Course catalogue

Social scientists have studied and designed leadership theories for decades to understand and explain how great leaders are made. They have compiled lists of leadership traits and constructed frameworks and models to illustrate the leadership phenomenon. And while these theories are detailed, thoroughly researched, and insightful, none provide “the” singular leadership model that works for every high-level manager aspiring to lead their team effectively and successfully.

What they do provide is an abundant source of leadership data that can be used to create your own flexible brand of leadership. Leaders face a wide range of tasks, responsibilities, and challenges—both anticipated and unexpected—every day.

Assembling a toolkit of leadership options that can address them is something smart leaders do. Let’s study the specifics of some core leadership theories and how you might use them in different business scenarios.

• Identify the Traits and Contingency theories

• Describe the Behavioral theory

• Explain the Transformational Leadership theory

How much time do you spend developing your leadership succession plan? As older leaders begin to retire at greater rates, the 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey discovered that 65% of potential millennial leaders feel unprepared to take their places. Forbes reports that by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials. These statistics suggest that there’s a leadership crisis on the horizon. Designing a strategy and framework to direct leadership development is mission critical for every organization. Training—and retaining —emerging leaders in your company should be a top priority. Understanding what team members want and expect from an employer will help you develop the right programs and systems to keep your talent engaged in learning, growing, and contributing to your organization.

• Retain your talented resource   

• Design a leadership development framework   

• Create a culture of learning

In today’s corporate world, it is important for a leader to develop writing skill and create a personal brand. When you are able to write crisply and relevantly about topics you understand well, you will influence not only those in your organization but customers, industry peers, and potential clients too. Whether writing emails, business letters, online articles, or posting on social media, you have the ability to set yourself apart from other leaders if you can convey ideas in a way that clearly and powerfully persuades, motivates, or informs. In this lesson, you will learn how to plan, organize, and write business communications as well as create and manage your personal brand.

• Write clear and direct business communications 

• Build your personal brand

The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.

 -Patrick Lencioni 

An important part of planning a successful meeting is deciding who should attend the meeting. In the previous course, we have learned that less is more. Invite only those persons who are necessary to achieve the vision and are committed to getting the work completed. Similarly, it is equally important to define and assign specific roles and responsibilities to the team members attending the meeting. This is a critical part of pre-planning. Careful planning ahead of time will result in less resentment, less time wasted, better decisions, and greater ownership of the process by each member of the team.

• State the different roles played in a meeting 

• Determine the roles and responsibilities of a meeting leader

Managers are often called to present to the groups of customers, cross-departmental teams, or in-house decision-makers. The process of crafting and delivering a presentation requires organizational skills, insight, technical abilities, and courage. Public speaking can be intimidating. But, by taking the time to methodically plan and execute the necessary details, you can be prepared and confident to deliver an effective presentation. This course will walk you through the steps you’ll need to plan and organize your topic, choose visual aids, consider technology tools, and practice delivering your speech. 

• Research, decide, and plan your presentation  

• Create a presentation with additional aid   

• Practice and make the presentation

Problems come in all shapes and sizes, and they are an inevitable part of business life. Instead of trying to avoid or ignore them, it’s better to accept them, find ways to solve them and learn from them. With the right perspective, problems can even be gateways to innovation. There are a variety of models and methods that can be used to identify, analyze, and implement effective solutions. In this lesson, we will look at a hybrid of the A3 model, 5 Whys, and Divergent/Convergent methods.

• Identify the eight steps of the A3 model  

• Assist your team in problem-solving

The virtual interview can be a challenging and difficult process if you don’t prepare properly. You may face many challenges, such as technological, ambience related issues. However, to convene a successful interview, it is important to how to overcome these challenges. Branding your company is also one the challenges you may face when conducting virtual interview. Home setup throws various set of challenges, which one must overcome to have successful virtual interview. In this course, you will learn to overcome the challenges faced in conducting a successful virtual interview. 

• Identify the requisites of a pre-interview process

• List best practices while conducting interview virtually

• Identify post interview actionable

Organizations are changing, and so are our offices. The new age millennials are shifting toward the virtual world. More and more organizations use virtual teams to meet corporate goals. This has created the need to determine how best to manage and lead these virtual groups. 

Traditional methods of managing on-site groups don’t work with remote workers, because virtual teams are most often composed of workers who are spread over a varied geographic and cultural expanse and communicate, for the most part, electronically. Future Workforce Report states that 63 percent of companies utilize virtual workers, but only 57 percent have standards in place to manage the process. 

In this lesson, you will learn to effectively guide teams that they rarely see face-to-face.

• Establish requirements 

• Build mutual trust with your virtual team 

• Communicate frequently with them

Leadership education is an ongoing process. Your success will increase when you invest time in studying leadership models and characteristics, reading about great leaders, putting your knowledge into practice, and then evaluating the results. It takes different skills and abilities to successfully lead small and large teams. In this course, you will get familiarized with many advantages and disadvantages, as well as the best practices to be adopted to lead small and large teams successfully.

• Identify the strengths and challenges of large and small groups

• Examine the best practices for leading small teams

• Examine the best practices for leading large teams

Over 50 years ago, a social psychologist Douglas McGregor of MIT published a book outlining his research of two contrasting management styles: Theory X and Theory Y.  

He argued that Theory X, based on hierarchy and power, was an outdated authoritarian “top-down” way of managing people. Theory Y, he proposed, was an improved, alternative method of management, one that was more participative and synergistic.

• Define Theory X and Y management styles 

• Describe Theory X and Y from the management’s and worker’s perspective 

• Differentiate between Theory X and Theory Y managerial styles

Sales effectiveness is the process of identifying and utilizing the right sales activities to generate the best sales outcomes. Your definition of a successful sale will depend upon your product, service, corporate goals, and objectives. Companies measure their effectiveness in a variety of ways: increased profit, new product sales, or shortened sales cycle. Successful sales organizations share a commitment to defining, measuring, and optimizing all of the components of their sales process in order to consistently achieve strategic goals. 

• Build an effective sales process   

• Measure your sales process  

• Practice the customer-centric sales approach

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

 -Colin Powell 

A new methodology for innovation, “Trystorming” is a combination of “Brainstorming” and “Trying” something practically. This lesson highlights the difference between brainstorming and trystorming, and provides the guidelines for where and when it can be used. Trystorming is a practical approach to innovating by focusing on practically trying or experimenting within reasonable limits to understand the efficacy of an idea before implementing it fully. Take this lesson to pick up the basics of trystorming and lead innovations in your organization.

• Explain what is trystorming 

• Know the difference between trystorming and brainstorming 

• Describe the guidelines for trystorming and where it can be used

In the previous lessons, you have learned the four skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management to increase your EQ and strengthen your ability to manage yourself and influence others. Boosting your emotional intelligence will leverage your existing skills, IQ, personality, education, and experience even more. This should align with the benefits of increasing your EQ as a leader in terms of how they deal with their people and increase their leadership skills. Consider that you may have the best plan and strategy, but it will not matter unless you communicate this strategy to your team, persuade them to work on it, listen to their inputs, and guide them through the hurdles. You will be able to do this through an exhibition of strong EQ. In this lesson, we will outline some strategies, exercises, and ideas you can use to become an emotionally intelligent leader. You need people skills to execute and succeed in your plan. Developing your EQ will supercharge your leadership arsenal.

• Apply strategies that will help you become self-aware 

• Practice self-management techniques 

• List the methods to execute social awareness 

• State the techniques to exhibit relationship management

In this lesson, you will learn how a culture of learning leads to success. Establishing a culture of continuous learning in your organization takes time and effort, but the results are worth the investment.    

Begin with gaining the support of executives, and then start to incorporate learning into your overall mission, your strategic goals, and value statements.   

Work to get “buy-in” from everyone in your company, and include them in finding ways to learn, teach, and share knowledge.   

Establish easy-to-use systems and processes that make learning an expected part of your corporate behavior.    

Your organization and employees will benefit not only through increased productivity and higher profits, but in personal development and job satisfaction as well. 

• Describe a continuous learning organization     

• List the benefits of a continuous learning organization    

• Build a culture of continuous learning

Holding a meeting without a clear agenda is like taking a trip without a map.

-Marsha Egan, A success strategist and CEO of The Egan Group 

Did you know that the average American professionals attend over 60 meetings a month? About 39 percent of the meeting attendees doze off during these meetings. Another source claims that 50 percent of meeting time is wasted. These statistics probably don’t surprise you. In fact, they might even confirm some of the reasons you dread meetings. You may also have been a part of meetings that have discussions on unrelated topics. This course will help you learn how to make meetings productive.

• Create a meeting agenda 

• Identify the influence of the agenda during and after the meeting

Business acumen is gaining an understanding of how business works as well as the behaviors business professionals should possess. This important skill is critical not only to corporate leaders, but to aspiring leaders, managers, and employees as well. The organization that prioritizes business acumen as a core competency promotes the growth of its workforce and strengthens its competitive edge.   

Some use the analogy of a quarterback who can “see” the entire field to describe business acumen. It’s simply understanding how your company operates, and then using that knowledge to develop the best business strategy. Regardless of your role in the organization, it’s an important skill to develop.

• State the importance of business acumen 

• Learn ways to improve your business acumen

Leaders in a World Economic Forum study listed creativity as the third most important work skill they seek in employees. And as organizations face increasingly complex business issues, they are training their employees to be smart risk-takers and creative thinkers. They are hiring for these competencies, too. As you apply the recommendations provided in this course, your skills will increase, your employees will grow more confident and competent in their abilities, and together, you will create a powerful culture of innovation.

• Identify the need and ways to harness creative thinking    

• Identify ways to build a culture of creative thinking    

• Explore recommendations for developing your team’s creative thinking

People generally do business with people they like or look up to, and not just with a company. This means that successful leaders build their personal brand, resulting in the achievement of organizational goals. A personal brand can elevate you above the crowd and help you achieve your personal and professional goals. It is a constant and ever-changing process of identifying your goals, setting up a plan, and monitoring it consistently. Your brand is a combination of the skills you develop and the behavior you display. In this course, you will look at the traits of building a successful personal brand.

• Define personal brand

• Enlist strategy to build a personal brand

• State the steps to build a successful personal brand

First and most importantly, it is the just and moral course of action. Centuries of exploitation, oppression, and disenfranchisement of the Black community has resulted in predominantly white leadership in most organizations. Companies must intentionally disrupt the systemic barriers in place that maintain the biased (prejudiced, race-based) status quo in order to create more inclusive and sustainable organizations that better serve the community.

• Why should companies invest in Black talent?

• How do companies identify and attract Black talent?

• How do companies develop and retain Black talent?

Executive presence isn’t something you’re born with, it’s a combination of learned behaviors and characteristics that can be developed. Depending upon your personality, industry, business goals and challenges, executive presence can be manifested in different ways. 

Having great presentation skills and making a strong first impression based on your clothing and demeanor is not executive presence. You need more substantive abilities to face daily business challenges, speak your mind while maintaining your composure, or inspire your team to commit to a demanding new goal. Executive presence is a purposefully developed hybrid of internal character and external presentation. Let’s look at the qualities that distinguish great leaders from mediocre ones.

• Identify the attributes of executive presence

• Gauge your executive presence and gain insight

• Receive feedback in different forms

• Develop your own executive presence