How to embed soft-skills development into the flow of work with View Your Splash

From one-off development sessions to lasting behaviour change beyond workshops.

 
Soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability and collaboration have become essential in modern workplaces. They shape how people navigate change, manage pressure, make decisions and work better together, especially as roles become more complex in the age of AI.

 

For senior leaders and talent professionals, the challenge isn’t recognising the importance of soft skills; it’s embedding them into the flow of everyday work, so they show up consistently in behaviour. Organisations that invest heavily in team and leadership development programmes are still struggling to see meaningful change once people return to the workplace and the pressures of day-to-day work take over.

 

The reality is that essential soft skills don’t develop through one-off interventions or workshops. They grow when people regularly reflect on the impact and perception of their behaviour, and how it shapes their performance, so they can adapt in real situations.

 

 

That’s why building a habit of self-reflection is one of the most effective ways to support personal, team and organisational development. It’s also why tools like View Your Splash, a key feature of the Lumina Splash app, are increasingly being used to embed the behavioural agility and skill development that high-performing workplaces rely on.

 

Why soft-skills development fades after workshops

Most organisations are not short of insight. Many development sessions succeed in helping leaders and teams build awareness around their strengths, preferences and development areas. Yet that awareness often fades soon after the session ends.

 

This is not from a lack of motivation or capability. Instead, research associated with Hermann Ebbinghaus shows that learning declines rapidly when it isn’t revisited or reinforced. In other words, without regular opportunities to pause and reflect, even meaningful learning experiences are quickly overtaken by existing habits.
 

Soft skills are particularly vulnerable to this effect because they are dependent on how people adapt their behaviour in different contexts. Skills like communication, empathy and adaptability are tested in meetings, during conflict, under deadlines and when stakes are high.

 

Without opportunities to reflect on and practise adapting their behaviour, people naturally default to familiar behavioural patterns when the everyday pressure of work returns.

 

 

The power of self-reflection in driving behaviour change

This is where self-reflection can be a powerful catalyst for behaviour change. But only when it’s approached in the right way.

 

Research in organisational psychology shows that self-reflection supports learning, adaptation and behavioural change. Reflective processes help people make sense of experience, regulate emotions and generate new perspectives, all of which are essential for adapting how they show up in future situations.

 

However, the research also highlights an important risk: when reflection lacks structure or a clear focus, people can begin to experience it as personal or judgemental. Without something concrete to anchor reflection, people are left interpreting their behaviour through a personal or evaluative lens rather than a constructive one.

 

This is where a practical behavioural framework makes the difference. When people have a shared language to explore how the same behaviour can be effective in one context and less effective in another, they can reflect without labels or judgement. Instead of personalising reflection, they can focus on how a behaviour showed up in a particular scenario and whether it was helpful or unhelpful in that context.

 

This reframing is subtle but powerful. Instead of seeing behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, people begin to see behaviour as a set of patterns they can dial up, dial down or balance more effectively depending on what the situation, or the people they’re working with, calls for.

 

How “View Your Splash” supports ongoing development in the flow of everyday work

For reflection to drive real behaviour change, it needs to happen more than once, and it needs to feel easy to return to. So, how can organisations support reflection that is practical and can be consistently applied to real work situations?

 

The View Your Splash feature in the Lumina Splash app was designed to support exactly this kind of ongoing reflection. The interactive feature brings the behavioural data from a person’s Lumina Spark Portrait to life through an animated Splash that moves between the Three Personas.

 

View Your Splash helps people explore and understand:
 

• The hidden potential in the behaviours that come naturally to them in their Underlying Persona
• The behaviours they dial up or down when working with others in their Everyday Persona
• How those same behaviours can become ineffective when over-relied on or under pressure in their Overextended Persona

 

 

This personalised, self-guided journey around their behavioural style helps people easily spot developmental opportunities and reflect on how they can adapt more effective behaviours in different situations.

 

Before a meeting, after a challenging interaction or when pressure is rising, the app becomes a go-to space to pause, reflect and consider how behaviour is shaping performance and relationships in that moment.

 

Over time, this helps reflection become a habit. Development is reinforced with ongoing reflection, helping learning stick long after sessions end. For organisations, this means soft-skills development moves beyond workshops and into the flow of work where behaviour actually shapes performance, relationships and culture.

Three practical reflection exercises that strengthen essential soft-skill development

Below are three practical reflective prompts that can be used alongside the View Your Splash feature in the Lumina Splash app to support ongoing soft-skills development.

 

1.Recognising hidden potential and development opportunities

Self-awareness is the foundation of all soft skills. Reflecting on behavioural patterns helps people recognise not just what they do well, but what they rely on most, what they may underuse and where hidden potential sits.

 

Practical exercise:

Using the Lumina Splash app, scan the QR code from your Lumina Spark Portrait. Open View Your Splash and toggle between your Underlying Persona and Everyday Persona. Notice how your behaviour shifts across the two, while reflecting on these questions:

 

Everyday Persona:

• Which behaviours have you relied on most over the last six months?
• How have these behaviours supported your performance and relationships?
• Is there a behaviour you tend to dial down that could be useful in your role?
• Where might developing this behaviour make a positive difference?
• How could you consciously bring this behaviour into your next meeting or interaction?

 

Underlying Persona:

• Which behaviours come most naturally to you here?
• How might you be dialling these behaviours down at work, and why?
• How could dialling them up help you be more effective or authentic?
• How could you experiment with bringing one of these behaviours into your next interaction?

 
This exercise helps teams and leaders identify underused strengths, understand which behaviours support their work, and translate self-awareness into development actions.

 

2. Adapting behaviour under pressure and change

Soft skills are most tested when pressure increases. When people understand how the same behaviour can be effective in one situation and less effective in another, they can consciously adapt their behaviour to respond better under pressure.

 

Practical exercise:

Building on the previous reflection, toggle to your Overextended Persona in View Your Splash and explore how your behaviour shifts when it is over-relied on or when pressure rises. Reflect on:
 

Overextended Persona:

• How does your behaviour typically shift under pressure?
• How does this shift impact your performance and relationships?
• What situations or triggers tend to cause you to overextend your behaviour?
• Could dialling up another behaviour help you regain composure?
• What is one thing you could do differently next time you feel pressure building?

 
This exercise supports people to recognise what triggers their overextensions, regulate behaviour under pressure, and sustain effective performance in high-stakes situations.

 

Developing behavioural agility in complex environments

Many people hold behavioural paradoxes in their behavioural style. For example, being both Introverted and Extraverted, People Focused and Outcome Focused, Big Picture Thinking and Down to Earth. Without awareness, these opposing behaviours can create inner tension and lead people to over-rely on one side, reducing their effectiveness.

 

When people understand how to navigate these behavioural opposites consciously, they develop the ability to read the situation, masterfully balance opposing behaviours and continuously adapt with the emotional intelligence that the moment needs.

 

Practical exercise:

Using View Your Splash, explore the opposite behaviours that equally come naturally to you in your Underlying Persona and the opposite behaviours you equally dial up your Everyday Persona. Reflect on:

 

• Which two opposing behaviours show up strongly in your style?
• In which situations do each behaviour serve you well?
• Where might you be defaulting to one behaviour at the expense of the other?
• How could consciously balancing these behaviours help you respond more effectively?
• What cues could help you decide which behaviour the situation calls for?

 
This exercise builds behavioural agility, enabling leaders and teams to adapt their style to context, navigate complexity, and avoid over-reliance on a single way of working.

 

Learning that sticks beyond the workshop

When reflection is supported beyond development sessions, learning doesn’t end when the workshop does, it transfers back into the workplace.

 

With a go-to space for people to reflect whenever they want, View Your Splash helps talent professionals sustain the impact of learning sessions and embed behavioural development at scale. For teams and leaders, it builds the habit of reflection and makes growth part of how they work, not something they do in isolated sessions.

 

This approach supports the ongoing development of the communication, adaptability, emotional intelligence and collaboration that modern workplaces depend on.
 

Experience View your Splash with your own Taster Splash

Give your people, teams and leaders a highly engaging way to explore and understand their behaviour and start building the habit of reflection that helps learning stick.

 

Download the Lumina Splash app from the Google Play Store or App Store and explore the View Your Splash feature with your own Taster Splash.