众所周知，如果软实力培训的方式得当，何愁不能帮助任何一个组织培养出最高效的员工，更好的团队成员、沟通者、问题解决者呢？大多数公司在开展软实力培训时，只是聘用外部培训师和顾问引进核心能力培养项目。这正是问题开始的源头——90%的顾问和外部培训师是怎么进行核心能力培养的呢？他们会从开始到结束，对你的公司和所有的员工，采取一刀切政策，这条路显然是死胡同，走不通。毕竟软实力的培训必须得因人而异！例如，能够通过自己的技巧谈判让老板获利的经理，他真的需要学习基本的沟通技巧吗？或者，办公室里最有条理的人需要时间管理课程吗？答案显而易见，当然，总是有改进和采用更好做事方法的余地，但这绝对不应是任何培训方案的最初重点！然而，90%的顾问会使用“一刀切”的方法，对这些人进行同样的培训，因此，尽管他们是提供内容以提高软实力的专家，他们在理解雇员究竟需要什么来提高他们的软实力方面可以说是非常糟糕！你的员工因为参加与他们技能提高无关的课程而十分沮丧，而雇主没有看到任何良性变化同样感到无比沮丧，这难道就是你要的结果？

这就给我们留下了少数——剩下的10%，那么他们到底是怎么做到的呢？正确的做法是他们诊断每个员工需要改进的地方，他们将员工视为员工，而不仅仅是一个数字。这种方法将通过解决员工技能短缺问题，从而为公司带来明显的好处，即财政收入大大增加，这样这种培训才是真正有效的！当然，困难在于评估，因为要准确有效地进行评估是极其困难的——但是，所谓的一分钱一分货，公司们要为这种优质服务付费，没有付出谈何收获？因此，任何外部培训师如果使用老派的评估方法，比如过时的人格测试，这种培训师对你来说有什么用呢？早该解雇寻找新方法啦！

你或许已经看出评估员工的重要性，这点十分重要！说实话，隐藏在许多培训项目之后的是“哦，培训不能立马看到明显效果，但是我们要保持信心”这种想法是外部培训者推卸责任所找的可悲借口！我不是说培训成果一夜之间就能看到，被培训者的评估结果也会因为开始的不适应而不理想。但我们务必要从长远来看，实施这种评估的培训计划可以让员工的软实力有显著的提高。绝对要撕裂外部培训师和顾问一直披着“结果不能立马看到”的伪装！你必须要求你的外部培训师和顾问在员工能力提升方面能给出可量化的成果，即使由此产生的商业收益是间接的，比如更多优秀的员工导致收入增长这种情况，再次强调，这点非常重要！

我一直都在反复强调，必须制定更有效的、有针对性的软实力培训计划，并提高他们的软实力，这样才能够培养出最高效的员工！而且在此我也要说明的是，内部的培训师有责任提高软实力，但我个人认为，内部培训师其实不想承担太多的负担和风险。所以显而易见的是，更好配合外部顾问，才是他们应该有的作用，而不是承担这种类型的风险，负责求有效的外部帮助来满足培训的需求，这才是他们最重要的责任。

英文原文：

Why 90% of external trainers and consultants are delivering useless training and how this can be fixed.

We all know that soft skills training can help any organization develop the most effective employees, making them better team players, communicators and problem-solvers, when done in the right way. When thinking about soft skills training most companies bring in external trainers and consultancies to introduce a core competencies program. Now this is where the problem begins - 90% of consultancies and external trainers is that they will stride in, take a one-size fits all approach to this whole process to your company and all your employees. As I’m sure you know this is the wrong way to be going about it as the soft skills needed to be developed will vary largely from one employee to the next. Take for example, the manager who can negotiate his way out of anything to benefit his employer, does he really need a lesson in fundamental mmunication skills?  Or, does the most organized person in the office need a lesson in time management? Sure there is always room for improvement and adoption of better practices, but it should not be the initial focus of any training program for them.  However, 90% of consultants would use the one-size fits all approach giving these individuals same training, so whilst 90% of external trainers are experts in delivering content to improve soft skills, they are atrocious in understanding what exactly the employee needs to improve their soft skills. The result is your employees frustrated, attending skills sessions that have no relevance to them and employers are overwhelmingly frustrated that you are seeing no positive changes.

That leaves us with the minority - that elusive 10% that we talked about, how on earth are they getting it right then? Well, the correct way of doing it is to diagnose specific areas of improvement for each employee, treating an employee as an employee and not just a number. This approach will provide obvious benefits to your company by tackling the skills shortages in of your employees head on so you will see big gains. Of course, the difficulty lies with the assessment because it is extremely difficult to conduct it accurately and effectively - but hey that's why organizations are paying for this type of premium service (一分钱一分货), so any external trainer that cannot do this without using old-school methods, such as outdated personality tests, should be discarded immediately.

It is important that you see measurable gains, as most training programs hide behind a cloak of ‘oh training cannot be explicitly measured- we must put faith in training to deliver’ excuse but quite frankly, those are just pathetic reasons to minimise the external trainers’ responsibility. I’m not saying that training results and benefits will appear overnight. Training participants’ assessment results may even dip initially as they are moving out of their comfort zone but in the long run there must be a tangible improvement to keep this form of training sustainable.  We cannot allow consultancies and external trainers to keep up this ‘results are not directly measurable’ charade as you need your consultants and external trainers to deliver results that can be clearly quantified in terms of the employees' improvement in their skills, regardless if the resulting commercial benefits are indirect, such as inadvertently leading to revenue growth.

I'm harping on the need for more effective tailored soft skills training that produces measurable improvement in their soft skills performance, and although your internal trainers do bear responsibility for soft skills, I am certain that internal trainers don’t want to have too much burden and risk. Evidently, they should not assume this type of risk; their role is better served in facilitating the existence of external advisors, but it is up to them to look for external help to deliver on this.

Andy的简介：

- Multicultural and multilingual: Grew up and lived in a number of countries, American-born Chinese -（Third Culture Kid）多文化和多语言:在多个国家成长和居住；美籍华人-典型第三文化人士(TCK)

-Leader in empowering corporate training and recruitment professionals with assessment methodologies and project-based learning andragogy为企业培训和招聘人士提供领先评估体系和游戏化的项目式学习的职场教学法的领袖

-Decade of experience in education and training, and expert in China十年以上的学生教育和企业培训的经验:并被很多本土和国外人士称为“中国通”

-Regular community event organizer with expertise in workplace gamification for employees定期社区活动的组织者:游戏化员工体系的主题

- UC Berkeley Alumni Club Ex-Leader and Recruitment Ambassador毕业于世界名校加州伯克利大学并担任校友俱乐部前任负责人和前任招生大使

- Third-party Interviewer for College Admissions美国第三方面试官(很多大学现在需要学生在提交申请书与第三方机构进行面试)

- Helped build a number of college admissions counseling departments负责搭建多个海外升学指导中心

- Unlike most “education experts”, personally attended more than a dozen schools growing up and personally went through the AP, IB, British, Singaporean and Hong Kong education systems相比其他所谓的“教育专家”，从小上过十几所学校，亲自体验过AP、IB、英国、新加坡和香港的教育制度

-Recently, created China’s first bilingual entrepreneurial and innovation educational events organization: Center for Youth Business Facilitation 在这一两年间，建立了中国第一个双语创新创业学习的活动平台: CYBF创习国际交流中心