Crafting a Blueprint for an Internal Soft Skill Training

In UX, most of the attention is on the surface: people are interested in wireframes, prototypes and shiny designs. But we UX-ers know that the real solution comes to life in the "background". The process and outcome rely heavily on teamwork, collaboration, empathy, and an understanding of the nuances of human behavior. For this reason, in addition to technical skills, soft skills are required to become an excellent UX designer or researcher.

Why Invest in Training?

Our Dedication to Training

The UX Studio team is very diverse. Apart from the fact that most of us are UX experts, we differ in many aspects, from coming from different cultures to having various educational backgrounds. We strive to use our differences to our advantage and support each other. With this in mind, we also organise internal training and we recently hosted a soft skills training.

Although we have a very talented team with various skills (e.g. interface design, data analysis, prototyping), we are always eager to learn and evolve in order to provide the best service to our clients. Continuous education and knowledge sharing is part of our mission, and it is something that we always pay close attention to inside the company.

We organise events to share our experiences, challenges and insights with each other. We also regularly hold internal training sessions and workshops to acquire or improve certain skills and abilities. Additionally, we have trainings for the newbies (eg. about workshop facilitation), but also for experienced employees on various topics, such as microcopy or UX leadership.

This fall, we decided to focus on soft skills.

Why Should You Focus on Soft Skills?

Soft Skills Definition

Soft skills, also known as emotional intelligence, encompass interpersonal, communication, and emotional abilities that facilitate effective collaboration, problem-solving, and adaptability in diverse professional and social contexts. These skills are individual qualities that impact relationships, communication, and overall interaction that help to relate positively to others.

The Benefits of Soft Skill Training

Hard skills are essential, but soft skills are becoming increasingly important in our everyday lives. The changing nature of workplaces, characterised by collaboration, remote communication and diverse teams, places an emphasis on interpersonal abilities.

According to Deloitte's 2017 findings, occupations with a focus on soft skills are expected to account for two-thirds of the workforce by 2030. Furthermore, the report suggests that companies can increase their revenue by more than 90,000 USD if they prioritise hiring employees with enhanced soft skills.

As a design agency, we work with various clients with different needs and personalities, to which we must constantly adapt our processes and mindset.

Soft skills help us to effectively communicate, collaborate with a variety of people, and handle difficult situations professionally.

Also, soft skills contribute to better understanding and empathising with others, which is a crucial skill for all UX-ers.

Internal Training

Although there are many excellent offers for soft skills training on the market, we decided not to hire an external trainer but to do it ourselves.

We decided to do it by ourselves because:

• We have many in-house researchers with a professional background in psychology who already have knowledge in this area.
• We know each other very well, both our strengths and weaknesses, and we also know our typical clients, projects and their needs, so we know exactly what to improve.
• Those who were responsible for this topic had to prepare themselves to facilitate soft skills training, which of course gave them new important skills that may be useful in the future.

Why Are Soft Skills Relevant Especially in UX?

Relevance of Soft Skills in UX

In the UX field, both designers and researchers frequently interact with a wide variety of stakeholders, from clients to end-users, to cross-functional team members. Soft skills, such as effective communication, empathy, and teamwork, are essential for understanding user needs and conveying insights clearly to the rest of the team.

For example, empathy allows UX designers and researchers to put themselves in the users’ shoes, which is fundamental for creating designs that truly meet user needs. This skill helps in understanding pain points, motivations, and behaviors, leading to more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces.

Benefits for Product Teams

For product teams, specific soft skills enhance collaboration and alignment within the team. Teams that communicate effectively are more likely to understand user needs better and create more cohesive and user-friendly designs. Training in areas like assertive communication and feedback can lead to a more open and constructive work environment, where ideas are freely exchanged and improved upon.

For instance, when presenting design or research findings, a UX professional must articulate their ideas persuasively and listen actively to feedback. These interactions heavily rely on well-developed soft skills to ensure that all voices are heard and that the best possible solution is achieved through collaboration.

Benefits for Freelancers

Freelancers, on the other hand, benefit greatly from soft skills as they often have to manage multiple clients and projects simultaneously. Strong interpersonal skills help freelancers build and maintain client relationships, manage expectations, and navigate the challenges of remote communication. For freelancers, mastering stress management techniques can also be crucial, given the often unpredictable and varied nature of their work.

Integrating soft skills training into our professional development equips us with the necessary tools to succeed. This is essential for thriving in our unique and diverse working environment, which usually requires team force. Soft skills also help to make us better team members and to make the entire collaboration more smooth and productive.

How to Hold Internal Soft Skills Training

Preparations

Together with the leadership team, we defined 4 main topics that we thought we needed to improve the most:

1. Growth mindset: the belief that one's abilities and skills can be improved through dedication, effort, and learning.
2. Giving feedback: the constructive communication of observations and assessments aimed at fostering improvement, learning, and positive development.
3. Assertive communication: expressing one's thoughts, feelings, and needs openly and respectfully, while actively listening and considering the perspectives of others.
4. Stress management: adopting effective coping strategies and techniques to mitigate and navigate the challenges and pressures of daily life, promoting overall well-being.

Each of these topics had an owner who had to prepare for the training and create both the theoretical and practical part of the session.

After the individual preparations were completed, the 4 topic owners met for joint sessions where we adjusted the schedule and structure together to create a coherent structure for the sessions and the training.

Training in Action

After discussing the details, we drew up the final training plan as follows:

• We split into small groups and followed the same structure with each of them.
• One session dedicated to growth mindset and feedback and another one dedicated to assertive communication and stress management.
• All training sessions started with a brief summary of the theoretical background, and then we focused on practising the specific skills with different exercises.
• The participants were confronted with both individual and team-related exercise scenarios.
• We also gave homework to the participants so that they could practise even more.

The aim of the exercises was to get the participants to think about real-life scenarios and work through them. They brought in their own experiences (e.g. they had to remember a situation in which they had received useful or useless feedback) and, together with the others, tried to find solutions and different approaches to solving the situation they had experienced (e.g. how to reformulate useless feedback into constructive feedback).

After each exercise section, a discussion part always took place for sharing our learnings, challenges, and feelings with each other.

Learnings

Carrying out training is one thing: people can learn and improve certain skills with it. That is, of course, an advantage. But during this training, I realised that conducting training is not just about acquiring knowledge during training. It encourages communication and conversation.

We started talking and sharing our own experiences about many topics. It turned out that each of us had thoughts and experiences of situations where certain soft skills could have been used better/differently, and we learned a lot just by listening to each other’s experiences. For me, that was the biggest benefit of the training.

Challenges

“I think this soft skill training is very useful in general. I can clearly see the progress in myself and also in my squad, even since the last session we had! Especially enjoyed the workshop parts. Hearing each other's solutions and discussing our experiences was very helpful for me.” - said one of our colleagues after the training.

Hopefully we indeed achieved our goals with this training. But, naturally, not everything went smoothly. We had to deal with some challenges during the preparation and facilitation of the training:

1. Choosing the right soft skills to work on

When the idea of soft skills training came up, it all sounded simple. But then the question came up: "Which soft skills do we want to cover with this training?” Of course, there are many of them, and one person thinks ‘skill A’ is the most important, while the other is convinced of ‘skill B’. Choosing between the ideas was as easy as we first imagined.

2. Building up the structure of the training

It’s never easy to develop structure and content for a training course for the first time. We had to rethink, reorganise and reevaluate the content many times before we felt ready to start the training.

3. Finding a suitable time

One of the biggest challenges was scheduling the sessions. As we had to adapt to our colleagues’ calendars, and everyone was working on different client projects, it was not easy to find time slots that fit all group members.

4. Managing time

During the sharing rounds, fortunately, people got so involved that they shared many thoughts and feelings, with which we did not calculate well, so sometimes we ran out of time.

At the end of the training, the facilitators had a retro with the leadership team where we went through all these challenges and gathered what we should look out for next time.

In the following section, you can read the short step-by-step guide we created. It can be useful for anyone who is considering conducting in-house training. We will definitely follow these steps next time.

Step-by-Step Guide for In-House Soft Skill Training

Implementing a soft skills training program requires a thoughtful and structured approach to ensure effective learning and development.

1. Define Objectives

Clearly state the goals of the training program. What specific outcomes do you want to achieve? Try to align these goals with the overall goals of the organisation, as this is the only way to translate the results into the values of the company later on.

2. Narrow the Goals

Soft skills cover quite a wide range of skills that you cannot cover in a single training course, so try to determine where you want to start.

Identify the specific soft skills that need to be improved in your team or organisation. Asking the leadership what they think you should focus on or conducting a performance review can also be helpful as a starting point.

3. Assign Owners

If you want to carry out internal training, it’s important that you appoint people responsible for it and give them time to prepare. The owner should already be familiar with the topic or the selected skill.

It’s also good if they have already led workshops or group activities so that they feel more comfortable during the sessions and are able to handle unexpected situations well.

4. Customise Content

Find out about the knowledge and needs of your participants before creating content. Creating professional content is one thing, but it’s also important to adapt it to the background of the participants. Use real-life scenarios and examples that are relevant to your industry and workplace culture, and develop realistic scenarios that mimic the challenges of your workplace.

This will make it easier to engage participants and give them the opportunity to practise applying soft skills in a controlled and safe environment before using them in real-life situations.

5. Interactive Learning Methods

Presentations and lectures are necessary elements to impart knowledge, but they are not enough. Choosing engaging and interactive methods to facilitate learning, such as workshops, role-plays, case studies or group discussions, is an essential part of today's education. This is especially true for soft skills, where practising can reinforce understanding.

6. Continuous Reinforcement

Soft skills require continuous practice in order to master them. After training, be sure to provide ongoing activities, mentoring programs, special exercises or follow-up sessions to reinforce the skills learned.

7. Feedback Mechanism

Gather feedback from participants, trainers and stakeholders to refine the training and make it even better next time.

Summary

Overall, our internal soft skills training was a great success. Not only because our colleagues enjoyed it and found it valuable, but also because we became even more aware of its importance and it opened many new doors for us that we can benefit from later.

We decided not to leave it at that, and created a toolbox that employees can use at any time. It contains individual and small group activities and games that they can use to practise certain soft skills.

We are sure that soft skills and their necessity will remain at the forefront of UX studio from now on, which will certainly contribute to serving our clients even better.

If you want to train with us, we recommend our UX training service.