Business ‘Soft’ Skills & Coaching

Business ‘Soft’ Skills

They might be called ‘soft’ but often these skills are some of the hardest to master, and often, doing these well is what differentiates ‘high performers’. Our practical courses avoid theoretical ‘fluff’, instead providing practical strategies and advice which can be immediately put into practice.

Our skills trainers really understand insurance. This understanding enables them to provide relatable, realistic support, grounded in the day-to-day reality of insurance professionals. Courses are delivered ‘in their language’, making it far easier for participants to translate classroom learning into real performance improvement.

All courses provide time for reflection and action planning, so participants leave with a clear way forward and personalised next steps.

All our courses can be offered in-person or online and can be tailored depending on seniority level and business function. Contact us for more detailed outlines for each course and to discuss how we can support your specific development needs.

What’s trending?

A selection of our most-requested business skills courses: 

Building Business Relationships

  • Relationship assessment
  • Building relationships at pace
  • Creating and maintaining trust
  • Adapting your approach

Stakeholder Management

  • Stakeholder mapping 
  • Stakeholder prioritisation 
  • Responding to stakeholder needs 
  • Action planning 

Effective Communication

  • How and why messages get distorted
  • Choosing the right mode
  • Considering your audience
  • Practical advice for in person, phones and email

Negotiation and Influence

  • Principled negotiation
  • Achieving Win/Win outcomes
  • Influence techniques
  • Market considerations

Presenting With Impact

  • Presentation design process
  • Delivering for high impact
  • Managing nerves
  • Practice and feedback

Navigating Conflict

  • The importance of healthy conflict
  • Understanding your conflict style
  • Balancing assertiveness
  • Practical examples

Time Smart

  • Working smarter, not harder
  • Planning
  • Prioritisation
  • Tackling time bandits
  • Overcoming procrastination

Essential Project Management

  • Understanding project definitions
  • Where and how to start
  • Project planning
  • Common pitfalls to avoid
  • Stakeholder mapping

Managing your Insurance Career

  • The development cycle
  • Personal SWOT
  • Writing a development plan

Creativity and Problem Solving

  • Why creativity can be difficult  
  • Accessing useful, creative thinking
  • Applying design thinking principles
  • Unlocking multiple perspectives

Impactful Business Writing

  • Planning a piece of writing
  • Structuring for maximum impact
  • Making your emails more readable
  • Writing to persuade

Quality Decision Making

  • How we think
  • Eliminating bias in decisions
  • A failsafe decision-making process

Understanding Yourself and Others*

  • Understanding yourself
  • Appreciating differences
  • Making small adjustments to achieve better outcomes

Personal Branding

  • Understanding personal branding
  • Crafting your professional brand
  • Communicating your brand effectively
  • Brand and authenticity

Making the Most of Your Appraisal

  • Career development cycle
  • Appraisal preparation
  • Getting quality feedback

Networking

  • Strategic networking
  • Using LinkedIn
  • Making the most of networking events
  • Working the room

Building Resilience

  • Pressure: eustress and distress
  • The impact of energisers and stressors
  • Mind traps and how to avoid them
  • Regaining your balance

Positive Politics

  • Understanding workplace dynamics
  • Building your political capital
  • Using the 4 aspects of political skill, ethically

Influence Without Authority

  • Where our influence comes from
  • Push vs pull influence
  • Influencing others
  • Action planning

Notes

* Can be delivered with or without a psychometric tool, contact us for options

Coaching

Whether you are transitioning into a new role, looking to overcome a career blocker or developing an intrinsic skill such as confidence or professional presence, sometimes a goal benefits from a tailored personal approach with a qualified coach.

Coaching is different to training or mentoring, a coach will not give you advice or technical input. Your coach is trained to use targeted questions and appropriate challenges to help you to think differently, find new perspectives and create a robust plan of action to implement outside your sessions and progress towards your professional goals.

At the start of your coaching relationship, you will have a contracting meeting with your coach in which you will discuss your professional goals and will agree how coaching will be structured (frequency, online vs in person, timings etc). You will set your overall objectives and will be given a contract which both you and your coach will sign, detailing important issues such as confidentiality.  

If your coaching is being sponsored, then there may also be a tripartite meeting in which you and your sponsor discuss your objectives with your coach present. 

During sessions, your coach will provide a confidential, non-judgemental space for you to think through your situation and options. They will use targeted questioning to help you clarify your thinking and find a way forward. You will leave each session with a set of actions and each session will begin with reviewing your progress. 

This depends on the individual and the goal. For some people, a one-off session is all they need to help find a way forward. For others (including career transition coaching) more sessions spaced over a longer period will be valuable. The most popular starting point is 4×90 minute sessions over 12 weeks, set 3 weeks apart. 

Yes, our coaches are qualified to at least ILM level 5 and have completed a minimum of 100 coaching hours.  

This choice is often a highly personal one. Biographies of our coaches can be provided; but sometimes a short chemistry call with your chosen coach(es) can be a helpful way to confirm the best fit for you and your goalWe are happy to arrange this.  

Please note that coaching is subject to availability. 

Set up a call.

Get in touch today to discuss your training needs.