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WCI Press Announces the Availability of Competency Styles Workbooks. Individuals HR professionals and organizations can use these new workbooks to increase 'soft interpersonal and teamwork skills.

After three years in development, WCI Press has announced the release of the Competency Styles workbooks, supporting workshops and facilitator materials. The workbooks allow both individuals and organizations to effectively develop soft" interpersonal skills. Written in the language of the workplace, each workbook provides an individual with a complete personal development experience in a core soft skill area.

August 4, 2004 [Hillsburgh, Ontario -- After three years in development, WCI Press has announced the release of the Competency Styles workbooks, supporting workshops and facilitator materials. The workbooks allow both individuals and organizations to effectively develop soft" interpersonal skills.

Working professionals need soft" skills. The importance of these skills is continually re-asserted in articles in newspapers and trade magazines. This need never goes away, no matter what the state of the economy. Organizations may reduce the overall size of their training investment in hard times, but they never completely stop investing in effective soft skill programs. WCI Press was created to meet this ongoing need in a cost-effective manner.

The Competency Styles workbooks are available to individuals, organizations, facilitators, HR professionals, trainers, coaches, and adult educators through a dedicated website: www.competencystyles.com. They are the first set of a series of workbooks that will address the soft skill acquisition. WCI Press is currently working on the next series, Meeting Styles.

Roelf Woldring, the author of the Competency Styles workbooks, drew upon his experience as an information technology executive and senior consultant, in developing these workbooks.

I am a 'techie who became an information technology executive with responsibility for the productivity of others," he explains. About 10 years into my career, I realized that many of my poor decisions had to do with the way I worked with people rather than the way I exercised technology."

During the 1980s and 1990s, as an IT executive, I invested in soft" skill training programs that used popular psychometric instruments, and were based on cutting edge leadership theory. However, I was constantly mystified by the fact that, unlike my technical training investments, none of this soft skill investment provided consistent on-the-job results."

Woldring has always implemented systematic performance management contracting and appraisal in the IT organizations he managed. Through these programs, return on soft skill training investment was measured through links to on-the-job performance improvement by individuals.

Effective leadership at work is a complex mixture of personal motivation, thoughtful job progression, carefully developed competencies and appropriate professional development. It can take years to develop," he explains. Training programs can help along the way, but they do not create leaders. There is no magic three-day, or even three-month, silver training bullet that will create effective leaders. To develop leaders, an organization must invest in broad, effective soft skill training combined with good career management that first selects, and then exposes, capable individuals to progressively broader developmental assignments."

Over the years, I realized that the soft skill training programs in which I invested did not directly address the broad soft skill developmental needs of working professionals. Based on psychological theory and psychometric principles, their first goal of their underlying tools is to be valid and reliable. Since they are often used to predict performance in the workplace, this is essential. To achieve this, they use the language and the statistical techniques of psychology to structure their approach and to present their results. Actual skill increase and on-the-job performance improvement is a secondary goal."

Actually improving the soft skill performance of the people in an organization has different requirements. All of the people in an organizational unit must first learn to be better at working with one another. Once they function better in teams, the next step is to improve the ways they act as day-to-day managers of others. Both require effective investment in developing the core interpersonal skills that are used in both situations.

Woldring was also concerned with paralyzing people in their performance improvement efforts. In his personal coaching work with executives, it had become clear that the amount of feedback provided by many of the current psychometrically based instruments simply overwhelm them. Much of his coaching work involved simplifying this feedback, and tying it back to basic core behavior changes that an individual could truly implement on-the-job.

Personal insight and behavior change needs to come in manageable chunks," Woldring notes. People need to actually apply what they learn the day they get back on-the-job. They need to see immediate positive results from their first behavior changes in order to build the confidence to continue on to make more complex personal behavior changes."

Woldring focused the development of the four core Competency Styles workbooks on basic interpersonal skills (e.g. interacting with others and making decisions). Written in the language of the workplace, each workbook is formatted as a complete self development experience that individuals can work through in their own time. They are also effective additions to a wide variety of existing professional development programs. The Competency Styles workshops can be used by HR professionals and trainers independently of existing programs to develop an individuals soft skills or to increase teamwork effectiveness in new and existing teams.

WCI Press has a larger vision than Competency Styles. The Competency Styles workbooks are the first of a series of individual soft skill development workbooks. Woldring comments, In the first months of 2004, we built the WCI Press infrastructure, boot strapping ourselves each step of the way. Now are we are releasing our first publications to the market. Meeting Styles will be next. We are also looking for authors who share our dedication to workplace language and manageable, positive on-the-job new skill implementation."

About WCI Press
WCI Press is the publishing imprint of Workplace Competence International Limited (www.wciltd.com). WCI has delivered process improvement, organizational change, and professional development services to clients since 1986. WCI is dedicated to working with executives, HR professionals, facilitators and organizations to improve organizational and individual performance. WCI Presss mission is to publish personal and professional development material on paper and on the web. The Competency Styles workbooks are available by visiting www.competencystyles.com.

About Roelf Woldring
Roelf Woldring is a seasoned IT executive and senior consultant, who has focused his graduate education and research on the psychology of the workplace. His consulting, training and coaching work has been done through Workplace Competence International (www.wciltd.com). A number of his publications are available for free on this website. He is the founder of WCI Press. He can be contacted at 519-855-4582, or woldring@wciltd.com.

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