Have you noticed how some people are addicted to negativity, blame games, and/or being a victim? Too often, “naysayers” downplay the value of good interpersonal skills training, mainly because they don’t know how to calculate the return on such an investment. It’s a soft-skill, not a tangible capital investment, and because most MBA programs don’t teach how to find ROI on training, too many people remain skeptical of its value.

But consider these statements made by clients of ours who have been through our Management Development Program, which places an emphasis on interpersonal skills:

“We know how to budget and forecast profits. For example, when we make a capital investment, we know how much profit will result and when. Well, this past year our profits are millions of dollars above what we expected, and we haven’t done anything different from what we’ve done in years past – except put people through this program.”

Another senior manager told me the following:

“This program is really paying off. Another senior manager and I used to butt heads like crazy. I thought he was a jerk and he thought the same about me. But after your program we realized we just had different styles. We used to make things difficult for each other on purpose, but now we’re working together and making decisions that save the company sometimes 20 thousand dollars a day.”

In their book Reframing Organizations, Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal state “Many organizations are reluctant to invest in developing human capital. The costs of training are immediate and easy to measure; the benefits are elusive and long-term.”

If you want to learn how to calculate the ROI for soft-skills training, I’ll be happy to show you how for free (just call). But either way, anyone looking to increase their profits should look into management development — especially in terms of Interpersonal Skills training. You can see from what people say that the value of their training was quite noticeable in their bottom line.

Share This

Filed in Training, Management, Team Building, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Human Resource Management