Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Communication Skills Training
Business leaders are increasingly realizing the importance of focusing some of their efforts and resources on developing the communication skills of their employees. Being an effective communicator can benefit employee cooperation, customer relationship building, and overall organizational success. To achieve these benefits, organizations often turn to training programs that target a variety of interpersonal skills. However, achieving the desired results is not always an easy process. Here are some common communication skills training pitfalls that can prevent businesses from successfully transforming their communication processes.
6 Communication Skills Training Pitfalls to Avoid
1. Lack of Clear Goals
If you find that your communication skills training program is not producing the results you want, the most common cause may be a lack of clear goals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you didn’t set goals when you started the learning process, but maybe you didn’t go as far as you should have. Maybe you haven’t identified specific positions in your organization or you haven’t done extensive research on the communication tools and platforms your employees are most likely to use. The absence of such important factors during the goal setting process can lead to a training program that lacks direction and coherence. This in turn has a negative impact on student engagement and the overall effectiveness of the strategy.
2. Treating Communication Skills Development as a One-Time Event
Another pitfall of communication skills training that is the cause of unsatisfactory results is treating this learning process as a one-time event. Businesses often organize a seminar or workshop and call it a day. But you can’t expect employees to absorb a significant amount of information and transfer it to their daily work routine after a single learning event, even if it lasts for a few days. If you want to prevent employees from forgetting what they learned in a few weeks, you should give them reinforcement activities. This can include ongoing courses, refresher sessions, practice opportunities, and training opportunities. This way, you can keep their attention and ensure that they retain and use their new skills.
3. Using the One Size Fit Method
Another common communication skills training mistake to avoid is thinking that everyone’s needs can be met with one training method. This is because your employees undoubtedly have different learning preferences, knowledge gaps, roles, responsibilities, and expectations in the training program. A training method that works for one person may not work at all for another. If you can’t take their different needs into account, your training plan will be inconsistent and, ultimately, ineffective for part of your team. Conversely, if you conduct a survey to understand this diversity, you will be able to provide a broader range of training strategies and resources that address diversity in your organization.
4. Failure to Cope with Nonverbal Communication
This hole, although common, rarely gets the attention it deserves. Many communication skills training programs focus on the verbal aspects of communication, such as posture, tone, dialogue, or reasoning. However, the non-verbal side of communication is equally, if not more, important. This includes eye contact, gestures, body gestures, facial expressions, and other factors that significantly affect the way a message is conveyed and the emotions it evokes in others. So, if you don’t include activities in your training program that focus on recognizing and interpreting non-verbal cues and using them effectively, you’re leaving out an important set of communication skills that your employees need to be successful.
5. Focusing More on Theory and Not on Practice
The process of supporting your employees in developing their communication skills needs to provide many opportunities to practice in real situations. However, often, organizations tend to overfill training sessions with theoretical content; for example, analyzing what active listening is and the principles of effective conflict resolution. However, if your employees only hear or learn about active listening but don’t actually practice it, they won’t be able to apply it in their daily lives. Additionally, a training strategy that focuses on just learning instead of active participation will lead to disengagement and negative learning outcomes. To improve retention and improve engagement, be sure to include interactive activities in your communication skills training program.
6. Neglecting to Address Organizational Culture
The last communication skills training pitfall you need to be aware of is failing to consider your unique organizational culture. Besides, each business has its own way of working, which includes different communication requirements and guidelines. Therefore, a training program that focuses on improving communication skills needs to meet these requirements in order to deliver maximum results. Failure to do so may lead you to waste resources on skills that are not useful to your employees and ignore those that they really need. To prevent that, take the time to examine the practices, values, and expectations of your company’s culture and make sure it’s reflected in your communication skills training strategy. This way, you can drive success and make meaningful changes.
The conclusion
Creating an effective communication skills training program is a more complex process than many might think. It requires a good look at your organization, diverse training, and providing plenty of opportunities to practice, among other things. Neglecting to do so has a major impact on the effectiveness of your training strategy, reducing employee engagement and motivation and keeping them from developing themselves. Be especially careful to avoid the common communication skills training pitfalls we’ve described in this article, and check that your training strategy is achieving all of the goals you set out to achieve.
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