Most people-skill training fails not because the content is weak, but because the learners are unconvinced. Technical professionals — engineers, developers, architects, analysts — are some of the brightest people in an organization, yet they’re also among the hardest groups to teach interpersonal skills to.
Why?
Because they’re wired to trust data over intuition, logic over ambiguity, and systems over sentiment. Put them in a workshop on emotional intelligence, and many instinctively lean back, cross their arms, and prepare to sit through something that “doesn’t apply to them.”
But the modern workplace demands exactly these skills: clear communication, healthy collaboration, emotional resilience, and the ability to navigate complexity with other humans.
And as learning and development professionals, we realize that technical teams need these skills as much as anyone — often more, but they just need to be taught differently.
In this session, popular Speaker Andrea Goulet reveals a practical, scientific approach to teaching communication, collaboration, and leadership skills to analytical, skeptical, and highly technical audiences. Drawing on two decades of experience at the intersection of systems thinking, communication science, and software engineering, she shows why traditional “soft” skill instruction often fails and how to redesign it using concepts that feel intuitive and relevant to technical minds.
You’ll learn how to reduce resistance, increase engagement, and translate human-centered skills into structured, evidence-based frameworks that technical professionals actually use. This approach strengthens L&D programs, improves trainer confidence, and creates learning experiences that spark genuine behavioral change.
3 Key Principles for reducing learner resistance and increasing psychological safety for audiences who might be skeptical or naturally process information through data and logic…so you can show clear, measurable behavioral change that makes the ROI of your programs easier for the leadership team to see.
2 Common Mistakes L&D teams make when teaching soft skills to technical professionals…and the simple rule that prevents them.
1 Super quick formula for designing soft-skill content that analytical thinkers perceive as credible, relevant, and applicable…so you can build high-impact training designed for engineers, analysts, and other data-driven thinkers in a fraction of the time.
