Leadership Essentials

COURSES OVERVIEW

Today’s organizational leaders are one part manager, one part HR professional. This certificate program will teach you how to elevate into a true leader instead of simply a manager. Find out what your leadership style is and how to develop the interpersonal skills needed to take charge. Knowing that will allow you to not only create a high-performing team, but manage it to its fullest potential as well. Learn how to manage your time, make clear, decisive decisions for the betterment of your organization, and how to communicate those decisions to upper management.

For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

This program includes a year of free access to Symposium! These events feature several days of live, highly participatory virtual Zoom sessions with Cornell faculty and experts to explore the most pressing leadership topics. Symposium events are held several times throughout the year. Once enrolled in your program, you will receive information about upcoming events.

Throughout the year, you may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program.

After successfully completing the certificate program, student will be equipped with tools and skills that should permit him/her to:

Understand the difference between leadership and management and devise a strategy for overcoming new leadership challenges
Create a strategy to create a high-functioning team
Apply leverage points for enabling the team to take ownership for its own success and shift leadership role as the team assumes greater responsibility
Assemble the different dimensions of interpersonal communications and apply them to difficult conversations
Establish standards for productivity, processes, quality, conduct, and timeliness
Set appropriate performance goals with individual employees and create an effective system of accountability
Determine current workforce needs with an eye to future changes and skills that might be needed
Develop a hiring plan that maximizes your likelihood of a good hire and communicate effectively with job candidates
Create a workplace atmosphere that reduces the occurrence of behavior issues and learn how to resolve issues as they arise

Leadership Forum

Becoming a Powerful Leader

You will be provided in this course with tools that will enable you to define and differentiate between leadership and management, develop a strategy for overcoming new leadership challenges, and evaluate motivational techniques and determine when to use them. You will also identify the skills needed to develop relationships crucial to your career development as a leader, based on the research and expertise of

Using tools provided in this course, you will explore what motivates others, assess leadership styles, and examine communication with your leadership team. With the completion of an action plan at the end of the course, you will be ready to apply what you learn to your own organization.

After successfully completing this course you will be able to:

Define and differentiate between leadership and management
A strategy for overcoming new leadership challenges
Evaluate motivational techniques and determine when to use them
Identify the skills and relationships you need to develop that are crucial to your career development as a leader

Building High-Performing Teams

In this course, you will be provided with needed tools and skills to create a strategy to turn a work group into a high-functioning team by evaluating challenges and applying techniques to generate positive team outcomes. You will learn how to enable a team to take ownership of its own success and shift leadership roles as the team assumes greater responsibility.

Tools provided in this course, you will enable you to explore best practices in leading teams, assess case studies, and examine functional conflict. With the completion of an action plan at the end of the course, you will be ready to apply what you learn to your own organization.

After successfully completed the course, you should be able to:

Create a strategy to create a high-functioning team
Evaluate challenges and apply techniques to generate positive team results
Apply leverage points for enabling the team to take ownership for its own success and shift leadership role as the team assumes greater responsibility

Active Listening and Processing Feedback

Course Overview

A leader's listening ability has a tremendous impact on their effectiveness. Professor Judi Brownell's HURIER model of listening provides a comprehensive method of listening improvement. In this course, you will assess your listening skills, set personal goals, and plan a development strategy. The application of listening principles to Servant Leadership and the development of emotional intelligence are emphasized.

You will use the HURIER self-assessment instrument to assess your personal listening skills then solicit feedback from your colleagues to compare your self-assessment results to their perceptions. You will then reflect on the results and create a SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound — listening goal. As you move forward in the course, you will take on the role of a Servant Leader and determine how to facilitate a listening environment. You will observe and analyze a team and create an action plan to recommend improvements to the listening environment. Finally, you will examine three emerging issues that impact listening in the workplace and the larger social environment: diversity, ethics, and technology. After taking this course, you will be prepared to foster a strong listening environment within your organization and set clear goals for your continued skill development.

After successfully completion of this course, you should be able to:

Apply the HURIER model to identify personal listening strengths and challenges
Process and respond to feedback for professional development and increased personal effectiveness
Create an action plan to improve team listening and address organizational challenges
Address emerging listening challenges and new listener responsibilities

Managing Team Performance

Most managers only think about performance once a year when they have to conduct annual appraisals for their direct reports, or when things are going poorly. This course equips managers to move beyond this approach and develop an ongoing and proactive developmental process that helps their employees to perform best in their jobs. When your people are performing well, you're performing well and your organization can succeed.

After successfully completion this course, student should be able to:

Establish standards for productivity, processes, quality, conduct, and timeliness
Set appropriate performance goals with individual employees
Create an effective system of accountability
Enact sustainable performance-oriented management practices
Identify and remove performance barriers

Managing Teme and Priorities

Every day is filled with new tasks, new challenges, and new distractions. Every so often you need to take a step back to audit how you are using your time and what your priorities should be. Doing so will allow you to effectively manage not only your own time and priorities, but the time and priorities of your direct reports as well.

In this course, Professors Diane Burton and Allison Elias will help you determine the needed frequency of audits, as well as how to create and conduct evaluations of yourself, your teams, and the organization. They will help you examine priorities and tasks on seven critical levels. In the course project, you will examine your work situation, and work-life balance, all with the goal and tools to become more efficient and effective.

Project Management Institute (PMI) Continuing Certification: Participants who successfully complete this course are able to receive 6 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from PMI. Please contact PMI for details about professional project management certification or recertification.

Participants who have successfully completed this course will:

Improve efficiency by effectively managing your own time and priorities as well as the time and priorities of others
Determine the needed frequency of audits so that you can begin to make more effective decisions regarding managing time and priorities
Conduct an audit of priorities to assess how well they fit in the seven critical levels
Evaluate your own and others' skills and interests to better distribute work
Examine the impact that time and task management can have on work and life.

Effective Hiring and Interviewing

Instead of HR professionals, front-line managers are now being asked to assess their personnel needs in the workplace and make hiring —or firing—choices that fit those needs. Many managers have not been trained on how to decide among candidates to make the best choices to fit their team. These choices are not just about creating test questions or reading resumes, but also about managing the interpersonal communication that must occur between hirer and candidate.

Usild faculty's teaching combines well-supported theoretical evidence with real-world examples and case studies to make the subject matter both understandable and easily applicable to a wide variety of managing environments. She focuses not just on the “how” of hiring and interviewing, but on the “why” so that individual managers and decision makers can be flexible and agile in changing environments and with changing needs.

Key Course Takeaways:

Determine current workforce needs with an eye to future changes and skills that might be needed
Develop a hiring plan that maximizes your likelihood of a good hire
Conduct interviews that yield good decision-making data while energizing applicants
Make appropriate hiring decisions
Communicate effectively with job candidate

Addressing Workplace Behaviors

Managers must foster a good workplace atmosphere and be able to deal effectively with behavior issues as they arise. Doing so improves productivity and employee engagement and helps an organization avoid costly legal liability.

Participants will learn how new and aspiring managers can prevent or reduce the occurrence of behavior issues. His lessons will show you how to assess issues as they arise and provide guidance and best practices on resolving behavior problems, primarily through the proven principles of progressive discipline. Professor Edward T. Moises draws on his legal and research credentials to provide guidance in dealing with harassment and bullying, planning and carrying out terminations when required, and managing requests to accommodate special employee needs and practices.

Throughout the course, you'll remain engaged as you participate in interactive discussions and complete a five-part course project, applying the key concepts to your own situation.