: Unlocking Leadership Potential: The Importance of Leader Soft Skills Training
Uploaded: 2025-10-23T19:16:06.164Z
Duration: 41 min 20 s
Description: Unlocking Leadership Potential: The Importance of Leader Soft Skills Training

Transcript for "Unlocking Leadership Potential: The Importance of Leader Soft Skills Training": Hello, everyone. Welcome to our session today. We will give it just another minute or so, to let people join, and then we'll get started. While we are waiting though, you'll notice, on the right hand side of your screen, there is a chat function. If you wanna introduce yourself and let us know where you're joining us from. We got Texas and Toronto, Boston. Welcome. Phoenix, Houston, DC. Got representation from all over. Alright. Well, we are just, about a minute after the top of the hour, so we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're happy to have you here. My colleague, Pedro, and I will be leading a discussion around leadership upskilling, and we'll just take a moment to introduce ourselves. I'm Elizabeth Halchak. I'm part of the customer journey team here at EVERFI. I am based in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and a cause that's close to my heart is, St. Jude's Research Hospital. And I will let my colleague Pedro introduce himself. Thank you, Elizabeth. My name is Pedro sorry. Pedro Limon. I'm a solutions engineer with EVERFI. Currently live in Austin, Texas. I've been here for the past forty years. Great city. And my favorite cause is autism speaks. I have two children that are in the spectrum, so I support that cause deeply. Back to you. Thank you, Pedro. So before we get started, there are just a couple of webinar house keeping items to go through. I do wanna point out a few features that are available in the webinar console. One, again, is that chat functionality. So here you can chat with one another and with, the webinar host, so that's Pedro and myself. We'd love to, hear your thoughts throughout our session today so please feel free to post those in there and also if you haven't already, please take a moment to introduce yourself and let us know where you're joining us from. If you do have any questions that you'd like for us to address at the end of the webinar, please feel free to submit those under the Q and A section, that's over on the right hand side again of the webinar console and then you'll also find some additional resources that are underneath the docs tab that again is in that right hand console. Here you'll find, some assets such as course data sheets and course outlines. You'll also find a link for webinar troubleshooting. So if you are running into any issues with the webinar itself, you can find the troubleshooting link there in the docs tab. And with that, let's dive in. So one thing that I think that we can all agree on is that being a leader in an organization has never been, an easy task. But I do think it's safe to say and there is a lot of data that we're going to walk through during our session today, that bears this out. But leading teams today is more complex than it has ever been before. One of the reasons for this complexity is that we do continue to be in a time of significant change for our businesses. One example does continue to be the dramatic shifts in how and where we work. Many organizations now have more employees that are working remotely than ever before. You may have entire teams now that used to physically sit together in an office location alongside their leaders that are now dispersed across the country or the globe. Others have, hybrid teams and are learning how to navigate those dynamics and how to make that scenario work. Others may be navigating an increase in office time or a return to office and are working to accommodate that and various needs that, employees may have during that transition. And so this shift alone is really causing many leaders to completely rethink and reshape how they connect and engage with their employees, how they communicate with them, how they manage performance, really the whole gamut of leadership responsibilities. Additionally, we're seeing that many organizations are also dealing with dynamics such as layoffs or budget constraints that are going to have a significant impact in a number of different ways on our teams and those are just a few examples of some of the complexities that leaders are working to navigate. So, this business environment really is challenging for leaders right now And employees are looking for more support from their leaders as well. It's not just, the leaders who are experiencing those challenges. Employees are experiencing more challenges than ever before both inside and outside of the workplace and the lines between, work and personal lives are becoming blurrier than they ever have been before. You may see that employees are carrying with them to work the the weight and stress of, potentially physical health issues or feelings of isolation, caregiving responsibilities, financial pressures or stresses in an uncertain economy or even, heaviness of recent events. And more and more, they're looking to leaders to provide support. And then you couple this with all of the incredible changes that are happening actually within the workplace, it's truly, a perfect storm that our leaders are trying their best to navigate and support. And so let's take a moment here for a quick poll. And, again, you can find, the polling tool over in the, right hand side. Let me go ahead and open that up. And so, again, you should see the poll now in the console. But all of these stressors, whether they're personal or professional are leading to, an increase in conflict in the workplace that leaders are increasingly being called upon to to navigate. So let's do a quick poll. How many hours do you think are do you think leaders spend managing conflict each week? So one hour, two hours, three hours, or four plus hours a week. So take a moment to enter what you think in the poll. Right now, the leader is four plus hours a week. We've also got some at three, a few at two, and once we're starting to get, a spread across. And Ashley, managing all of the hours depending on the industry. Alright. So we have, a pretty even spread, across two, three, and four plus hours a week. I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll here. But here you'll see, what leaders are really struggling with. So according to, Myers Briggs conflict study at work, managers spend about four hours every week addressing workplace conflict. And this is double the amount that they saw in their previous study, which they did in 02/2008. So, obviously, that's a significant amount of time that leaders are finding themselves, devoting each week to managing conflict. And the reasons for conflict really vary. It could be due to poor communication, stress at work, unclear role or responsibility definition, personality clashes, organizational change among many other, reasons. It's also important to note that not all conflict is necessarily negative. You can have healthy conflict where employees disagree but, are presenting their views in a respectful and constructive way and managers really play a significant role in cultivating that environment. When it comes to that managing of conflict though, leaders may find it a challenge to navigate that process, perhaps to remain open to all of the different perspectives and stay impartial to fully understand the issue and provide appropriate support while collaborating on a solution, or to communicate effectively. In fact, only 30% of leaders report that they feel confident in their conflict management skills. And then in addition to managing conflict, leaders and managers today are also struggling with keeping their employees engaged. Recent research is showing that the majority of employees today are not engaged. And that could be for, of course, various reasons. That could include, you know, potentially not feeling valued at work, limited opportunities for professional development or advancement, lack of clarity of job responsibilities, burnout, increased workload, just a myriad of reasons that could be causing that disengagement. Recent research is showing that about six out of ten employees are not fully engaged at work and potentially up to half looking for a new job and, quiet quitting. So doing that minimum in their roles while potentially seeking other opportunities. And while these statistics can be, discouraging or deflating, an important factor to emphasize is the manager's role in influencing engagement. So Gallup recently studied this point and found that managers, more than any other factor, influence team engagement and performance. And that's not an exaggeration. About 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. So given this information, it's critical that leaders and managers are equipped with the training and resources they need to be able to successfully engage their teams. And we'll pose a question here. So who has the most impact on an employee's mental health? So many of us have heard or perhaps know from personal experience that employee mental health has become a big concern in the workplace. So again, who who do we think has the most impact on an employee's mental health? Doctor or therapist, spouse or partner, or manager's leader? Give it a second just to throw it in chat if you'd like. Alright. So most everyone who threw it in the chat got this correct, but, maybe surprising, but managers and leaders have, more impact on a person's mental health than a doctor or therapist and about the same amount as a spouse or a partner. So significant impact. Alright. So, continuing on with some of the aspects leaders and managers are struggling with today, we know how important it is and impact will our role managers have with supporting employee mental health. But, unfortunately, what we're seeing is research is showing that about only a quarter to a third of leaders report that they feel equipped to handle the mental health needs of their teams. You know, in this regard, we're asking a lot from our leaders and some may not feel confident in handling potentially sensitive situations. In addition to, mental health leaders are also struggling to have effective performance conversations. Employees are increasingly looking for more regular feedback and ongoing performance dialogue not just, during annual review time. Gallup reports that about, only 14.5% of of managers strongly agree that they're effective at giving feedback. And the way in which leaders and managers deliver feedback is imperative as well. Poor delivery of feedback, especially negative feedback, can be a catalyst for disengagement or even employee turnover. So given that all we've discussed so far and really all that managers and leaders are balancing at the moment, it's really not surprising to hear that, more than half of CHROs say that it's harder now to lead workforces than even just a few years ago. Alright. So why focus on leadership skills? You know, unfortunately, the struggles that we've talked about already that leaders and managers are experiencing are really taking a toll on organizations today and they're directly impacting the bottom line and an organization's overall success. So there's the financial toll. Workplace conflict cost companies about 359,000,000,000 in paid hours. And disengaged employees can cost companies 8,800,000,000,000.0 globally in lost productivity. So not small numbers that we're talking about here. Additionally, focus on leadership skills can help to reduce turnover and improve that productivity. A Gallup survey found that about 50% of workers have left a job at some point in their career to get away from a manager, and that's a lot of unnecessary and, of course, costly turnover that could be addressed with a focus on leadership skills training. And as we shared earlier, managers more than any other factor, are influencing team engagement and overall team performance. This focus also helps to make your job easier. So focusing on these skills will save you time as well. You know, previously in the presentation, we touched on the fact that leaders and managers are spending about four hours each week managing conflict. As I'm sure many of you are well aware, workplace conflict doesn't only take time away from leaders, but also for, HR professionals. It's taking up a lot of your time as well. So we're finding that, you know, HR half of HR pros are spending about one to five hours every week helping others to manage conflict. So that's in addition to those four hours that our leaders are already spending. So we've just seen, some of the cost of having to look with leaders. On the flip side, investing in those leadership training programs can drive enormous benefit for an organization. So as you see here on the slide, for every $1 spent on leadership development, the average return on investment for the organization is about $7. So this ROI is going to come from increased revenue and sales as well as cost savings due to higher levels of employee retention, employee engagement, and lower recruiting costs. Additionally, that leadership development is going to help to, again, increase engagement, productivity, and boost morale, and all of these things are going to truly benefit an organization's bottom line. So from improved, individual and company performance and productivity, it's clear that, training and developing leaders is more critical than ever. There's a HR brew had a quote from July 2023 that said that manager effectiveness was ranked as one of the top areas of focus, from the CHROs that they surveyed. 39% identified it as one of their main priorities. About a quarter said that they were focused on change management, and 18% said that they were focused on culture. So again, this is an area, of top importance, and a critical need for organizations. So we will open up one more poll here. Give me one moment to do that here. And again, you'll see the poll in the top right hand corner. So thinking about, all that we have discussed so far in the webinar today, think about leaders and perhaps leaders in your own organization. And, you know, in what areas do you think that leaders need more skill development? And you can select more than one in the poll. So we've got, so we've got several for all of the above. Leading with emotional intelligence and empathy, managing conflict, having tough performance conversations. Give it just another moment here. Well, looking at the poll results, the clear winner is all of the above. So, definitely, I need to take a look at skill development in all of these areas. Okay. So moving on to what we've heard, and this is in line with the poll results. So through, interviews and research with leaders like yourselves, we've learned that there are, several critical leadership skills that are top of mind right now for many organizations. So leading with emotional intelligence, how do you improve, promote, and help leaders to use emotional intelligence skills in the workplace, delivering performance reviews and feedback, navigating employee termination, so being able to develop those skills to handle, termination conversations, managing conflicts or providing managers with, strategies to handle and respond to those conflicts that are popping up in the workplace, keeping employees engaged, so how to sustain and improve engagement throughout the organization, and leading effective and inclusive team meetings. So with the, changing landscape of, the issues faced by managers today, giving consistent training not only is going to help managers manage more effectively, but also is going to help with company culture as well as reputation. So as you think about implementing a leadership development program or, potentially adding to the one that you already have, did wanna spend, just a quick minute covering some of the elements and effective practices that are related to leadership training strategy. So first being sure to, gather support from your senior leadership about desire to provide more leadership training. This will not only help when it comes time to procure budget, but also ensure that there is, buy in to allow leaders to, encourage all leaders to participate in that training. And, of course, you may need to create a bit of a business case, for this as well. Next, identifying your skill gaps. So kind of honing in on what are those specific skills that the leaders need more help with. And it's really important here that you're gathering that data so that your training is effectively targeting those areas. Some methods that you could use to gather that information is employee surveys, both of leaders and managers as well as employees. So asking the leaders themselves where they feel that they need that help, and then you could ask both the leaders as well as employees in terms of, what have they observed successful leaders do? What are the skills that those, individuals have? What are they doing really well? And also providing, an avenue for individual contributors to provide their feedback. They may not be comfortable going to their manager with specific concerns, but having a way for employees to raise those concerns with, potentially HR can be powerful and give insights into areas that people don't often recognize. You can also look at performance reviews, interview executive leaders about their direct report, as well as look at exit interviews to identify what those goals are. And then once you've identified the areas that you could potentially address, you might want to just choose a few at a time. You know, no need to, tackle it all at once. So you could align the topics that you have chosen, the ones that align with your potential, business goals for the year. And so making sure that those skills align there will give you an area of where you could start with that training. And the training, of course, shouldn't be a one and one and done event, rather kind of, being able to reinforce those skills through ongoing touch points and systems. So that could include reminders and communications that you're sending out, providing tips and tricks in those reminders that you're sending. You could have executives share what they've learned within their leadership team meetings and even include these skills as a prompt in leadership performance appraisals. And then lastly, of course, you're going to wanna make sure that you're measuring that impact so you could consider reissuing those surveys, touching base with your executive team, looking back at performance evaluations to assess whether your training is having the impact that you're expecting. Now when it comes time to, actually deliver your trainings after you have selected the trainings that you would like to offer, there are a few things to keep in mind, in terms of some barriers to successful training programs. And one of those which is no surprise to anyone here is time. Leaders and managers today are incredibly busy and may not have time to attend long trainings. So, you know, many may have very good intentions about attending an hour long or a half day training, on leadership but conflicts happen. I'm sure that's happened to all of us and you it's more likely that you'll have conflicts the longer the training is in length. So you could have the best program in the world but if your leaders can't attend due to time constraints, they're not going to get the benefits of that training. So it's important to ensure that you're selecting training that's going to work with your leaders' schedules. And the content needs, of course, to be relevant to their work. They need skills for real life situations that they're encountering. You know, some may find, learning more about leadership theories to be interesting, but many will want to know how can I use this in my day to day work? What does, you know, for instance, emotional intelligence look like in practice? What do I actually say when there's, a conflict happening in front of me? So the training really needs to be practical and relevant for their roles. And then lastly, it's of course very important that leaders can immediately apply what important. So when you're thinking about timing, you know, training can be most impactful when it's delivered close in time to those key leadership moments. In fact, empirical research shows that if the training is received right before a key leadership activity, like performance conversations or handling a conflict, the training is going to be more effective at actually impacting the leaders behavior as opposed to, you know, a blanket one off training at some other time of the year. And these studies have also found that having repeated smaller training modules, like refreshers in advance of those key moments can be impactful as well. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Pedro who is going to provide some more information and a demo of our leadership micro lessons. Thank you, Elizabeth. For the sake of efficiency and to avoid any possible Internet glitches, I went ahead and prerecorded the demonstration part. I also recorded a couple of slides, prior to the demo. Once the, demo starts, you'll see that we're done a deep dive into one of the micro lessons, the one, called, Managing Conflict. So stay tuned. Here we go. EVERFI's leadership micro lesson suite is designed to equip your leaders with the essential skills they need to shine in today's workplace. From management basics like hiring and termination, to deep culture building topics like leading with emotional intelligence, managing conflict, and effective employee engagement, we've got you covered. Our courses go beyond the basics to ensure that learners walk away equipped with the tools they need to be successful leaders in your organization. With content that reflects real life scenarios that are backed by legal and compliance expertise, you can rest assured that our leadership micro lesson suite will be a valuable addition for learners at all levels of your organization. We get it. Your people leaders have a lot on their plates. Our leadership microlesson suite is designed to deliver highly impactful content that hits the sweet spot of efficiency and engagement. Without further ado, let's get into our demo. I will cover managing conflict at work, which is part of our leadership micro suite. Learners will receive an invitation through the learning management system, letting them know that they have been assigned a course. By selecting start, we kick things off and we're brought to the introduction screen. At this time, I'd like to call out some different accessibility and navigation features. At the top right hand part of the screen, you will see the listen button. This will turn on our voice over feature and is available in different translations to meet one's preferred learning style. Immediately to the right of the listen button, you can access our settings and enable closed caption text for all our video content. To the left hand side, we have the navigation menu. This will allow navigation throughout the course for those sections that have already been completed. Additionally, we also provide citations for our content. Now the goal of the Managing Conflicts at Work lesson is to provide managers and leaders with tools and strategies to effectively handle conflicts within the workplace. Learners will interact and experience examples of healthy and unhealthy exchanges at work and understand the different impacts these can have. They then will explore appropriate ways to respond and prevent them from happening in the future. Here, we identify what truly defines conflict. It means any type of disagreement that impacts the workplace. Conflicts can take place outside of work hours, such as at company sponsored events, happy hours, and group gatherings. These can also take place through an email exchange, social media, work chats, and more. It is important to understand that conflicts are unfortunately unavoidable sometimes. Given that workplaces are made up of people with diverse personalities, opinions, different communication styles and backgrounds, conflict is bound to happen. So, as leaders, we need to have a proper way of responding and preventing them. Let's explore the two types of conflict that can exist. First, we have healthy conflict. These can include an exchange of words where employees simply disagree on an issue. However, they express their view in a way that's positive, it's constructive, and the goal is to solve the issue together. There's no true negative tone, but simply a healthy debate. The other type of conflict is unhealthy conflict, and this can include an exchange of words or disagreement where it's it's disrespectful, it undermines others, and it even discourages different opinions. This can lead and create a hostile work environment and prevent productivity, ultimately damaging workplace culture. Managers here need to be aware of how to minimize these unhealthy situations and understand the warning signs prior to them taking place. We present managers here with an additional tip that there are gray areas, and it's best to avoid disciplining employees who bring up unpleasant things about the workplace. For example, it's unlawful to discipline or retaliate against employees for complaining about pay, work hours, benefits, and more. Instead, the best course of action in this type of situation is to involve human resources or any other appropriate department. As we continue, let's explore some different types of examples of conflict that you may have witnessed or have been on the receiving end of at work. In this exercise, we're going to identify the type of conflict and then provide managers with best practices and strategies to avoid situations like these. First, we have leadership disagreement. Since managers have different management styles, this can sometimes create disagreement and challenges. Managers should be aware of their team members preferred communication style, recognition, and an overall response style to avoid this type of conflict. Second, and quite common, is task or project disagreement. This type of conflict can delay projects, create tension, and ultimately impact productivity. Managers should bring their teams together, outline roles, and clearly communicate what the goals are to avoid future disagreements, so employees have a better shared understanding of the specific task at hand. Next, we have personality or work preferences. We all have unique working styles and personalities, and these can sometimes create challenges and disagreement. Some employees may have minimal patience for small details, while others embrace focusing on detail. So as a manager, we must encourage all our employees, all our team members to contribute in their own positive productive way. Now, a more serious and potentially illegal conflict is harassment and discrimination, and we all know the impact that this can have on workplace culture. This includes negative comments on someone's race, gender, religion, background, age, and other protected categories. This needs to be reported immediately, whether it is to human resources or other channels per policy, and simply should not be tolerated. Finally, ideas and views can be in fact a healthy disagreement. This can even lead to more creativity as long as they are positive and aimed towards better collaboration. As we continue, we're presented with our card style learning. It's another great interactive exercise that keeps learners engaged. Our goal in this exercise is to examine the effects of unmanaged, unhealthy conflicts. In other words, what impacts do these have on the workplace if they are not managed correctly? In our first card, we know that dealing with employee turnover combined with employees not showing up for work can be an unfortunate outcome. This can have a huge impact on the organization because of the increase in cost and delays in project completion. Additionally, there can be legal consequences such as lawsuits that can also be quite costly and add damage to an organization's reputation. Overall, employee engagement and morale can decrease, and this impacts workplace culture as well as individuals' own performance levels. It's important for managers to know how each one of these is harmful and to better identify unhealthy conflicts early on. This is an effective way to manage them and avoid challenges from happening such as these. In our final exercise, we're going to provide managers with essential skills, framework, and strategies of how to handle workplace conflicts when they do take place. These are some great tips to help them as they respond effectively and appropriately. First, managers need to evaluate the problem. Evaluating whether the problem is something employees can manage on their own, or if a manager needs to get involved, or if HR needs to be brought in. If a situation starts to negatively impact not only employees, but the work environment and productivity, it's time to get someone else involved. We provide learners with some examples of when a manager should and should not get involved. These are just some examples that we may all have experienced within the workplace. Next, we need to listen. Actively listen and become cautious and or curious if a situation needs manager involvement. It's important that we do meet with the involved parties. Listen to both sides of the story and understand the facts and details around this disagreement. We should be encouraging our employees to avoid making assumptions about someone else's views or thoughts towards a specific subject or what they may have observed. Some examples provide alternate language or clarifying questions that a manager can ask on what specifically did they say or do. What impact did that have on yourself or your work? Just some great questions to ask to diffuse the situation or possibly brainstorm a solution. Hold off on just coming to a conclusion. Instead, ask each employee to identify potential solutions that would address the needs of the situation to ensure that we're satisfying everyone's needs. Encourage learners to come up with multiple options and even have them discuss the pros and cons of each one. It is also very important that we record and follow-up on situations like these, keeping clear documentation of the issue in case it does occur again. It is also very important to check-in on your team, see how the solution is working. Is future intervention required? Do we need to take further disciplinary action? At this point, I'll pause our course here for today. And I would like to thank you so much for taking part of our demo. Alright. Thank you, Pedro. Alright. Before we move on to opening it up for q and a, I did wanna share here the SHRM activity ID. So this webinar, is eligible for professional development credits. This code will also be emailed to you in the follow-up. So if you don't get a chance to write it down right here, you will receive this via email. But I'll, leave this up here for just a few more moments. And with that, we will open it up for q and a. So if you do have any questions, please feel free to put those into the q and a section that's in the top right corner of the console, and we will stay on to answer some questions. So I do see, one question here. So how can these micro lessons fit into a company's larger leadership training? So, I'll weigh in. And, Pedro, if you have any, thoughts, please feel free to jump in as well. But, a couple of things that I'll point out, one is, the length of these micro lessons, it's around five to ten minutes. So they are really designed in a way that they can be flexible and assigned kind of within the timeline of your leadership training strategy. So you could choose to use them as refresher courses or assign them to leaders, at a point in time where they may need to, to use those. So like we mentioned earlier, before, you know, performance review time or if a leader is starting to navigate a, you know, potential conflict, these can be great tools for leaders to use, right at point of time. The other thing that I'll point out, with the micro lessons is, they contain configurable pages. So these are optional but recommended pages that you could use to add in, your organization's own content. So that could be, for instance, like a video from one of your leaders explaining why the leadership training is being assigned and the importance of the training. You could also, link out to other resources that your organization has so that you're providing all of the resources that a leader, might need right within the the reference of that particular course. Any other questions? Again, feel free to put those in the chat. I do see that there is a request to put the SHRM credit back up on the screen, so I'll do that. And, again, this will be shared via email with you after the session here as well. Alright. I am not seeing any additional questions. So, again, thank you so much for your time and for joining us today. You will receive an email after the session with, the SHRM activity ID if you need it. And, again, thank you so much for your time, and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.