Soft Skills Development
Soft Skills Development, Confidence through Practice.
Focused Soft-Skills Development structured to the relevant
Leaders practicing value-based soft-skills with confidence, without the intent to manipulate, are very successful in creating an environment that attracts the best, the brightest and most talented individuals.
The Davis and Dean soft skills development workshops are structured according to the following management designations:
- Senior Management,
- Middle Management, and
- Aspirant Managers
Current Soft Skills Workshops
The following soft skills development courses are offered by Davis and Dean:
Management and Leadership (3-day workshop)
The management and leadership course enables you to become an effective leader within your organisation. Understanding the difference and timing between leadership and management will allow you to build strong relationships as a foundation for becoming task oriented later in the business cycle. Like a ship’s pilot steers and navigates his course, these five leadership and management modules will charter your way to becoming a dynamic and successful leader.
- Self-Awareness
- Leadership and Management
- Goal Setting
- Organisation models
- Teamwork
- Management
- Induction
- Meeting procedures
- Problem solving
- Leadership model
- Customer service
- Motivation
- Negotiation
- Conflict Management
- Time Management
- Financial Management
- Performance Management
Emotional Intelligence (2-day workshop)
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others, while affording ourselves enough time to make sound decisions. In a survey that was done with 109 Project Managers only 10% were familiar with EI. 88% wanted to know more about EI, 44% said it has contributed to their success and 49% believed it would contribute to their success in future. When considering your own organisation, how able are your management and employees in managing their emotions effectively and maturely? Do they have the skills to self-motivate, recognize and understand other people’s emotions and manage them? The fast pace and high rate of change in business requires different skills for survival and success, continuously working under stress, requires thinking on your feet and making tough decisions on the fly. Improve your business results by increasing your emotional intelligence in this soft skills development workshop.
- Principles and concepts of emotional intelligence
- Value of emotional intelligence at work and at home
- Techniques for giving and receiving feedback
- The positive and negative impact of emotional intelligence
- The consequences of applying emotional intelligence
- Emotional level evaluation
- Emotional Strengths and weaknesses analysis
- Techniques for improving own emotional intelligence
Stress Management (1-day workshop)
Are your people functioning productively at peak and optimum levels? Are they are exposed to more stress than they can deal with, their mental, physiological and spiritual life in danger? The loss of balance in
- Understand the real meaning of stress
- Determine the difference between positive and negative stressors
- Identify internal and external stressors related to your personality and communication style
- Develop a new/fresh approach toward stressors
- Improve your communication skills
- Use the principles of Eustress Vs Distress to cope in demanding situations
- Change bad habits like procrastination and crisis management
- Analyze the cause of outbursts, conflict, and stress
- Develop a plan to deal with stressful situations and work it!
Conflict Management (1-day workshop)
Interpersonal conflict is the most apparent reason for dysfunctional conflict in the workplace. Symptoms are evident through office politics, gossip
Stressors from home are brought to the office and conversely from the office back home, leading to
- Discover the
cause / source of conflict - Characteristics of conflict in the workplace
Organisational Conflict- Business Conflict
- Conflict associated
to personality types - Steps to manage conflict
- Conflict resolution
- Conflict strategy and action plan
- Conflict policies and procedures
- Conflict vs
labour relations - Skills and attributes of an effective conflict manager
Communication Skills (1-day workshop)
For the better part of every day, staff on all levels of
- Understand the real definition of communication
- Identify the different communication methods
- Identify communication barriers and how to overcome them
- Develop non-verbal and para-verbal communication skills
- Use the STAR method for impromptu speeches
- Practice active listening effectively.
- Practice sound questioning techniques
- Use appreciative inquiry as a communication tool
- Adeptly converse and network
- Learn to see and understand the BIG picture
Interpersonal Relationships (1-day workshop)
We live in a country with different cultures, believes, traditions, backgrounds
- Principles and concepts of inter-personal relationships
- Value and
positive impact of inter-personal relationship skills at work and at home - Techniques for getting along with people from all backgrounds
- The consequences of applying wrong techniques
- Inter-personal relationship level evaluation
- Strength and development assessment
- Strategy for improving inter-personal relationship skills
- Communication skills
- Conflict management skills
- Establish productive working relationships
Managing Your Personal Finances (2-day workshop)
Employees on all levels of
- Positioning the state of your finances by reporting and
analysing current spending patterns - Planning your finances by taking control of own finances and get the most of one’s money
- Financial Management by recognizing the need to save as part of personal financial management
- Budgeting by compiling a personal budget for the next three months, to manage own money
- Credit by discussing the different types of credit available to an individual in own situation and the basic principles and legal implications of credit contracts
- Buying a property or home by researching the cost of credit when buying a property/home
- Cost of credit on household items, clothing
and consumable goods by researching the cost when buying on credit - Financing a vehicle by investigating all the options.
- How compound interest work for or against you
- How to save electricity and water the best way?
- Marriage and money
- Buying groceries, the best way and save hundreds of rand’s every month
- Your rights as
consumer in SA - How to build a buffer for unexpected expenses?
Assertiveness and Self Confidence (2-day workshop)
Assertiveness and Self-Confidence are closely
- Understand the real meaning of assertiveness and self-confidence
- Determine the difference between assertiveness and aggression
- Identify emotional intelligence principles to support assertiveness
- Develop a new attitude towards positive submissiveness
- Improve your understanding of the role and benefits of self confidence
- Use the principles, techniques and benefits of self-awareness and confidence
- Draw up a plan of self-management techniques, analyse and evaluate your abilities
- Categorise emotions relating to assertion and confidence
- The role of emotional intelligence in being assertive and confident
Coaching and Mentoring (2-day workshop)
Life-long-learners go from strength to strength in today’s fast-paced and competitive world, learning mostly from chosen role-models. Life-long-learners contract with mentors to become mentees to renew themselves regularly, preventing becoming obsolete. Learn to play a vital role in the lives of others, whether you are in a formal or informal leadership position. Leaders leave a legacy by growing new leaders. “The moment you start focussing on the development of others, you will experience huge growth and development yourself!” This workshop has been designed for managers, supervisors and all other staff who are willing and able to help others grow toward personal mastery. Learners will understand the mentorship concept, the characteristics of a mentor as well as the role of a mentor / coach.
- The learning environment is assessed and developmental roles are clarified
- Insight into own beliefs and learning potential is gained
- The development process and outcomes are understood
- Coaching is understood and implemented
- Mentorship is applied in appropriate situations
- Development discussions and feedback on progress is conducted
- Managing development
- The learning relationship triangle
- Individual readiness for development is assessed
- Readiness to facilitate the development mentees is assessed
- Use of competencies in development
- Forms of coaching discussions
- Objectives of coaching
- Phases of coaching
- Planning coaching
- Role and characteristics of a mento
Customer Care and Relations (1-day workshop)
Successful
- State what successful customer service means in relation to all your customers, both internal and external
Recognise how your attitudeeffects customer service- Identify your customer’s needs
- Use outstanding customer service to generate return business
- Build
good will through in-person customer service - Provide outstanding customer service over the phone
- Connect with customers through online tools
- Deal with difficult customers
- Recovering difficult customers
- Understanding when to escalate
- Ten things you can do to WOW customers every time
Time Management (1-day workshop)
Through research and training of individuals in companies, we found that time is a great equalizer. We all get the same amount of time for different priorities. The difference being our attitudes and tenacity to produce results. When managing time, you manage your tasks. When assisting your team to manage their time, it directly influences your own performance. Employees are supposed to be productive for at least six and a half hours per day, excluding lunch and tea/coffee breaks, but reality paints a scary picture of the impact of time wasters on productivity. Learn to practice Time Management for personal and team benefit.
- Realising that Time Management is a myth
- Avoid time wasting
- Dealing with procrastination
- Creating Time Management goals
- Implementing a Time Management plan
- Using Time Management tools
- Prioritise ruthlessly
- Learn to delegate and/or outsource
- Establishing and adopting routines
- Get in the habit of setting time limits for tasks
- Organising your systems
- Don’t waste time waiting
Self Management Practices (1-day workshop)
“People are supposed to manage themselves – naturally”, a statement which is often far from the truth. The majority of people battle self-managed emotions like anger, guilt, lack of confidence, stress, hate, and many others, on a daily basis. Resulting in poor decision-making and thereby place themselves in untenable situations. Learning to overcome reactions will result in sound value-based decisions that provide peace, and self-worth. A sure sign that we are a work-in-progress is the victim mentality, not taking responsibility for ourselves and blaming others for situations we caused ourselves. Join us in this workshop to empower you to
- Anger Management
- Causes for anger
- Reasons that triggers anger
- Legitimate and destructive forms of anger
- Types of anger
- Situational responses, symptoms and events
- The angry chain reaction
- Breaking the chain of anger
- Advantages of anger management
- The consequences of out-of-control anger
- Sources of stress
- Types of stressors
- Signs and symptoms of stress overload
- Consequences of not dealing with stress
- Stress management plan
- Organise oneself for work
- Organisational culture and behaviours
- Expectations of workplace behaviour
- Expectations of the organisation
- Legislation, policies and procedures
- Human resources policies and procedures
- Coaching the underperforming employee
- Effective time management
- Plans to improve time management skills
- Measuring progress against plans
Professional Behaviour (1-day workshop)
Professional Behaviour must form part of our Vision and Mission. Our Core values must largely reflect our professionalism toward our customers, being our biggest asset, whether internal or external. It is said that you have only one opportunity to make a first impression, then doing so over the phone or one-on-one, is an opportunity to form a lasting impression. It has been proven that it costs exponentially more to gain a new customer than what it costs to retain an existing customer. Focus on and implement the principles of Professional Behaviour to grow and retain your customer base. Learn to look, act and behave professionally to contribute to
- Positive listening skills
- Non-verbal communicating signals
- The role of posture and eye contact
- Personal space
- Importance of
first impression - Visitors greeting
- How people are introduced to each other
- Ways of closing an interaction
- Importance of delivering on promises
- Ways of behaving professionally when provoked
- Importance of confidentiality
- The dress code of your
organisation - Understanding the
organisation’s code of good practice - Work ethics and the responsibility and accountability of the individual
Supervisory Skills (2-day workshop)
Do the Supervisors in your
- Making proper decisions and solving complex problems
- Understanding brainstorming techniques for problem solving, teambuilding and creative processes
- Change management strategies and programs
- Record administration
- Planning and conducting of appointments
- Understanding leadership styles and modules
- Transforming from a general position to Supervisor
- Appointing and releasing staff
- Forms of discrimination
- Accountability
- Motivation
- Problem solving
Apply Today
Approach and Strategy
- Although our list of soft-skills development programs are
credit-bearing and Unit Standard based, experience has shown that only 2% of learners submit Portfolio of Evidence after soft-skills development training. - That is why we save you the expense and follow a workshop approach. Learners do class exercises and receive a Certificate of Attendance after each workshop.
- Should organizations prefer Outcomes Based Training (Portfolio of Evidence, Assessment,
and Moderation), the same will be provided. - Learning material and hand-outs are of the highest quality.
- Only Subject Matter Experts act as Facilitators in the different workshops.
- After-training support is available.
- Workshops can be presented in-house (
at theorganization’s own venues, at a reduced price) or at external conference facilities.
Course Materials include:
- A course workbook
- Additional accelerated learning study aids.
- In class practice and review
PMI®, CAPM
Read more about Davis and Dean’s wealth of experience here.
Accreditation

Project Management Institute (PMI) Accreditation
Davis&Dean is a Charter Registered Education Provider with the PMI (Project Management Institute). The MBP program is accredited with 24 PDU’s (Professional Development Units)

Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) Accreditation
Davis&Dean is registered with ECSA and the Managing By Project (MBP) program is validated for CPD under Course & Lectures, obtain 3 CPD points for attending, ICMEESA 065/11
