Course catalogue

Organizations are changing, and so are our offices. The new age millennials are shifting toward the virtual world. More and more organizations use virtual teams to meet corporate goals. This has created the need to determine how best to manage and lead these virtual groups. 

Traditional methods of managing on-site groups don’t work with remote workers, because virtual teams are most often composed of workers who are spread over a varied geographic and cultural expanse and communicate, for the most part, electronically. Future Workforce Report states that 63 percent of companies utilize virtual workers, but only 57 percent have standards in place to manage the process. 

In this lesson, you will learn to effectively guide teams that they rarely see face-to-face.

• Establish requirements 

• Build mutual trust with your virtual team 

• Communicate frequently with them

The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.

 -Patrick Lencioni 

An important part of planning a successful meeting is deciding who should attend the meeting. In the previous course, we have learned that less is more. Invite only those persons who are necessary to achieve the vision and are committed to getting the work completed. Similarly, it is equally important to define and assign specific roles and responsibilities to the team members attending the meeting. This is a critical part of pre-planning. Careful planning ahead of time will result in less resentment, less time wasted, better decisions, and greater ownership of the process by each member of the team.

• State the different roles played in a meeting 

• Determine the roles and responsibilities of a meeting leader

Social scientists have studied and designed leadership theories for decades to understand and explain how great leaders are made. They have compiled lists of leadership traits and constructed frameworks and models to illustrate the leadership phenomenon. And while these theories are detailed, thoroughly researched, and insightful, none provide “the” singular leadership model that works for every high-level manager aspiring to lead their team effectively and successfully.

What they do provide is an abundant source of leadership data that can be used to create your own flexible brand of leadership. Leaders face a wide range of tasks, responsibilities, and challenges—both anticipated and unexpected—every day.

Assembling a toolkit of leadership options that can address them is something smart leaders do. Let’s study the specifics of some core leadership theories and how you might use them in different business scenarios.

• Identify the Traits and Contingency theories

• Describe the Behavioral theory

• Explain the Transformational Leadership theory

Managers are often called to present to the groups of customers, cross-departmental teams, or in-house decision-makers. The process of crafting and delivering a presentation requires organizational skills, insight, technical abilities, and courage. Public speaking can be intimidating. But, by taking the time to methodically plan and execute the necessary details, you can be prepared and confident to deliver an effective presentation. This course will walk you through the steps you’ll need to plan and organize your topic, choose visual aids, consider technology tools, and practice delivering your speech. 

• Research, decide, and plan your presentation  

• Create a presentation with additional aid   

• Practice and make the presentation

Executive presence isn’t something you’re born with, it’s a combination of learned behaviors and characteristics that can be developed. Depending upon your personality, industry, business goals and challenges, executive presence can be manifested in different ways. 

Having great presentation skills and making a strong first impression based on your clothing and demeanor is not executive presence. You need more substantive abilities to face daily business challenges, speak your mind while maintaining your composure, or inspire your team to commit to a demanding new goal. Executive presence is a purposefully developed hybrid of internal character and external presentation. Let’s look at the qualities that distinguish great leaders from mediocre ones.

• Identify the attributes of executive presence

• Gauge your executive presence and gain insight

• Receive feedback in different forms

• Develop your own executive presence