Many managers are highly motivated. They are interested in their personal development and ensure that they do their job to the best of their abilities and that the people they report to see that.

The film ‘Wall Street’ contained the famous quote, ‘lunch is for wimps’. Many managers seem to follow this as a mantra as they rarely take lunch breaks, work regular hours or, it seems, have a life outside work. They will frequently work 70 or more hours a week. Many even have a change of clothes at the office and take working at weekends as a given.

Where managers’ understanding of motivation falls down is when they have people reporting to them who do not share their values. Some employees are happy to take their salary, do their job to the best of their ability and go home at five and forget about work.

These people can be individuals who value their family life above their work life. It may be that their personal circumstances mean that they are the main carer for their children, for example. Alternatively, an employee may have reached a level at which they are comfortable but have no motivation to go any further.

It is vital that managers take into account different mindsets other than their own when managing and motivating their staff.

There is no doubt that times have changed. Whereas many years ago an employee would often spend virtually their whole career with one employer, those days are gone. Those employees slowly worked their way up to management so that when they got there they knew their organisation and their colleagues thoroughly. Nowadays, even though there is a limit to how many different jobs it is thought desirable to have appearing on your CV, it is quite a common situation for people to move on to new challenges after a relatively short time.

It is important for new managers to put their soft skills training into practice. In other words, they will take their time in ensuring they understand an organisation and their staff before they start changing things. They need to listen, question and plan before implementing change.

One problem in many organisations is that staff are often promoted to management positions on the basis of their technical skills. They will often have no experience or knowledge of how to manage and motivate people.

New managers should never try to bluff. If a manager finds they don’t know something, they should be able to tell their staff they don’t know.

There are a number of common mistakes that presenters make and these can be covered in soft skills training.

One of the worst assumptions you can make when you are to give a presentation is to think that your audience know what you’re going to be talking about. Don’t just launch into what you want to say as you will probably lose the interest of many of the people present.

It may sound almost too simplistic for words but there is a very effective method for ensuring that whatever else may be said about your presentation, people will at least know what it’s about. There are essentially three elements, although if you wanted to be completely reductive, you could say this method consists of one piece of advice repeated three times.

First of all, tell your audience what you are going to say. In other words you should introduce your presentation with the reason they are there, your subject, your objective in giving the presentation and how long it will take.

Tell your audience exactly what you said you would in the introduction.

Finally, recap the points you have covered. Remind your audience what you have talked about and summarise the key points. Remind your audience of your stated objective and demonstrate how you have achieved that.