Enhancing the soft skills of the Farmlands technical team

Farmlands is New Zealand’s largest farmer owned rural supplies co-operative. They exist for one simple reason – to use the collective power of their shareholders to negotiate better deals and improve individual profitability.

Technical skills are vital for starting a project, but successful delivery depends on effective communication and collaboration. With Altis’ specialised Soft Skills training, your technical teams will gain the confidence to succeed.

The opportunity

Farmlands have a technical team that is highly skilled and knowledgeable, a growth area for the team was to engage more closely with the business and decision-making stakeholders. This lack of interaction between the technical and business teams meant that the team was engaged later in the decision making process, purely as report builders to monitor performance, rather than earlier, where more input into strategic decisions making with data and analytics could be provided.

The solution

Our soft skills trainer, Sara O’Connor, put together a custom Soft Skills Training Program mapped to the specific needs and current skills of the Farmlands team.

The program included 3 workshops focusing on:

1. Communicating with impact and improved influence in a technical
   environment
2. Presenting complex ideas to a group, and
3. Growing strong relationships with all stakeholders

After each workshop the participants received personal coaching to help embed the learning and transfer the new skills into everyday practice.

The outcome

The combination of workshops and individual coaching accelerated Farmlands return on investment, and there has been a noticeable improvement in the communication within the business, which has been commented on at an executive level.

Do you want to find out more about our Soft Skills training offering?

View our Soft Skills Training page or connect with Altis today to find out how we can help your team gain the confidence to succeed!