Course catalogue

The impact of social media has dramatically changed the recruiting strategies. Evaluating and screening candidates for job openings also significantly changed. Today’s organizational hiring processes consist of software programs, technology, and behavioral science. Once applicants have responded to your company’s recruiting efforts via LinkedIn, corporate website, or other social platforms, what are the most efficient and cost-effective ways that hiring managers can decide to pursue suitable candidates? The answer lies in a variety of methods from old-fashioned reference checking, software programs that manage hiring efforts, pre-employment assessments, and so on. Let’s look at some of the ways you can use these tools to streamline your efforts and quickly identify the most qualified candidates for your organization.

• Review and shortlist candidates resume and use software applications to screen them   

• Identify the need to check for reference and social media presence of candidates    

• Conduct remote interviews for the first round of scanning   

• Use assessments to gauge the candidates

Very few leaders are born with the qualities required to inspire and lead others. Most leaders are built—through personal effort, lots of introspection, and assistance from mentors and other leaders. In this course, you’ll learn the six characteristics that set effective leaders apart. You’ll discover the differences between managing and leading, and when to do each. And you’ll find out how to create a plan that will help you move from simply managing results to setting vision and leading others.

• Differentiate between managing and leading  

• Create leadership development action plan

Your talent is your most important resource. Deploying it to implement different methods of coaching will not only help you to strengthen your team’s abilities, but also your own leadership skills. No matter where you are, no matter how many people you put together on a team, you will always experience the same phenomenon. Some team members will perform above expectations while others will perform at an average or standard level, and some will perform at substandard levels. Coaching is a performance process with lots of actions and steps. Let’s take a look at some of the ways to coach your team and how you can make the most of these opportunities.

• Identify how to coach the low performing employees 

• Implement the techniques to coach the average performing employees 

• Coach the high performing employees 

• Meet the challenges of coaching remote employees

Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

-JimRohn, an American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker 

Meetings are necessary, but they become intolerable when they drag on and on, start late, or the discussion goes off the track. It’s annoying when you feel that your time has been hijacked—especially when other projects and responsibilities are in the pipeline. Poor time management is often the cause of this distress. Meetings would be more productive—and less irritating—if all activities started on time, ended on time, and stayed on the topic. As a leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that meetings are of benefit to the participants and satisfy the meeting objectives. Running a successful meeting can be boiled down to three things: be purposeful, be engaged, and be respectful of the attendees’ time.

• Explain the importance of adhering to meeting time 

• Interpret the impact of delaying a meeting 

• Respect others’ time

In today’s competitive world, businesses move faster and faster to stay ahead of the competition, develop new offerings, and keep up with client demands, employees need constant feedback, support, and direction in order to achieve those objectives. The era of the annual performance review is long gone, with managers now meeting with team members frequently to set goals, coach, provide training, and review performance. Performance dashboards that automate company-wide goals, metrics, customer feedback, and other performance-related data keep leaders and team members aware of their progress. Instead of looking backward, the new model for managing and motivating employee performance is fast-paced and feedback focused.

• State the best practices to improve the performance management process 

• Explain the review model

Accountability is an individual’s acceptance of responsibility for the outcome of a job, project, or program. There are five steps that you can use to engineer accountability into both, your work processes and your employees to achieve performance goals.

• Define accountability 

• Describe the five steps to accountability 

• Apply the five steps of accountability

Learning how to manage conflict successfully is a critical business skill that’s worth the time and effort to practice. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Mark Gouston’s Just Listen are two resources among many that can help you strengthen your conflict management aptitude. Relationships can be messy, but with the right skills, attitude, and mindset, you will be able to address issues calmly, ensure that your customer feels heard and valued, and arrive at a solution that satisfies you both.

• Use the right tools to find a resolution of conflict

• Demonstrate the right attitude and behavior required for conflict resolution

• Determine the right solution to solve the problem

Many managers are promoted to leadership positions by virtue of their technical skills or subject-matter knowledge. Their proficiency and expertise set them apart from other candidates. These abilities are important, but they are just one aspect of being an effective leader. Leadership expert, Stephen Covey, says that due to the speed and constant change that define our world today, leaders need to be able to face new and different problems as they arise, make strategic decisions quickly, and guide their organizations with competence and character. He has identified four roles a leader must master in order to succeed in this ever-changing environment.

• Inspire trust among your team members

• Create a vision for your team

• Execute strategy to reach your goals

• Recognize your coaching potential

We know how important it is for us all to do what we can to ensure an effective transition for ourselves and our teams back to work. The landscape of the workplace has and will inevitably continue to change and today’s ‘new normal’ may not be tomorrow!

"As a leader of a small or big team, you all are responsible for the budget allocated to your projects, which in turn is nothing but finance. Thus, knowingly or unknowingly you are involved in financial management too. You must evaluate the investment decisions, such as return on investment analysis after you deliver the product or service that you are responsible for. As a nonfinancial manager, you cannot avoid financial information, profitability statements, rates of return, budgets, variances, asset management, and project analysis.        

In this lesson, you will get an overview of financial management, roles within the financial department, and the four financial objectives of any organization.

• Overview financial management     

• Identify roles within the finance department      

• List the four financial objectives

It is a law of nature, if you work with people, you’re going to have conflict. When people with different viewpoints, backgrounds, personalities, work ethics, and industry experience come together, discord and differences of opinion are inevitable. Wise leaders accept that conflict is a part of work, they anticipate it, and they have a plan to address it. Effective conflict resolution takes practice. You may want to ask an experienced colleague, your HR department, or your manager for suggestions on dealing with this issue. Just realize that while you can’t avoid conflict entirely, you can establish an environment and a process that minimize the damage conflict can cause. 

If managed well, conflict can lead to innovation, stronger teams, and greater personal development—for you and your employees. 

• Become aware of workplace conflicts 

• Set a protocol to handle conflicts

There is no “one-size-fits-all” leadership style or approach for today’s managers. Each day brings new situations and challenges to be navigated. Depending upon the circumstances, effective leaders modify how they lead others and how they manage outcomes. They build collaborative partnerships with their team members. They develop and apply multiple leadership styles. As they know that change is inevitable, they plan for the future—for themselves and their team members. Let’s take a look at the skills situational leaders need to succeed.

• Identify the core situational leadership skills

• Evaluate your leadership approaches

• Create individual development plans

A business is a living organism that depends on the strategic coordination of systems, activities, and information to build customer-satisfying products and services and ensure profitability and future growth. A company’s success is determined by the ability of each core function to effectively perform its specific purposes and responsibilities and, at the same time, proactively cooperate and communicate with the other departments. It is this combination of business-unit excellence and cross-functional collaboration that acts as a key to organizational success.

• Review talent recruitment and development    

• Review finance and information technology   

• Assess operations and strategic management

Good leaders are predominantly facilitators, these leaders teach their people how to work effectively and solve problems. The result is more empowered and capable teams. Directing is said to be a process in which the managers instruct, guide, and oversee the performance of the employees to achieve predetermined goals. 

• Differentiate between a leader and a director 

• Define an enabler 

• Describe how a good leader facilitates an employee's problem solving ability

"You build a great network by first offering your services to others, and by so doing, winning their interest. This is the foundation of building trust and creating a platform for them to invest in you in a reciprocal manner, such that it becomes a win-win situation.

-Oscar Bimpong 

Organizations deal with both major and minor conflicts day-in and day-out. The important thing is one cannot ignore these conflicts as they can have a far-reaching negative effect on the teams involved. This may inevitably affect their day-to-day work and eventually the performance of the company. This course helps you reach consensus amongst employees by resolving workforce conflicts. It introduces strategies to create a win-win situation for all the stakeholders. It is important to gauge how the stakeholders feel before and after settling the conflict. You will learn about the four win-win conflict solution techniques that will help you maintain harmony in the work place.

• Communicate effectively to handle a conflict 

• Establish boundaries to reduce workplace conflicts 

• Use emotional intelligence to achieve better team performance 

• Institute behavioral consequences for uncooperative employees

Today’s marketplace is fast-paced and ultra-competitive. Operations departments should be the same. They can’t afford to be wasteful, slow, or out of touch with their customers’ needs if they hope to compete and thrive. In order to achieve and maintain a competitive edge in the global economy and maximize corporate profits, successful operations management systems need to be engineered to quickly respond to customer’s requests, promptly adapt to new processes and product requirements, and rapidly embrace new technologies. No wonder Forbes magazine reports that 75% of CEOs come from an operations background. Having a comprehensive understanding of how an organization works is a leadership advantage. 

• Define operations management 

• Make operational decisions 

• Improve operations continuously

"Today’s business environment is global, generationally diverse, collaborative, cross-functional, and constantly changing. Leaders who believe that they can achieve organizational goals using just one leadership style will not succeed. The most effective leaders learn how to flexibly adapt multiple leadership styles to guide their employees, achieve their goals, and build strong teams.

A popular management theory called Situational Leadership, first developed in 1969 by Dr. Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, remains especially relevant in today’s business environment. This theory is based on the premise that because organizations are not made up of workers who are equally skilled and motivated, leaders should manage team members according to their individual abilities and developmental readiness. We’ll review their method, and then suggest some ways you can use it to manage today’s business challenges."

• Name the four leadership styles

• List the four maturity levels

• Apply the situational leadership model

Conflict management is a major hurdle in any organizational growth and has to be resolved on priority to reduce the negative effect it may cause. The role of the facilitator is complex. A leader’s job is to guide conflicting individuals through a process without using their influence to determine the outcome of the negotiations. They must model calmness, respect, and open-mindedness in situations that can be emotionally charged. They must encourage full participation of all group members from defining the cause of the conflict to agreeing on a resolution.      

In task-based situations, facilitators need to push team members strongly but respectfully question, challenge, and argue decisions, suggestions, and processes recommended by other team members.      

Leaders who know how to anticipate conflict and address it proactively with the right tools, techniques, and a well-managed process create healthy work environments that use differences to grow and move forward positively. In this course, you will explore the various tools available to the facilitator to manage conflicts.

• Identify the basics of facilitation   

• Apply the three-step mediation process     

• Decide when to encourage opposing dialogue

Why do we often say that it is important to effectively network and build strong business partnerships? It is because your success as a businessperson will be greatly affected by the professional relationships you cultivate. Whether leading employees, working on a cross-functional team, or meeting with colleagues at an industry conference, your ability to successfully network and build productive and authentic business relationships is important. Strong business relationships drive productivity and business success. Smart leaders spend time developing their interpersonal skills in order to build solid bonds with their employees, work productively and positively with peers and superiors, and generate business relationships that can contribute to personal and organizational success.

• Describe interpersonal skills    

• Identify ways to build business partnerships    

• Enlist key strategies to successful networking

A project is a sequence of tasks completed in a specific order with the goal of achieving a certain outcome. Projects are overseen by managers but are executed by project teams according to detailed plans, budgets, and timelines. The investment of an organization’s time, labor, materials, equipment, and capital require that each detail be monitored and managed carefully to ensure that the scope of the project doesn’t spiral out of control and that the project’s profitability is maximized rather than jeopardized. Effective project managers demonstrate well-developed technical and interpersonal skills, attention-to-detail, business acumen, and exceptional follow-through.

• Explain the four components of project management  

• State the project management lifecycle