Ask HN: What is the most useful work-related course you ever followed?

[hcheemskerk]

My employer has a budget for personal development of its employees - I have to choose what courses I want to take. I asked around a bit, and the results were interesting! People in completely different roles/departments and even in different companies would answer the same thing 9/10 times: courses centered around soft skills were by far the most useful ones. However, people generally had trouble explaining what exactly it was that they learned.

I wonder whether this is just my social bubble, or also sentiment broadly shared by HN. I'd also appreciate examples of the concrete contents and applications of these courses.

[RMWildly]

I took a course from a local conflict mediation charity based around the Harvard Negotiation Project's framework on Difficult Conversations (So another vote for soft skills, really). It completely changed the way I think about dealing with internal & client side comms - with a big part of the focus being on trying to understand the underlying motivations behind people you're communicating with. Honestly, this feeds into how I try to communicate with people in a non-work context too, so, can't recommend it highly enough.

Not sure how helpful that'll be in terms of finding a course that you can access yourself, but link to the original book outlining the framework below.

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/shop/difficult-conversations-how...

[hcheemskerk]

Thank you for the suggestion, I'll check whether something resembling this is available in my area.