Personal effectiveness is about developing the “soft” skills of life that we often take for granted as being common sense behaviours. Using all your resources such as your skills, time, energy, strengths and talents to master life and achieve your goals.

If you were never exposed to these skills or taught them growing up you may not be aware that they are learned behaviours.  Learning to manage yourself impacts your personal effectiveness and requires an ability to reflect on your behaviours, beliefs and values.

Personal effectiveness skills available as training includes assertiveness, anger management, body language, conflict management, emotional competency, handling difficult people, motivation, persuasion, creativity, negotiation skills, stress management, goal setting.

Be the Best You Can Be

Often when you act in a passive, aggressive or passive-aggressive way you may believe you have no choice.
Assertiveness is an effective communication technique that provides for respectful communication that recognises choice in our ability to respond.  It helps us to be productive so that time isn’t wasted in misunderstandings and miscommunication.
It’s the ability to express your needs and uphold your own integrity and dignity without violating the rights of others
Anger is often considered a “bad” emotion because of the outcome of it’s expression when that is damaging to self or others..  Anger is an emotion that let’s us know that something is pressing on our boundaries.  It helps to protect us and restore our inner strength.  Anger can be an effective motivator for action to change things.
What is unhealthy is when anger is used to fuel aggression or hostility.  When anger becomes chronic it can affect your health. 
Not expressing anger appropriately and turning it inward has been shown to factor in the development of depression. 
Managing anger is about using anger appropriately not only for the protection of others but also self protection of your boundaries and health.  
Effective communication relies on non-verbal communication and body-language plays a key role in emotional communication.  Our interpersonal interactions can be improved when we know how to control our own body signals and ability to read those signals from others in context.
Reading body language is not fool proof, the principles can be learned to read clusters of open and closed body positions.
Everyone faces conflict.  As part of dealing with people, the ability to deal with conflict effectively and peacefully results in better understanding, negotiation for resources and harmonious relationships.
It’s okay to disagree, you don’t have to be disagreeable doing it!
There are a variety of styles we develop and more that can be learned while staying emotionally balanced during a conflict.
Research has shown that emotional intelligence is a critical skill in determining a person’s success.  Developing competency assists to increase the quality of interactions and improve productivity through being able to manage yourself. 
Getting a handle on emotional competency is part of mental wellness and is part of our psychosocial need for a sense of control.

We come into contact with a lot of different people and some of them we can find difficult to deal with for a variety of reasons.  If they are in your family or at your workplace is can be hard.  It is possible to develop effective mental attitudes and use techniques to maintain peaceful and productive relationships.

To move forward in life we need to know what we want and stay motivated to achieve them.  Along that journey we often need to persuade others to support us or to gain something and be able to do that creatively.  Motivation, persuasion and creativity are inter-related skills toward achievement of goals.

To become a good negotiator, you need to be good in many related areas such as bargaining, psychology, empathy, planning, scheduling, body language, politics to name a few.
We often need to negotiate with others so that we can get what we want or need and without this ability we can feel a sense of powerlessness.
The ability to manage stress, not only alleviates an awful physical state to be in, it can increase personal productivity and help to avoid mental and physical health issues. 
Stress has been shown to affect the immune system providing a path to more infections and more sick days.  It is also linked to the development of depression and can lead to a state of exhaustion.

Having goals is an important psychosocial need.  Learning to develop effective goals using the SMART system in alignment with personal values provides a foundation for living with purpose and providing a sense of meaning.

Be the Best You Can Be