Course catalogue

Written communications are a necessary part of a manager’s daily work. Whether responding to emails, composing performance reviews for team members, editing an industry report, or crafting a letter to a client, you probably spend a lot of time on writing. For some people, this work comes naturally, but for others, it can be a chore. Becoming a strong writer takes time and practice. But the benefits are worth the effort. As you improve, you’ll be able to structure and “sell” your ideas more easily and your messages will be better received. Let’s look at some fundamental guidelines you can use to make your writing more powerful and effective.

• Learn the importance of thinking before writing   

• Write conversationally     

• Use active voice in your sentences

Performance management ensures that the day-to-day activities are focused towards achieving organizational goals. In this lesson, you will learn about setting SMART goals by implementing the SMART model. Whether you are using the SMART model to define the specifics of a small business goal or to manage an enterprise-wide project, you will find that this system lends clarity, focus, and flexibility to the art of goal setting.

• Explain SMART goals

• Identify SMART goal benefits and examples

Coaching is a process that can be customized to meet the needs of the trainee. This process seeks to raise the workforce awareness toward their current style of work and behavior. It helps them strengthen their uniqueness optimally. It provides with different tools and strategies that help them achieve their individual goals faster. Coaching is the process that guides an individual to maximize the productivity seamlessly so as to achieve more in less. This helps them reach their personal and professional goals at the earliest.

• Recall the ""What, Why, Where, and How"" of an effective coaching 

• Describe the three-step approach to better coaching

All teams need coaches. That’s how they get better. Your role as the leader of a high-performing team is to provide the training, resources, coaching, and support they need—as individuals and as a team—so that they can grow in their abilities, and perform as efficiently and dynamically as possible. Because of today’s constantly evolving business environment, every individual, regardless of position or experience, needs ongoing training and coaching. Knowing which tools, training opportunities, and coaching methods work for each individual is critical. Research by Accenture found that 31% of employees left their jobs because they don’t like their boss; another 31% cited lack of empowerment as their reason for leaving. This lesson will help you build robust coaching connections and a toolkit that will help you develop your team’s skills, coach them to personal and professional success, and build a culture of growth and continuous improvement.

• Define the training needs for your team  

• Provide coaching to your team   

• Create growth opportunities for your team

As it’s important for leaders to give constructive feedback, in order to help their employees grow, develop their skills, confidence etc.. which results in organizational growth. Similarly, It’s important for an individual to ask for feedback instead of waiting to receive it. Start thinking of feedback as the fuel for your professional growth. In fact, set a goal to solicit feedback regularly instead of waiting for it to come to you. When you begin to see the value in regular feedback, your manager will find it easier to deliver, and—using these strategies—you’ll find it easier to receive, assess, and apply. Let’s take a look at how you can ensure that your future performance conversations are positive and productive.

• Examine the necessity to change your perspective towards feedback

• Identify the behaviors of receiving feedback

• Assess the ways of responding to feedback

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

-Warren G. Bennis 

Leaders, who spend more time managing their employees than leading them are less likely to achieve the top performance they seek because they focus on controlling employees and their tasks to accomplish a goal.

• Define leadership and management 

• Identify the hallmarks of action-based leadership 

• Differentiate between supervisory and leadership tasks 

• Describe an effective team leader

You’ve leveraged your education, professional experience, hard work, and business abilities to get to this point in your career. Now you’re responsible for leading a team in achieving your firm’s target goals and objectives. Did you know that there’s another skill that will be critical to your continued success and advancement? It’s called Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and it’s a big business topic these days.

• State the emotional intelligence model 

• List the benefits of emotional intelligence

In this lesson, we will study the first two steps of Goleman’s four components of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and self-management. As per Goleman, self-awareness is the building block of all other competencies. Without recognizing what you are feeling, you cannot proceed to other competencies. It helps you to handle your emotions in order to avoid its interference in work and use these emotions to facilitate and recover from emotional distress. Self-management flows from self-awareness. It helps to understand situations from others’ perspective and to cultivate relationships.

• Manage yourself through self-awareness 

• Establish self-control through self-management

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

As with many business practices, hiring techniques have been affected dramatically by the Internet. “Surprise” interview questions are now available on hiring websites, such as Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com. Candidates can practice their responses via video coaching until they are tweaked to perfection. And in the current job environment, the competition for great employees is strong. You have to move quickly and analyze swiftly to capture the best candidates for your organization.       

This video discusses some pre-interview, interview, and post-interview guidelines that will help you design and develop a winning hiring process. We begin with what to do before you’ve even met your ideal candidate and progress all the way to planning for their successful post-hire on-boarding and retention. 

• List the pre-interview tasks   

• Prepare for the interview  

• Identify the post-interview tasks

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

In this lesson, we will study social awareness and relationship management that fall under the heading of “Social Competence” in Bradberry and Greaves’ model of emotional intelligence. Social awareness is the ability to use empathy and active listening to understand others better. Leaders with strong social awareness are not only able to read their own emotions precisely but are also able to interpret others emotions accurately. Relationship management is using all of your EQ skills to establish solid relationships and manage your interactions with others.

• Define social awareness  

• Build relationships with employees to enhance business outcomes

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

"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

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

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

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

Leaders must focus on developing their ability to be more agile and strategic – within an environment of constant change. They should explore tools that can be leveraged to achieve the goal. Good agile leaders make sure that their teams identify the desired long-term goals, and then work backward from these to identify all the conditions that must be in place for the goals to occur.

• Define the theory of change and identify factors impacting the change

• Enlist 5 types of organizational change and successful ways to implement them

• Apply strategies which help in creating an organization that is always ready for change

"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

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

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

Your day-to-day ability to genuinely connect and work well with others is the key to long-term career success. Especially in today’s work environment, where cross-unit, cross-functional, and even cross-organizational teams abound, those with strong interpersonal skills have a decided advantage. And you don’t have to be the stereotypical extroverted salesperson to possess these kinds of skills. Anyone can learn and practice how to interact with others in positive and productive ways. Whether you are collaborating with colleagues, attending a conference of industry peers, or chatting with a team member one-on-one, well-developed people skills give you the opportunity to build stronger relationships, foster goodwill, and cultivate influence with others.

• Manage business relationships   

• Work collaboratively with your team    

• Manage disagreement with colleagues

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

Your success as a leader isn’t dependent upon how much technical knowledge, business expertise, or years of industry experience you have. If you want to achieve goals consistently, build strong, collaborative teams, and establish solid relationships with colleagues, superiors, and clients, then you need Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Emotional Intelligence, also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ) is the ability to properly gauge your emotions as well as the emotions of others in all situations, use proper judgment and behave appropriately for the desired outcome. In other words, EQ is the ability to identify your emotions, and those of others, and use that knowledge to make the best decisions, regardless of the circumstances.

• Define EQ 

• Describe the four components of EQ 

• Use tips and techniques to develop your EQ

"“Communication works for those who work at it.” 

-John Powell  

Upward communication flows from the lower level to the upper level of a hierarchy. For example, employees communicating with their immediate manager, the immediate manager communicating with their reporting manager, and so on up to the board of directors or owner of the company. This form of communication helps employees express their requirements, ideas, or goals. Managing upward communication is an art to be acquired if you are looking for a long-term career in your organization and wish to get ample opportunities to learn and grow. This course will help you communicate upward effectively.

Establish your interest in the organization  

Look for opportunities to contribute and think big 

Be yourself and do not encourage or be involved in manipulation 

Take ownership of your mistakes and avoid politics

You want to develop a team that feels comfortable approaching you with new ideas, suggestions for improvements, and even their personal challenges. You want your clients to know that you are genuinely interested in hearing their concerns and ideas. And you want your superiors and peers to see you as someone who encourages innovation and open communication in your department. Working to improve your active listening will take patience and practice. But if you learn how to put this powerful communication skill to work for you, you’ll discover that the benefits are well worth the effort.

• Define active listening

• Confirm your understanding of the meeting

• Pay attention to body language

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 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

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

"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

Your success as a businessperson will be greatly affected by the professional relationships you cultivate. Interpersonal skills are the cornerstone of developing these associations, so it is important to assess your abilities to communicate clearly and empathetically and to listen well. The most effective and satisfying relationships are based on a genuine and mutual desire to get to know and help others. When you focus on adding value to your business connections, you will build a network that is both personally satisfying and professionally beneficial.

• Identify foundational skills required to build a strong interpersonal relationship

• Develop methods of building business partnerships

• Enlist keys to networking

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

Constructive feedback has the ability to help your employees do their jobs better. It helps strengthen your team and improve the overall performance. Many managers are unable to give constructive feedback; hence, they do not get the expected results and sometimes have an adverse effect on their relationship with their employees. To avoid this, many managers are reluctant to provide feedback.  

Constructive feedback is an opportunity to coach your team members on how to grow into more productive and independent contributors. When giving and receiving positive and negative feedback becomes a routine part of everyone’s workday, you and your team will be on your way to personal and organizational success.

• Follow the rules of providing feedback 

• Implement effective methods to share feedback

"“Change is the only constant in life.” 

-Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher 

As a leader, you’re responsible for leading your team to achieve organizational goals. Sometimes that involves changing processes, adopting new technologies, or learning new skills. What do you do when one or more of your employees refuse to change and grow with the rest of the team? People tend to approach change in one of the two ways. They either embrace change and are excited about the possibilities and opportunities inherent in a new adventure. Or they resist change because they fear the unknown. As a leader, you probably have employees in both camps. In this course, we will discuss how to influence the change resisters.

• Identify the fear for change 

• Implement T-chart

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

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

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

One of the most important leadership roles is a mentor. You are responsible for teaching your employees how to achieve goals, make better decisions, solve problems, and advance their careers. Without formal training in this area, how do you coach or mentor these skills? This course will introduce you to employ a model, built on four simple techniques. By employing these techniques, you will strengthen your coaching skills and develop your team members’ potential.

• Help your team set the goal as per the GROW model 

• Provide assistance in gauging the available options 

• Get your team commit to specific actions to help them make progress

"Faced with the increasing pace and pressures of today’s business environment, organizations are constantly seeking ways to be more efficient and effective. Because companies are often asked to do more with less—including time—they must use their resources wisely to stay ahead of the competition. A talented and skilled workforce is the key to achieving the required results. When you align your workforce with your company’s goals, your organization’s energies will be appropriately focused. And if you set reasonable, measurable, and attainable goals, you will be able to link performance to rewards and motivate your employees to do even more. 

Most organizations don’t understand the power of incorporating the correct timing and frequency of goals into their plan. For example: goals that are set at the beginning of the year and audited 12 months later are not going to motivate your people. It’s difficult to stay committed a business goal over such a long time. When you learn how to set strong, timely, and measurable goals, your team will clearly understand their purpose, see their importance, and know how they will be measured. In this course, you will learn the usage of stretch goals to motivate your team.

• Align stretch goals to performance goals 

• Decide whether to stretch the goals

Mentoring is a process that follows coaching. Coaching makes a person equipped with the skills required for a job whereas mentoring is on-the-job process. It helps a person practice the skills learned, enhance the skills, and learn new skills to be future ready. Hence, coaching is a short-term relationship whereas mentoring is a long-term. Coaching is always task oriented whereas mentoring is relationship oriented. It is all about reaching a stage where the mentor can easily share the real issues influencing the trainee. On the other hand, coaching can be implemented immediately on any particular topic. This course will help you acknowledge the difference between coaching and mentoring and make you learn when to use them.

• List the differences between coaching and mentoring 

• Identify the requirements that are suitable for coaching and mentoring

These days, organizations are making the most of available tools to locate, screen, and attract the most qualified candidates available. The recruiting process has been enhanced, streamlined, and accelerated by technology, behavioral science, pre-employment assessments, and social media. The key is to know how to position your business to attract the best talent pool using social recruiting. Using social media to present your organization dynamically, positively, and effectively to your audiences of active or potential applicants is also vital. It is important to recognize the candidates who have the right competencies and cultural fit to your organization is another skill worth developing. We’ll look at ways that you can establish your company as an employer of choice, use social media to locate and draw the right applicants for recruitment, and assess cultural fit to guarantee the best possible talent choices.

• Become an employer of choice   

• Maximizing your company’s social media reach   

• Evaluate if a candidate is a cultural fit for your organization

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

If you want to unleash the power of your diverse team, you must also foster inclusivity. Your team members are more likely to contribute their unique perspectives and experiences when they feel welcomed and respected within the group. Inclusion is a team-wide endeavor, and you must be the leader. Helping team members find common ground and at the same time learning about and respecting each other’s differences is the key to creating an inclusive work environment that will leverage both talents and abilities of your diverse team.

• Identify the importance of managing diversity

• Enlist tips for building a strong team

• Explore the strategies of managing diversity

Making your hires successful requires a lot of work. There is a science to identify talent that matches the needs and culture of your organization. The process of interviewing candidates based on behavioral questions is a proven way of pinpointing the best-qualified applicants. In this course, we will review the whys and hows of using this popular interviewing practice so that you can make the most of its benefits.

• Determine what behavioral interview is   

• Enlist steps to prepare for the behavioral interview   

• Create questions using STAR model   

• Conduct behavioral interviews

Conflict always creates uneasiness in the minds of employees and organizations. Conflict can involve sore emotions and impend relationships. Leaders experience the same emotional distress while handling a conflict situation. The most difficult situation a leader deals with is conflict management. It is observed that ill-managed conflict creates huge costs in the form of time expenditure, higher attrition, legal implications, etc. It also lowers productivity. When people are involved in conflict, they begin to recoil, stop sharing information, and take fewer risks. The result can be poor decision making. Low morale and strained working relationships can cause stress and drain employees’ energy to focus on being creative and productive. In this lesson, you will learn to deal with situational conflict.

• Identify the five stages of organizational conflict  

• Name the five styles of conflict management   

• Interpret when to use the different styles of conflict management

Studies have shown that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. In a survey of customer retention, 44% of companies said that they focus their efforts on acquiring new customers, but only 18% surveyed focus on retaining existing customers. Another survey revealed that companies who increase their customer retention rates by 5%, increase their profits by at least 25% and often more. 

These statistics make it clear that loyal customers help drive a company’s growth and profitability. The key to keeping your customers satisfied and loyal to your organization is excellent customer service.   

In this lesson, you will learn how to build relationships of trust and appreciation.

• Recognize the value of customer service 

• Serve external customers 

• Serve internal customers

The journey of a successful leader begins with both personal and professional development. Leaders stay on top of their industry and economy. They are future-focused, positive, and strong communicators. Leaders spend time in self-reflection and education, learning how to maximize their strengths and improve their weaknesses. They study best practices for working with others and know how to get the most out of their employees. They combine these knowledges to guide their organization. Leaders pursue goals persistently. They are open-minded and flexible in their approaches, encourage team members to embrace innovative thinking, and cultivate an environment of positive work culture. They develop team members through coaching, delegating, and mentoring. They also model and inculcate behaviors they want their employees to have, such as integrity, strong communication skills, innovation, emotional intelligence, strategic decision-making, confidence, and vision. Above all, a successful leader provides clarity of purpose, direction, and support, so that everyone succeeds as they work to achieve common goals.

• Demonstrate excellence in business strategy

• Apply essential personality characteristics

• Build critical people skills required to achieve goals

The simplest definition of diversity is “a range or variety of different things”. In the context of D&I, diversity refers to “the traits and characteristics that make people unique” which include (but are not limited to) race, ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic class, ability, sexual orientation, and nationality. The summation of these variables combine to create life experiences which shape how a person solves problems, creates, and assesses risk. These are examples of “diversity of thinking” which yields direct and indirect benefits that are foundational to the business case for investments in D&I initiatives.

An inclusive environment is one in which “all individuals are treated fairly and respectfully, feel welcome, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute fully to the organization’s success.”

• What are strategies to improve D&I initiatives?

• What is the business case for D&I?

• What are the gaps in the business case for D&I?