Course catalogue

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He argued that Theory X, based on hierarchy and power, was an outdated authoritarian “top-down” way of managing people.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

Just about everyone knows that young people just love to travel. It is a means of expressing themselves, discovering who they are, and a fantastic means of exposing them to different cultures, societies, and ways of life. It is also common knowledge that there are, and always will be inherent risks that accompany young people whilst they are travelling away from the security of family and home. For example, in Australia, more than 38,000 people go missing each year. Whilst most of these are located within a short time period, there remain as many as 2,600 missing for more than 3 months.

The Online Travel Security Awareness for Students & Young People Overseas Course has been specifically written for young people travelling or working overseas during gap years, student exchange programmes, working with NGO's and Charities or simply backpacking around the world. 

The course covers most areas that need to be considered in order to assist in the mitigation of the risk of a security-related incident. The course also covers topics relevant to safety issues, including emergency response planning and measures. Learners should understand that this course cannot guarantee you a risk-free experience, but it will build on your current personal security knowledge and risk mitigation skills.

Attacks against Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in high-risk conflict zones have increased exponentially over the last two decades. NGOs increasingly work in the field, providing humanitarian relief and development assistance in countries around the world. As they carry out their work, they face many serious problems. Governments or rebel groups deny them access to those in need, corrupt officials or warlords demand payoffs, and local violence threatens the safety and even the lives of field personnel.

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

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

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

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

Understanding customer motivation is both a science and an art. Purchasing decisions are based on a wide variety of rational and emotional factors. Besides becoming familiar with motivational models—the sales process and typical purchasing behaviors—you should also practice ongoing customer research. This research will help you identify changes in markets, competitors, products, and customer motivations. The more you understand the underlying principles that determine buying decisions, the more you will be able to satisfy existing customers, attract new ones, and develop the products and services they want.

• Explain the factors that influence purchasing decisions

• Determine how customers make buying decisions

• Use research methods/tools to understand customers

When writing business emails, letters, memos, and other communications, it’s important to check for any grammar or spelling errors that can distract from your message. Misspelled words and grammatical errors are easy to fix if you make a habit of using the spellcheck and grammar features on your computer. In this course, we will review basic punctuation rules. We will examine some common sentence structure mistakes. And we’ll study some common word choice errors. Finally, we’ll provide a list of online resources and books. Don’t let grammar and word choice errors blur your message or damage your credibility.

• Use appropriate punctuations    

• Improve your sentence structure    

• Identify the common mistakes in word usage

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