5 free online courses to develop effective leadership skills

The importance of having good leadership skills cannot be overstated. You don’t need to be the CEO to have to develop your leadership chops. Working on the soft skill can help you foster confidence, understand how to contribute fully as a member of an organisation, and advance in your career. These free online courses will help you identify where you might be lacking, or enable you to you hone these skills even more. From effective communications to new leadership styles, get ready to cover all the bases.

Understanding the Basics

Offered by Deakin University

The course will help you understand the basics of leadership and management. Through the duration of the course, you will learn the fundamentals of leadership, understand how leadership thinking has evolved over the years, and differentiate it from management. If you’re a business professional who is already at a management position or want to aim for a leadership role in your organisation, this course will help you in expanding your knowledge and making you self-aware of your capabilities as a potential leader.

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Building Leadership Skills

Offered by HEC Paris

A good leader is self-aware and confident. Take this course by HEC Paris to develop rational skills and self awareness. The curriculum is based on the Savoir-Relier methodology, which is defined as the capacity to build sensible, positive relationships between entities that are inherently different or antagonistic to each other. It’s a new approach to leadership that you can learn through four steps: introspection, conversation, resilience and responsibility towards value creation. You will also get valuable insights from industry professionals and participants of the HEC Paris leadership programme.

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Global Leadership and Management

Offered by Arizona State University

Aside from learning the basics of leadership skills and management, it’s also important to understand how it all applies in a much larger, global context. Through this course, you will learn how to manage people on an international scale, which is more dynamic and complex. You will learn through real-life case studies. Additionally, the course will help you understand the role of culture in an organisation through a location-based perspective.

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Effective Communication

Offered by Technológico de Monterrey

It goes without saying that effective communication is one of the top skills a leader should have. As a leader, you’re required to communicate with a variety of groups within an organisation. Each group demands a different kind of communication and leadership style, something that you will be able to grasp only if you're skilled in the area. The course will help you understand the concept better, and develop effective communication skills. It will also help you apply these skills to achieve the objectives you’ve set out as a leader of your organisation.

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Strategic Management

Offered by RWTH Aachen University

Apart from owning great communication skills, you need to be able to understand how to craft effective strategies that can help in the advancement of your organisation. This course will help you understand what exactly a good strategy is, why it is important to your organisation, and how to identify and analyse resources that could be important and hold strategic value. The lesson takes real-life case studies to aide your understanding of the concepts.

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