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

Question

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 · Accepted Answer

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...