leadership

Oct 22, 2023

Best Soft Skills Training Courses You Shoud Take

Summary

This guide explains why mastering soft skills through targeted soft skills training and workshops is critical for professional excellence. It also sheds light on the management and leadership soft skills training courses managers can enroll in to advance their capabilities.

In today's hypercompetitive job market, the difference between professional excellence and mediocrity often comes down to one crucial factor - your soft skills. Soft skills are the high-demand capabilities that enable you to communicate ideas powerfully, lead teams effectively, collaborate efficiently, and adeptly navigate workplace relationships and complex situations.

Unlike technical skills that relate specifically to occupational duties, soft skills are versatile and transferable across roles. These interpersonal capabilities are absolutely vital for success in nearly every industry. Organizations now prioritize soft skills above all else when hiring and promoting. They know strong soft skills are linked to higher productivity, leadership potential, and long-term career growth.

This means professionals who invest in mastering top soft skills will unlock immense advantages. Targeted soft skill training can rapidly level up your capabilities and elevate your impact. But where can busy working professionals find the time and resources to build these in-demand skills?

Look no further than Maven. Our premier online soft skills workshop offers expert-led courses and workshops designed specifically for soft skills training and mastery. Maven's immersive training journeys deliver hands-on practice and personalized coaching from seasoned professionals with decades of experience.

This guide will showcase five of Maven's highest-rated soft skills courses you can enroll in right now to unlock your full leadership potential and accelerate your career. You can join a cohort of peers on a transformational learning experience tailored to your schedule.

Maven's instructors guide you to systematically strengthen crucial competencies related to communication soft skills training, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, influencing, conflict resolution, and more.

Top Soft Skills Tranings Courses Managers Should Take

Investing in soft skills training can provide immense value for professionals at any stage of their career. Here are some excellent courses taught by industry experts on Maven, the soft skills workshop, to rapidly build capabilities across essential soft skills:

1. MGMT Accelerator by Dave Kline

This intensive 5-week cohort-based course falls under the management soft skills training courses. It provides managers with the tactics and systems to lead high-performing teams with excellence. Instructor Dave Kline draws from over 20 years of experience leading major divisions at top companies like Bridgewater and Moody's to equip participants with a proven management playbook. He is a master instructor at coaching soft skills.

Through Dave's expert guidance, you will develop a codified approach to refine your personal leadership decision-making style, systems, and processes tailored specifically for you. The journey focuses on building a top-down management system encompassing goal-setting, delegation, operations, coaching, and engagement.

You'll walk away with a clear framework dubbed the "Management OS CODE" - a personalized operating system to enhance how you Coach, Operate, Delegate, and Engage. The course is designed to help managers at any level overcome common yet critical challenges through established techniques and structures.

For newly promoted managers, it provides the management soft skills training and tactical knowledge to avoid unnecessary mistakes that often plague inexperienced leaders. For managers with 1-5 years of experience, it allows you to reset, refine and optimize your approach to clear away counterproductive habits. For experienced managers taking on new teams, it empowers you to maximize the opportunity by honing a consistent high-impact leadership system to jumpstart your first 90 days.

The intimate cohort format connects you with over 300 like-minded professionals progressing together through the management journey. This built-in community enables valuable peer-to-peer learning, support, and accountability - which helps build emotional intelligence.

By the end of the 5 weeks, you will have gained applicable skills to tackle management struggles with prioritization, building remote team trust, providing meaningful developmental feedback, and strategically managing up.

"Dave's frameworks completely evolved how I think about managing people. I've implemented many tools from this course in my company and seen huge growth." - Kevin Lee, Co-Founder at Immi

Learn more about MGMT Accelerator

2. How to Facilitate a Truly Productive Meeting by Dom Michalec

This intensive 4-week cohort-based course equips professionals with the tactical skills and frameworks to design and lead profoundly effective meetings that drive outcomes. Facilitated by Dom Michalec, an experienced professional facilitator and member of the prestigious International Association of Facilitators, the course delivers a powerfully practical curriculum.

It focuses on building specific facilitation capabilities to transform unproductive meetings into focused experiences leading to agreement and forward progress. The highly interactive format recognizes that most professionals learn these techniques best through hands-on application and practice.

Each week spotlights specialized concepts and competencies to absorb you in the facilitation material and accelerate practical mastery. You'll gain knowledge to prepare meeting participants for substantive contributions rather than passive attendance. Pre-meeting prep guides and templates empower you to get the right people mentally focused on the right prioritized topics and tasks.

Dom's expert instruction and experience coaching soft skills equip you to masterfully guide teams toward clarity and decisions, maintaining a clear line of sight on the intended goal. You'll facilitate with flexibility and confidence, even when complex dynamics emerge.

Post-meeting, you’ll implement communication techniques and alignment strategies to sustain team momentum. Meeting outcomes and next steps are reinforced across groups to drive follow-through. Over the next 4 weeks, your new skills and evolved mindset will begin to positively influence the overall meeting culture at your organization.

This course perfectly suits professionals, including internal program leaders aiming to transform company meetings, external consultants seeking to facilitate impactful client sessions, coaches and trainers looking to boost their group leadership presence, and founders who need to engage their teams. You'll walk away capable of getting people focused, guiding progression, and ensuring forward movement long after sessions conclude.

"I gained superpowers I can use to transform any meeting through this highly practical course." - Matt B., Product Director

Learn more about Leading Productive Meetings

3. Communicating with Power by Kate Mason

This intensive 2-week cohort-based course empowers women to master influential communication and amplify their professional presence. Led by Dr. Kate Mason, an experienced facilitator, educator, and world-champion debater with experience in coaching soft skills, the course equips participants with tangible tactics to own their authority and persuasively convey ideas.

Kate has trained thousands of women globally to elevate their communication in an authentic style that is true to themselves. Her engaging teaching methods create a highly practical learning experience.

Through Kate's expert guidance, you will learn frameworks to engage audiences and compellingly deliver your narrative using the appropriate degree of context and evidence. You'll understand how to showcase credibility and signal authority in a way that aligns with your preferences.

Kate will provide communication techniques to help you feel confident in extending your time to fully cover topics without minimizing your message. Her coaching builds skills to craft persuasive arguments with calm, logical reasoning that resonate with listeners. You'll practice showcasing your authentic self to connect and influence.

This course is designed for exceptional women, including emerging leaders looking to rise, experienced professionals wanting to improve their impact, and skilled individual contributors seeking to overcome vague "executive presence" Improvement feedback.

The intimate cohort format facilitates dynamic discussion and meaningful connections with peers at today's top companies that are also invested in advancement. You'll gain communication "superpowers" applicable to everything from high-stakes presentations to casual conversations. By honing these skills, participants unlock greater achievement in their careers and organizations.

"Kate helped me find my voice. Her advice made an immediate difference in how I present myself at work." - Alexa Dennett, Head of Communications & Marketing, Heirloom

Learn more about Communicating with Power

4. Facilitation Finesse

This intensive 4-week cohort is a great leadership soft skills training course that elevates your facilitation skills to strategically guide groups with creativity, intuition, and impact. Your instructors, Julia Winston and Romy Alexandra, are facilitation luminaries who draw from over 25 combined years spent designing and leading transformational programs worldwide.

Their hard-won expertise informs a proven curriculum emphasizing personalized breakthroughs through hands-on learning. Today, effective facilitation is an essential leadership skill expected from anyone guiding teams, meetings, or events. Simply having subject matter knowledge is no longer enough.

This course perfectly suits facilitators with 1-10 years of experience who feel ready to advance beyond beginner basics and intermediate skills. You'll gain practical yet powerful mindsets, frameworks, and toolkits tailored to your unique facilitation superpowers. These will help you flexibly own your presence and gracefully handle any curveball that arises.

The immersive format recognizes professionals make breakthrough progress through active application - not just passive theory. You'll receive 8 hours of personalized coaching and multiple opportunities to practice facilitating your peers and receiving their candid feedback.

Pre-session primers distill key concepts, like the 5 intuitive steps to fluid facilitation. Post-session integration strengthens learning. Ongoing community interactions drive meaningful connections. By the end, you'll lead impactful virtual and in-person sessions with complete confidence.

The universal skills apply whether guiding intense strategy meetings, energizing public workshops, sensitive boardroom conversations, or highly-technical training seminars. This course perfectly equips internal program leaders to reinvigorate stale company gatherings, coaches and consultants to deeply engage clients, and entrepreneurs to tightly align teams around a shared vision.

"I’ve found few valuable resources for facilitators to deeply learn their craft with opportunities to practice. Facilitation Finesse offers a roadmap to grow your skills. A must for anyone leading groups." - Lisa Rogoff, Founder of Launch Project

Learn more about Facilitation Finesse

5. Mastering Innovation Methodology

This intensive 7-week immersion provides a proven system for innovating successfully within established companies. Your guide is creator Jacob Dutton, an innovation luminary who has spent over 15 years coaching executives at global powerhouses including Walgreens, Hilton, NBC, Microsoft, and HSBC.

Jacob distills his signature methodology into an actionable framework for driving internal change. In today's rapidly evolving world, organizations must constantly identify emerging opportunities, validate new solutions, and nimbly scale offerings. But most lack the internal skills and processes to maintain this agile innovation.

This course equips corporate innovators to transform this vicious cycle of stagnation into sustainable, frictionless progress. The intimate cohort-based format stimulates peer discussion, fosters communal support, and provides tailored coaching from Jacob himself at pivotal moments.

You'll gain practical frameworks to benchmark existing capabilities, discover high-potential prospects, prioritize a strategic roadmap, stress-test concepts, accelerate validated ideas to market, and activate organizational readiness for ongoing change. This course benefits professionals across industries whose current innovation efforts feel scattered, siloed, and stuck.

You'll gain the methodology and mindsets to overcome obstacles, achieve alignment, and build executive confidence. The community atmosphere facilitates sharing best practices across companies to stimulate breakthrough thinking.

"This method adds discipline and rigor to ideas. It helps stage gate across desirability, feasibility, and viability - which is really important for us." - Dr. Taran Toor, Director of Wellness Innovation at global health and beauty retailer Holland & Barrett.

How to Know Which Soft Skills Course Is Best For You?

With the vast range of high-quality soft skills courses available today, it’s essential to select training that aligns with your specific professional development goals and needs.

First, reflect deeply on your current role and capabilities. Consider complex situations where stronger soft skills would enable greater success. Identify specific competencies like cross-functional collaboration, influencing without authority, or coaching team members where you aim to improve.

Get very clear on the exact skills you want to build. This clarity of focus will allow you to choose the perfect course.

Next, evaluate potential courses across five key factors:

Time Investment - Consider the overall scope and format in relation to your schedule. Shorter microlearning courses may suit busy professionals better than extensive programs.
Cost - Compare to your training budget. Vet discounts, stipends, and reimbursements to reduce out-of-pocket expenses.
Instructor Expertise – Research the real-world background of instructors. Seek those with demonstrated success in strengthening these precise skills in others.
Teaching Format – Determine whether the delivery method matches your ideal learning style. Options range from self-paced content to interactive cohort workshops.
Expected Outcomes – Confirm the course will build the exact competencies and behaviors you are seeking to develop.

Analyzing courses through this lens empowers you to make the optimal choice for maximum career relevance, growth value, and ROI. Focus your program selection tightly on your specific development goals. The investment will provide immense dividends throughout your journey.

Develop and Boost Your Soft Skills With Maven

Maven is the premier destination to select and enroll in transformative soft skills courses tailored to your unique goals. Our network of over 500 industry-leading instructors creates dynamic learning journeys to help you master in-demand skills.

The key advantages of training with the soft skills workshop - Maven include:

Renowned Experts - Learn from experienced executive coaches, corporate trainers, and subject matter authorities. This caliber of teaching is unparalleled.
Microlearning - Courses broken into bite-sized lessons optimize comprehension and real-world application.
Peer Cohorts - Join an intimate community for accountability, networking, and lasting connections.
Mobile Accessibility - Learn anytime, anywhere with convenient mobile access.
Personalized Guidance - Maven’s matching technology provides course recommendations aligned to your specific growth goals.
Measurable Progress - Robust analytics allow you to track your development and measure improvements.

Sign up with Maven today to access unrivaled soft skills courses, coaching, and leadership soft skills training that will profoundly expand your capabilities. Our renowned experts can help you master skills like emotional intelligence, team resilience, effective storytelling, and essential leadership habits to accelerate your career success.

The first step is easy – simply create your free Maven account to instantly access personalized course recommendations tailored specifically for you.

Redefine your career trajectory by unlocking immersive soft skills training on Maven's one-of-a-kind soft skills workshop.

Frequently asked questions

What are examples of good soft skills?

Some of the most sought-after and career-advancing soft skills include detailed communication abilities like active listening, presenting, and writing; leadership competencies such as coaching, influence, and change management; collaboration skills including teamwork, inclusion, and cultural fluency

What are the six main soft skills categories?

The six foundational categories encompassing the most essential soft skills for professional success are:

Sophisticated communication abilities - mastering crucial competencies like presenting, writing, listening, and influencing.
Leadership and people management skills - leading change, coaching others, cultivating talent.
Productive collaboration skills - teamwork, cultural competence, conflict resolution, and inclusion.
Adaptability and resilience in the face of change and ambiguity.
Creative problem-solving techniques - critical thinking, innovative thinking, overcoming obstacles.
A disciplined work ethic characterized by organization, time management, grit, and motivation.

Why are soft skills important?

Mastering soft skills enables individuals to effectively collaborate across teams, lead organizations, communicate ideas persuasively, navigate workplace politics, manage complex projects, overcome challenges, cultivate talent, drive innovation, and handle dynamic work situations.