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The purpose of this research paper is to identify and describe the key leadership skills associated with great leaders in the sales discipline. Nine critically important sales leadership skills are identified and discussed in this manuscript with the purpose of getting sales leaders think about skill set development while providing those responsible for sales leadership development an opportunity to think through some critically important questions.

A sample of over 300 sales personnel were asked to individually describe the best sales leader with whom they had ever worked for during your career. Focus groups were then conducted to identify the most critical skills for sales leadership success. A content analysis of the focus group findings were then used to tabulate the key findings in this paper.

Key findings from this focus group study identified a wide range of critically important leadership skills and behaviors that included: emotional intelligence and 360° communication skills, possessing the ability to effectively coach and develop sales personnel, the ability to create clear performance expectations and accountability, problem-solving and conflict resolution skills, the ability to engage a sales workforce, strategic acumen, character and integrity, and data Mining and analytical skills, among others.

The key findings from this research provide the reader with a host of potentially testable hypotheses as well as ideas and findings for future sales leadership research. 10;This study provides a clear roadmap for sales leaders to develop critically important skill sets needed for improving a sales force's performance and revenue generation capabilities. 10.

This study provides a clear roadmap for sales leaders to develop critically important skill sets needed for improving a sales force's performance and revenue generation capabilities.

The social implications of the study make it clear that great sales leaders take great care of their workforces, develop their people, and demonstrate great character and integrity in the workplace.

This paper will identified nine specific leadership skills and practices required for high performance in this regard. Focus group findings will challenge the readers thinking on several key fronts while at the same time providing them with a punch list of critically important behaviors that can be targeted and developed. This information is important for both individual performers as well as those responsible for sales leadership development in their organizations.

This article reports on a pilot graduate apprenticeship in hospitality management, currently delivered at Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies (BCFTCS). The graduate apprenticeship at BCFTCS involves the integration of key skills and level four NVQ units into the established hospitality business management undergraduate degree programme. Key outcomes to emerge from the design, implementation and first year delivery of the graduate apprenticeship are discussed to assess if the integration of key skills and NVQs into an existing programme of study provides added value to the student learning experience. The major benefits and challenges which a programme involving a coalescence of key skills, HE award and NVQs offers HE institutions and employers are discussed.

Universities are encouraged to embed key skills in their undergraduate curricula, yet there is often little support on how to identify skills development and progression. This paper describes a tool that facilitates colleagues in auditing key skills and career/employability skills within individual modules and mapping these skills across degree pathways. The instrument presented supports a systematic approach to collect information on skills development. It enables tutors to highlight those skills students have the opportunity to develop or practise within a module, and to record for each skill whether explicit learner support is provided, whether the skill is assessed, and the desired standard of proficiency. The latter is identified from descriptors defined for three standards. Data collected for all modules within a degree pathway may subsequently be summarised (mapped). The tool provides valuable summary data for institutional quality assurance purposes and facilitates reflection on how to enhance students' learning experiences.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

To explore potential mismatches between stakeholders' perceptions and expectations of key and technical skills needed for an advanced modern apprentice within the UK.

Using data collected from the automotive sector, the template process is used to establish lecturer, student and employee stakeholder group's expectations of a person taking up employment alongside an advanced modern apprenticeship or as an advanced modern apprentice. Perceptions of the extent to which expectations are met and their relative importance are assessed.

All stakeholders acknowledge that a skills gap exists across key and technical skills. However, whilst students focus on technical skills, lecturers and employees place greatest emphasis on key skills and their ability to transfer them.

Although this research is based on the UK automotive sector, the findings emphasise the importance of key skills and understanding as part of students' learning. Research is needed to establish why students appear to undervalue these and establish whether similar patterns exist in other sectors.

The voluntarist approach to UK vocational education and training has, when combined with the need for further education colleges to be economically viable, resulted in courses that appear attractive but do not always meet the automotive sector's needs. Research is needed to establish whether this is occurring across other sectors.

This template process offers a new technique to explore stakeholders' perceptions and expectations. The findings provide new insights into the mismatches between expectations of the stakeholders in vocational education and training.

The prevailing literature argues the need for “new” skills to deliver energy-efficient buildings. The concept of new skills, however, has not been subject to empirical investigation. This paper aims to provide insight on the required new skills, and their development and application, for the successful delivery of energy-efficient school retrofit buildings.

The research employed a case study approach of a school retrofit building project in the early stages of the adoption of energy-efficient measures. Through the application of the socio-technical network approach (STNA) as the data collection and analysis framework, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and a review of relevant organisational documentation and were analysed using thematic coding.

The findings reveal key actors (i.e. the local authority, energy contractors and school end-users), their principal interests and the required communication, project management, energy management, technical and research skills during their interactions in the successful delivery of the school retrofit building project. The results further reinforce the crucial role of the local authority in driving energy performance improvement of school buildings.

This study demonstrates empirical evidence of the principal actors and skills required for the delivery of energy-efficient school retrofit buildings, contributes to new theoretical insights at the identification of key micro-level development of construction skills through the project network and evidences on how the STNA can be mobilised in construction skills research.

The purpose of this paper is to report how one University has sought to test the effectiveness of strategies to enhance employability skills, and the key themes which emerged from this investigation.

A survey tool has been used to record staff perceptions of where employability skills are strongly developed and assessed in a sample of courses. The results have been triangulated against explicit statements/mapping in course documentation, and top level University strategies and policies. Key performance indicators have been reviewed, and focus groups have been conducted to appraise student perceptions. An external scan of selected comparator benchmark institutions has also been undertaken.

Key emerging themes include issues surrounding the role of higher education; deficiencies in the classification of graduate destinations; the challenge of predicting the needs of employers of the future; and gaps between strategies, perceptions and realities.

A number of the outcomes of the audit are University specific. However, some of the key themes and issues that have emerged are relevant to the sector as a whole. This paper highlights these broader issues, whilst acknowledging that individual Universities will find their own unique responses to these challenges.

This paper shares an approach to the critical evaluation of the effectiveness of strategies to enhance employability skills development, which may be of value to educational establishments wishing to review their own provision. The paper also draws attention to key issues relating to the enhancement of graduate employability.

Credit mobility has been acknowledged not only to broaden personal and intellectual horizons but also to have positive effects on the skills development and employability of undergraduate students. Academics, policymakers and organizations representing the labour market have presented a broad number of skills-related explorations proposing different frameworks to help develop students' skills. However, the identification of explicit skills is still a difficult endeavour. This study aims to revise main conceptual skills frameworks applicable in the European higher education area (EHEA), determine the skills relevant in European credit mobility and categorize skills among the examined schemes in order to create a normative model of the skills students should obtain in exchange programmes.

The approach used to identify related literature was a search in three main databases such as Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar for scientific and relevant articles after 1990 using the following combination of keywords: “skill frameworks” AND “higher education” OR “skill frameworks” AND “mobility exchange programs”. It produced 391 articles but only 32 deal with skill frameworks in European higher education. After the review of these existing literature (summaries, tables and conclusions), we found out that most articles focused on specific skills (transferable, employable, etc.) in the EHEA, but merely 16 academic publications offered a complete depiction of skills frameworks applicable in credit mobility programs. Most current accounts about skills outlines, specifically the ones related to employability, come from grey literature, namely comprehensive records and reports.

Data seem to confirm that there is scarce agreement on a common taxonomy of skills. However, considering the results, which summarize relevant educational, institutional and occupational perspectives, it can be noticed that there is consensus on the classification of only four skills: ICT, literacy and numeracy, which are considered basic, key or core skills in most researched papers together with problem solving, which is generally regarded as a cognitive skill. The general tendency is that policymakers and academia focus on some particular domains: basic/key, core/global foundation/fundamental skills, transferable, transversal and other skills. Studies analysing the workforce skill requirements have projected mainly cognitive and learning skills, whereas mobility programmes concede relevance to employability, management, career and life skills.

Measuring skills involves limitations as records vary depending on continuous emerging data from institutions, occupations and education. The key frameworks surveyed have provided a representative classification and depiction of the current skills from specific perspectives which are also believed to have their shortcomings. In combination, however, it is believed that the results presented can help provide a theoretical basis for assessing skills in credit mobility and Erasmus programmes within the EHEA. The resulting framework presents a founded basis for skills appraisal which expects to be meaningful for various stakeholders and helps determine how mobility policies can help improve the attainment of skills in the EHEA.

Research has suggested that education systems will have to adapt to the changing needs of the labour markets' reshaping roles to balance technology and human intellect. The workforce seems to realize that cognitive skills such as problem solving, organization and decision-making are needed in today's society; advanced basic learning skills such as numeracy and literacy are essential. Findings appoint to new areas for exploration in skills development in order to prepare European higher education students for current trends in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the fusion between digital, physical and biological spheres.

Data seem to confirm that a sole degree does not guarantee success, but the maturity of certain skills and the commitment to lifelong learning. This can be strengthened by taking part in EHEA credit student mobility that has proved to improve not only basic and linguistic skills but also self-development and respect for several aspects such as diversity and (inter)cultural awareness. Taking into account the perceptive and interpersonal abilities mentioned in reports on future skills, it seems that education will need further support for updated teaching practices and assessment of the skills that are expected to have greater demand, namely STEM. Institutions will need to update and promote the teaching of new skills based on a new collective and moral consciousness as recently indicated in OECD's (2018) Global Competence in order to make future citizens understand and act on issues of universal significance in today's interconnected world.

For several decades, government, education and industry have proposed different outlines for what graduates should know and be able to do. Limited academic studies have been found, however, with updated concrete data on which skills should preferably be developed or whether and how students can further improve these skills as part of EHEA credit student mobility. This study has synthesized works and identified domains which featured the importance of generic core, cognitive and employability skills. The revision of skill frameworks has underscored existing literature and reports on future skills which anticipate that, in order to confront the expanding and prevalent role of technology, graduates will need to focus on developing unique human skills such as effective communication and creative innovation, critical thinking and collective ethical values.

The paper seeks to report the impact of a partnership training intervention on trainee teachers' confidence to teach Personal, Social and Health Education.

This intervention required trainee teachers to work in 15 groups of four across subject disciplines. Each group was required to negotiate, plan and deliver their intended lesson on PSHE in a partnership school. The initiative was evaluated on a pre‐ and post‐test basis by getting each trainee to complete a PSHE Key Skills Confidence Scale that consisted of 45 items, 25 pertaining to working together and 20 to communication.

Results revealed a significant change in trainees' confidence in all of the key PSHE‐related skills. Trainee teachers reported increased confidence in “agreeing what else could have been done to improve working relationships and methods”, “using role play strategies”, “reaching agreement on whether or not the activity fulfilled its objectives”, “considering strategies that will empower pupils to make informed choices about their health”, “determining pupils' attitudes and views of health and healthy living”; “ensuring that pupils received information about the factors which affect health”, “identifying factors that influenced the learning outcome”, and “encouraging pupils to be assertive and resist unwanted peer pressure and other influences”.

It is recommended that all trainee teachers are assessed on their ability to deliver and evaluate PSHE lessons as part of the award of Qualified Teacher Status. Furthermore, it is essential that trainee teachers receive specific resistance/life skills training as part of their initial and continuing professional development.