Course catalogue

Whether you’re publicly challenging long-held beliefs or experimenting with a new idea, it’s normal to experience fear or discomfort. You can reduce these emotions by creating a workplace that openly promotes change, welcomes honest and productive discussions, sees failure as a necessary part of business success, and rewards and supports risk taking on a daily basis. It may seem ironic, but when you instill a continuous learning culture and growth mindset in your organization, failure can actually lead to success.

• Identify methods to challenge the status quo   

• Identify reasons for bias towards encouraging smart failure and suggest solutions    

• Enlist ways of encouraging learn from failure culture

McKinsey’s 7-S model was created by McKinsey consultants Robert Waterman, Tom Peters, Richard Pascale, and Anthony Athos. It provides a framework to plan and execute mid-term organizational change. It is based on the premise that organizations perform properly when seven key elements are aligned. 

The seven key elements are structure, strategy, systems, skills, style, staff, and shared values. The model is most often used as an organizational analysis tool to assess and monitor changes in the internal situation of an organization.

• List the seven elements of McKinsey’s change model 

• Identify the hard and soft elements of the factors of change 

• Use the model to change organizational behavior 

• State the advantages and disadvantages of the model

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

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?

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

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

One of the key responsibilities of a leader is to assess team members on a regular basis. These might include post-project reviews, annual or quarterly performance evaluations, and in-the-moment feedback.  

Organizations use different parameters and tools to assess their employees. The assessments used are based on functional goals, developmental goals, innovation goals, stretch goals, or any other goals customized to the organizational needs. Irrespective of the tools you use, when it is time to assess your employees, do you rely on the data or by your perception of the person?  

As fair and factual as you believe your assessments are, you might actually be guilty of some “rater biases” that can skew your evaluations. 

• Assess if you are too lenient or halo in your evaluations 

• Find whether your evaluations are based on recency or similarity 

• Examine if you are driven by contrast or negative bias 

• Identify the central tendency and employ a technique to be objective during your evaluations

Coaching is a process, which the leaders use to help employees become more independent. There are many coaching programs available to managers these days. But the good leaders implement The COACH Model in coordination with a coaching philosophy that includes mentoring, constant two-way communication, and continuous feedback. The COACH Model is a five-step program that walks a leader through the process of coaching an associate from setting a goal to measuring their success at the end of the process. 

• Describe the effectiveness of the COACH Model 

• Explain the need to clarify goals 

• Identify obstacles and explore alternatives through brainstorming 

• Choose an action and hold the accountability

With COVID-19 meaning that home working is no longer an option but a necessity for many, what are the potential side effects on our health and work performance. Employers may need to provide additional training to ensure appropriate supervision and work behaviours. These include remote technology, communication skills development, time management and ergonomics.

Managing remote teams and business continuity are operational priorities for companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Remote working allows some operations to continue and facilitate flexible work schedules, which typically improves individual performance. However, greater flexibility and leading teams remotely puts a greater burden on managers and makes supervision more complex. 

The group of workers who experience most difficulty in handling ‘boundary-less’ working are actually managers.  This is mainly because they are connected longer in their ‘non-working time’.

The ‘Managing Remote Teams’ bundle includes 3 months access to 10 online courses and over 10 hours of eLearning. 

• Negativity in the Workplace

• Decision Making

• Supporting Change: 03-Your Path to Supporting Change

• Management 101: 02-Leading and Communicating as a Manager

• Smart Management: Managing a Geographically Distributed Workforce

• Health and Safety for Home Workers (Managers)

• Lone Working (Managers)

• An Effective Leader’s Guide to Time Management

• Team Building IV: Conflict Management

• Essential Skills of Leadership: 05-Lead Effective Meetings

With COVID-19 meaning that home working is no longer an option but a necessity for many, what are the potential side effects on our health and work performance. Employers may need to provide additional training to ensure appropriate supervision and work behaviours. These include remote technology, communication skills development, time management and ergonomics. 

Maintaining health and well-being while working from home encompasses many areas, including ergonomics, preventing feelings of isolation and effectively managing stress. Studies have found that more than half of people working from home had not paid any attention to ergonomics, and 94% of them reported that neither had their employers. Almost half of remote workers have experienced work-related pains. One of the most problematic aspects of home working is the isolation and the lack of access to day-to-day informal interactions. While remote working enables greater autonomy, it also leads to higher levels of work intensity. The ‘24/7’ availability for work can result in family conflict and stress. Key areas to promote a positive work-family interface include the parental ability to cope with children and amicable resolutions of conflict about working hours, household work and personal time in the family.

The ‘Healthy Home Working’ bundle includes 3 month access to 12 online courses and over 9 hours of eLearning.

• Stress Awareness

• Working Time Limits and Fatigue Management

• Display Screen Equipment (DSE)

• Ergonomics

• Health and Safety for Home Workers (Employees)

• Medicine Awareness

• Smart Health: Sleeping – How to Ensure You Are Well-Rested & Energized

• Smart Mental Health: Managing Anger and Emotions

• Smart Mental Health: Keys to Successful Parenting

• Smart Health: Drinking Responsibly

• Smart Mental Health: Reducing Stress and Anxiety

• Smart Mental Health: Mastering Marriage