Online Business Course

Module I - Introduction

8 Interactive Lessons

Weekly Assignments + Fun Quizzes

If you miss a lesson, you can always view the recordings later.

• Lesson 1 - Are You a Manager or Leader?

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  We start by focusing on the basic skills that all managers and leaders must have to succeed. You will then explore the characteristics that great leaders bring to their positions. You will be able to use these characteristics to make you a better manager with the confidence to face any challenge ahead.

• Lesson 2 - Management Competencies and Why They Matter

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  In this lesson, you will develop an awareness for the basic management skills: Planning, Organizing, Directing and Control. You will then apply these competencies to set clear directions, provide feedback, recognize and reward performance, and communicate effectively. You will then be able to contrast different management styles that will help you to develop your own personal style of leadership.

• Lesson 3 - How Leaders Have Vision, Values and Purpose

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  Perhaps the greatest difference between a leader and manager is their ability to explain why they work the way they do. In lesson 3, you will explore how leaders explain why they do what they do. You will learn how strategic alignment holds the key to helping managers create a winning culture.

• Lesson 4 - Learn to Motivate and Inspire Others

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  Leaders inspire their teams and motivate them not to fear change but embrace it. During lesson 4, you will gain key insights into how leaders encourage growth and development. Building trust is at the heart of what leaders do. You will learn how to make time for each team member and invest in their well-being. The result will be to make work more enjoyable and more productive for your team.

• Lesson 5 - Coaching for Success

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  In Lesson 5, you will learn how to coach employees effectively. You will appreciate why leaders schedule regular performance reviews. Leaders also know how to manage difficult employees by setting clear objectives so that there is no wriggle room. You will also gain insights into how rewarding performance promotes productivity and helps build resilience for those times that you need team members to go beyond the call of duty.

• Lesson 6 - How Leaders Manage Change

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  Those who lead inspire change. Here you will learn how leaders build and maintain momentum during times of change. Leaders explain why change is required. They focus on the end goal. You will focus on key communication skills that facilitate change and motivate those who are resistant to change.

• Lesson 7 - Future Leadership Roles

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  Some managers struggle with how work is constantly changing. We look at the millennial generation and provide insights to help you lead in a global, social, diverse, and multi-cultural environment. You will learn to appreciate how the changing nature of work demands new leadership and transformational roles. Roles that you, as aspiring managers and leaders, can fill.

• Lesson 8 - Leaders are Continuously Learning

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  Change demands new skills and competencies. Leaders demonstrate that learning on the job is key to an employee’s development. In lesson 8, we will focus on the steps to build a productive learning culture. You will learn why leaders provide the opportunity for others to grow and how the development of a productive learning culture helps to sustain growth in times of change.

Module II - Leadership Awareness Module

• Week 1: Why Leadership Matters

  Effective leaders start out by being themselves. They have integrity. They are honest and generally walk the talk. They are humble and they try to engage with employees to work out what they need to succeed. In week 1, we focus on the core leadership traits and styles that enable them to work with those who are entrusted with realising the vision, strategy, and plan that the leader has crafted.

• Week 2: Principles Of Leadership

  In the foundation course, we’ve seen the common reasons why employees quit their jobs. It’s down to poor management practices. Here we focus on the key principles of leadership: being respectful, instilling trust, taking responsibility and having the courage to act when others carry out behaviours that run counter to the vision, values, and purpose that all great leaders seek to embed in their organizations.

• Week 3: Leading With Vision, Values, And Purpose.

  During week 3, you will learn how to build a vision and create a shared set of values that gives you purpose to better lead yourself and others. Leadership is all about providing direction and to do this successfully, you need to strategically align vision, values and purpose across the organisation. Great leaders communicate why their work has meaning and purpose. They can show others to find meaning in their work and by being successful are transformed by the accomplishments they achieve. In this way, leaders truly inspire others to action.

• Week 4: Leaders Communicate To Inspire

  Here you will learn how leaders are able to communicate with ease when presented with a seemingly complex issue. This is because leaders have honed a heightened sense of situational and contextual awareness in which they operate. It is their ability to develop a keen external awareness that helps then define the key message the audience wishes to hear. In week 4, you will appreciate how leaders are able to articulate their vision in a manner which speaks to the emotions and inspires action and support for their vision.

Module III - Organizational Leadership Module

• Week 1: Leadership And Organizational Culture

  Leadership in times of change is often challenged by the prevailing culture that resists change. So, what do great leaders do? They find ways to exercise their influence to build a vision and have others willing to work towards that vision. We will focus on how leaders can own, shape and change organisational culture. They focus on the collective behaviours of the organization and mould them to work together toward a common goal or purpose.

• Week 2: Leadership And Engagement

  Great leaders can convey vision with passion, to bring with them reluctant employees who once were suspicious of change. How do leaders get employees to commit to the organization, and put more discretionary effort into their work? The secret lies in their ability to engage positively with teams across the organization. We analyse how leaders support the efforts of those around them, provide the right conditions so that employees can give their best each day and in the end, contribute to the long-term well-being of the organisation.

• Week 3: Why Leaders Coach, Mentor, And Develop Others

  The best leaders don’t rush to the solution but use their time to ask questions to foster a team’s process of self-discovery. By using effective coaching and mentoring techniques the successful leader creates more effective and self-sustaining teams by building autonomy, adding responsibility and providing essential feedback so that others learn to navigate and succeed in an ever-changing corporate environment.

• Week 4: Leaders Empower Innovation And Creativity

  In week 4, you will learn how leaders promote knowledge sharing and collaboration to breakdown siloed thinking. By becoming engaged, employees can be innovative and creative in their work. Ultimately, leaders appreciate that to successfully lead others, they must first build a sustainable culture, one that accepts that failure may happen, but ultimately provide the conditions and support for those to succeed.

Module IV - Strategic Leadership Module

• Week 1: Leaders Develop Strategic Awareness

  We begin this semester by examining how successful leaders can shape the future and utilize the strength and skills of those around them to build long-term success and security. They do this by first learning about their own strengths and weakness and building their own sense of leadership. In addition, they learn to anticipate change, challenge the status quo, be decisive and ensure that they have alignment between their vision, the organizational strategy, and, those whom they lead.

• Week 2: Adaptive Leadership

  In times of profound change, we tend to turn to the tried and tested, looking for the predictable outcomes which have served us well in the past. There is a view, that what sets great leaders apart from their peers is their ability to adapt to the changing circumstances in which they find themselves. We delve into the Ron Heifetz’s theory of Adaptive Leadership and see how leaders need to navigate the business environment, lead with empathy, create win-win situations, and learn to self-correct.

• Week 3: Leaders Constantly Scan Their Environment

  Here we focus on how leaders scan their environment for signs of emerging change, or subtle shifts in how external factors might impact their business. Successful leaders build in an “early warning system” that lets them see changes to their key business drivers, their regulatory environment, the key technologies they depend upon and any other external challenge that may require them to develop a new strategic course of action.

• Week 4: Leading Through Change

  Leaders who bring about successful change are rare. According to a 2015 study by McKinsey & Co 75% of change initiatives fail. We look at the key skills that successful leaders utilize during times of change. These are: ensuring buy-in from the front line, being sincere in listening and helping others feel respected and heard. Leaders ultimately provide the vision of the future and the key reasons why change is happening. When employees buy-in and take ownership of the change they are far more likely to succeed.