Leadership Essentials

In this course you will 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 Professor Kate Walsh, Ph.D. of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

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.

In this course, you will create a strategy to turn a work group into a high-functioning team by evaluating challenges and applying techniques to generate positive team outcomes. Based on the research and expertise of Professor Kate Walsh, PhD, of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, 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.

Using tools provided in this course, you will 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.

Interpersonal communication is built on the bedrock of confidence, presence, social and emotional intelligence, and being open with others and yourself. This course will cover all of these dimensions, including how they play into your management style and your workplace actions like holding difficult conversations.

Professor Pam Stepp, Ph.D., of Cornell University’s ILR School will guide you as you discover how interpersonal communication will impact your team. In the course project you will assess yourself and others on the aforementioned key dimensions. You will reflect on your past performance, analyze your strengths and weaknesses, and determine an actionable plan for future 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.

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 of Cornell University’s ILR School 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.

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.

Cornell University’s Professor Livingston’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.

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.

Professor Alexander Colvin, Ph.D. of Cornell University’s ILR School explains 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 Colvin 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.