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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

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 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?

When you make developing customer rapport a priority, you will experience many benefits. From the very first interaction, there are things you can do to begin earning customer trust and loyalty. Be friendly and genuine as you communicate. Always be honest and work hard to solidify your reputation as a trustworthy professional. As your relationships grow, find ways to help your customers outside of your role as their sales consultant. These opportunities to assist them in their successes will cement your rapport even more. And don’t forget that relationships with your colleagues and co-workers need as much attention and care as your customer connections. It takes hard work and teamwork to be successful. Taking the time to build rapport with both your customers and colleagues is the key that unlocks this reality.

• Identify Ways of Establishing Customer Rapport

• Identify Ways of Sustaining Customer Rapport

• List the Benefits of Building Customer Rapport

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

Teams are the backbone of contemporary business life. Executive teams, work teams, cross-functional teams, high-performance teams, and project teams serve a variety of purposes, but they all have the same goal: to solidify the organization’s competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

Cross-functional team leaders draw individuals from departments across the organization to address a particular problem. They might select development engineers, marketing professionals, sales people, legal experts, customer service managers, accountants, and HR executives to apply their various talents to accomplish the goal. The concept is powerful. But this mix of diverse skill sets, professional experience, and personalities also comes with challenges—and you need to manage the team carefully in order to maximize its potential for success.

• State the challenges of handling a diverse team 

• List the ways to manage these challenges 

• Apply the strategies to leverage the power of your team

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 art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

 - Thomas Berger

Asking open-ended questions is a powerful tool to not only spark new ideas and discussions but also developing strategic thinking, collaboration and innovative business solutions. Leaders who demonstrate curiosity and active listening skills are ideally qualified for asking open-ended questions and helping their teams discover original answers to corporate challenges.

• Define an open-ended question 

• Identify the best practices in asking open-ended questions 

• Explain how to encourage and enable employees to use open-ended questions in business meetings 

• Recognize the advantages of open-ended questions

Changing demographics, technology innovation, and global competition are driving enterprise-wide business transformation. Digital natives—two new generations of buyers and corporate talent—are wired to connect, communicate, and operate in this environment. How they instinctively navigate this digital age is redefining how organizations are responding to customer expectations, continuous business innovation, and competition. A recent Wall Street Journal article said, “We are in an era of extraordinary change in core business models. Technology is usually the cause.” As organizations shift from pre-digital age business models to more agile platform-based models, their strategies are changing too. Digital technologies are the tools that organizations are using to meet the demands of a new breed of the buyer and a competitive global economy. It’s clear that today—and going forward—every business is now a digital business.

• Learn how markets are getting transformed due to digital

• Recognize how business models get transformed due to digital

• Understand how digital influences strategy transformation for any business

"“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

"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

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

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

The workforce in most of the organizations has a mix of four generations. Individuals from the Baby Boom era are moving closer to retirement, while a new generation of workers, Generation Z, are entering the business world. Different cultural events and forces have so distinctly molded the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z that their approaches to work vary greatly. In this lesson, you will learn that strategic leaders seize the opportunity to leverage the wisdom and experience of the oldest generation and the entrepreneurial, technological, and ideological strengths of the younger generations to prepare their organizations for the future.

• Identify the similarities of all generations 

• Learn to lead the generationally diverse team 

• Build the bridge between these generations

In today’s corporate world, it is important for a leader to develop writing skill and create a personal brand. When you are able to write crisply and relevantly about topics you understand well, you will influence not only those in your organization but customers, industry peers, and potential clients too. Whether writing emails, business letters, online articles, or posting on social media, you have the ability to set yourself apart from other leaders if you can convey ideas in a way that clearly and powerfully persuades, motivates, or informs. In this lesson, you will learn how to plan, organize, and write business communications as well as create and manage your personal brand.

• Write clear and direct business communications 

• Build your personal brand

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

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

As a person at a leading position, have you ever assessed your effectiveness as a coach? Although, coaching your team is the most underrated roles you play, it is the most important role too. This course addresses the five strategies used by effective coaches. Assess your skills against these five strategies and enhance your abilities to sharpen your coaching skills.

• Listen more to your team and talk less 

• Provide timely feedback to your team 

• Set up your team to win 

• Cheer your team 

• Provide your team with the right resources

Kurt Lewin a German-American psychologist, defined himself and his contributions within three lenses of analysis: applied research, action research, and group communication were his major offerings. One of the Cornerstone models for understanding organizational change was developed by him and is referred to as ""Kurt Lewin's three-stages of Change.

This model breaks into three-stages: Unfreeze, Transition, and Refreeze. In the ""Unfreeze"" stage, an organization prepares for the change. In the ""Transition"" stage, the change takes place and in the ""Refreeze"" stage, the change becomes solidified as the new norm.

• Describe the need for change

• Identify the three stages of Kurt Lewin’s change model

• List the activities in the unfreezing stage

• Explain why communication is important in the transition stage

• Explain the importance of refreezing