Personal Skill Development

Personal development happens when you take part in activities that grow your aptitude in a certain area of expertise. Personal development also provides an increased sense of morale and lets you discover and attain new personal development goals. Personal skill development is explicitly intended to help develop new skills and seven sharpen pre-existing ones.

Employees may want to work on their personal skills, but might not know how or where to start. Employees feel valued when their employer shows interest in helping them develop. It doesn’t cost a company much to guide employees’ personal skill development, and the benefits quickly add up.

Because personal skill development is a broad category, many talents and skillsets fall into it. These include (but are not limited to) skills like adaptability, communication, integrity, interpersonal skills, leadership, organization, problem-solving, self-confidence, and work ethic. Let’s take a closer look at what each of these means.

Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to analyze a situation, pinpoint problem areas, develop a plan, and overcome the issue. It’s an essential skill for employees because it increases their independence and efficacy.

Communication

Communication is an employee’s ability to adequately express an issue and discuss how to solve it. Without proper communication skills, employees make more mistakes and disagreements arise.

Integrity

The honesty, loyalty, and morality a person possesses make up their integrity. Employees who show lower integrity don’t gain the trust and confidence of their coworkers and have a harder time working as a team.

Interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills are necessary for interacting with others. These include teamwork, motivation, leadership, dependability, and responsibility. If an employee lacks interpersonal skills, they won’t work well with others.

Leadership

Employees with solid leadership skills know when to take charge and instruct their coworkers, and when to step back and let them figure things out themselves.

Organization

Strong organizational skills keep the workplace running smoothly, increase productivity, and decrease work-related stress. Organization also establishes structure, which boosts morale.

Problem-solving

Employees who can proactively resolve hurdles on their own and work better independently mean that managers and other higher-ups won’t need to step in as often.

Self-confidence

Employees with high self-confidence make fewer mistakes. They work more efficiently, independently, and productively.

Work ethic

Work ethic is, “a belief in work as a moral good: a set of values centered on the importance of doing work. Employees with a strong work ethic put their job higher up their priority list. They do as much as possible to ensure things get done right.

The Importance of Personal Growth and Development

Not everyone realizes that personal growth and development are crucial for employees in the workplace. However, most employees say they’re more likely to stay at a company that prioritizes personal growth and development than at a company that doesn’t.

Encouraging employee growth and teaching them personal development skills also benefits your business. The more room an employee has to grow and flourish, the more valuable they become. Some of the most important personal development skills are communication, problem-solving, adaptability, organization, and confidence. There are others, but these are the building blocks to any good personal development plan.

Personal Growth Examples

Many factors go into what personal growth looks like; the individual, the company, and the industry involved all make an impact. Personal growth is often hard to identify because of this. To help, we’ve provided a few examples of what personal growth looks like in some scenarios.

Personal development examples for sales reps include:

Overcoming objections
Arguably one of the most important skills for a sales rep to have is the ability to overcome objections. This skill isn’t inherent in everyone, and it’s challenging to learn. There are a few simple steps to take if overcoming objections as a sales rep doesn’t come easy. Active listening means paying close attention to verbal and non-verbal cues. It’s the initial step in overcoming objections because the sales rep gathers information about why the individual they’re talking to is objecting.

A sales rep must ask follow-up questions that provide essential insight into the customer’s point of view. This insight allows them to anticipate objections more easily, giving them more time to prepare their response.
Asking the right questions
Repetition, in moderation, helps the customer know the sales rep is listening to what they say. By repeating their main points back to them, the sales rep is acknowledging their concerns and indicating they are working on a solution. Validation goes hand-in-hand with this because simply repeating the customer’s words back to them isn’t enough. The sales rep must also make the customer feel like they’re on the same team.They’ve gathered all the information they need. Now the sales rep must be able to give a convincing and persuasive argument for why the customer should do business with them.
Ability to source prospects
Sourcing prospects is a sales rep’s responsibility. It involves finding organizations or individuals to become potential clients. These prospects must align with the company’s idea of the perfect customer, and finding these clients is vital for any sales rep. Without customers, there is no business. Common methods of prospect sourcing include referrals, direct marketing, frequent events, partnerships, and automated marketing.
Increasing monthly or annual revenue numbers
A sales rep’s main job is simple: make more sales for the company. If a sales rep is unable to increase or, at the bare minimum, maintain monthly and annual revenue, they need to work on developing their sales skills.

Personal development examples for customer service agents include:

Effective communication
For customer service agents, communication is key. No matter how good someone’s communication skills are, there’s always room for improvement. To help, we’ve put together a list of tips for communicating effectively.Make it personal
When reaching out to customer service for help, customers don’t want preset responses. All too often, customer service agents have the conversation mapped out and come across as robotic or uncaring. Every customer’s situation is unique, and the customer service agent’s responses should be, too. Cookie-cutter answers don’t work for many scenarios, and often make the customer feel ignored or unheard.

Be positive
Customers are already frustrated when they contact customer service. By wording things positively, the customer service agent has a chance to get the customer out of that mindset. Avoiding negative phrases and connotations is crucial. Empathy lets the customer know that everyone is on the same team.

Listen intently
Customer service agents that interrupt and don’t listen closely to what the customer is saying make it seem like the company doesn’t value their customers. By listening intently and letting the caller finish, the customer service agent shows that the customer is important to the company.
Problem-solving
Problem-solving is a customer service agent’s job. Good customer service is one of the cornerstones of customer satisfaction. Companies are unable to help customers when they have an issue with a product or service and quickly lose their positive reputation. Those companies get bad reviews, which can turn away future customers.
Improve customer satisfactionThere are four simple rules to improving customer satisfaction with customer service: pay attention, be proactive, be honest and open, and be empathetic. Inattentive customer service agents make the customer more upset and feel as though not much is being done to help. Customer service agents must be proactive and take control of the situation. Getting involved in the conversation shows them the customer service agent is listening, but also that they’re doing everything in their power to fix the issue.Personal skill development also helps employees uncover a new work goal; examples include a desire to increase their professional knowledge or landing a leadership role. Personal objective examples that employees might also develop along the way are increased pay, strengthening their relationships with coworkers, and trying new things.

How to Develop a Skill

Everyone has room to improve, but not everyone knows how or where to start. It’s not that employees aren’t looking for ways to improve professional development; most are deterred by their jobs not offering methods or tools to help. It’s crucial for companies and businesses to provide their employees with ways to improve professional skills for many reasons, one of which is the increased willingness of employees to work for you. You may even learn some things about how to improve your skills, too.

Create a personal development plan: Creating a personal development plan provides clear goals and motivations, an idea of what skills are missing, and a course of action to develop those skills.
Develop Training: Sit down with your employees and discuss what skills need to be developed, how to develop those skills, and what you can do to help.
Give employees a safe space to practice skills: Employees will develop skills more efficiently if they have a safe space to do so. Provide them with space where they won’t feel pressured and where they can be away from distractions.
Deliver feedback and coaching: If you don’t provide constructive feedback or coach your employees on the areas they struggle in, they won’t know what they’re doing right or wrong. Check in with them routinely and be available to answer any questions they have.
Evaluate: Evaluate employee progress frequently to keep track of how successful their practice and training are.

Develop Employee Skills and Knowledge with Lessonly

So you may be wondering, “How can Lessonly teach me how to improve my skills at work?”

Lessonly is online enablement, training, and coaching software designed to do exactly that. Our powerfully simple platform shows you what skills employees excel at, and what areas could use some improvement. Lessonly makes it easy to create and deliver training materials that walks employees through how to develop the skills and knowledge they need for their jobs. There are few things more important than personal development in the workplace, and Lessonly offers hundreds of personal development training topics for you to choose from.

Visit our blog to read about the importance of workplace training, and preview the benefits of Lessonly and how we can transform your workforce. Lessonly has everything you need for personal skill development or helping your employees develop their skills. Ready to learn more? Watch this quick 2-minute preview to see how we can help your employees with their personal skill development.