53333 Courses delivered Online

Managers and leaders use power every day, many feel reluctant to use it or even to admit that it is part of their job. However, using power effectively is an important skill and by developing influencing techniques can lead to increased effectiveness in a team. This course describes the sources of power and strategies and assesses your abilities in line with these. Power should contribute to organisational goals, respect human rights and conform to standards of equality and justice.

Much of what you achieve will depend on your ability to persuade other people. In many respects, persuasion is the highest form of communication. This course looks at the ability of persuasion and negotiation in producing successful outcomes and the skill required in moving towards a convergence of opinion and understanding. Like much of leadership, negotiation depends on your attitudes in approach, as well as your ability to devote time to planning.

Leaders and managers are powerful people who are able to exercise considerable influence over the way in which an organisation operates and its employees. Ethical leadership involves the way that managers and leaders carry out their decision-making in terms of moral issues and choices. It is concerned with right versus wrong, good versus bad and the many shades of grey in between. Moral implications spring from virtually every decision, both on and off the job, requiring the ethical leader to have more imagination and the courage to do the right thing, from an ethical standpoint. This course examines the role of the ethical leader and the influence that he or she can exert in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and improving an organisation’s ethical climate.

Much of management is about finding creative solutions to problems and identifying the appropriate course of action. Creativity and originality explores the power of the mind in bringing things into being from original thought or basic concepts. This course sets out to demonstrate how the power of imagination can build on original thoughts to create solutions and plans, which contribute to workplace performance.

An interesting aspect of job knowledge is that the majority of people believe they understand their job until they are asked to explain it. This course sets out to examine your professional, specialist or expert knowledge and understanding that are especially required in your job.

Work stress has been described as the ‘wear and tear’ caused by your working life. In recent times, stress at work has seen a rapidly rising trend. This course looks at your ability to avoid work stress and to control and manage it, when it arises. Excessive and continuous work stress is very damaging, resulting in health problems, loss of productivity and pressure on working relationships. The main problems stem from excessive workloads and impractical deadlines, relationships with colleagues and future job insecurity.

What you achieve at work is dependent on the contributions you make to your team. This is the sum of the skills that you willingly give to others or you add towards a common goal or result. This course looks at the key areas of contribution that you are required to make in order to achieve team objectives

Estimates show that some 70% of your work time is spent in some aspect of communication or another. With so much practice and experience, it would appear that we are all experts, but that is not the case. This course looks at your ability to reach a shared or common understanding with another person and how you apply your verbal and written abilities as well as your capacity to listen and understand.

Objective setting is the foundation of all good management. Without objectives, you will never be able to focus on achievement, nor manage the various aspects of your work and working relationships. This course covers your ability to think through and define the results you and your team wish to achieve in the future, taking you through an eight-step process, which is constantly subject to change and review.

For many people, managing priorities often causes a potential source of conflict. The correct work behaviour is summarised in the phrase ‘what you do second is equally important to what you do first’. This routine can be achieved if time is controlled for the purpose of priority management. This course looks at your ability to focus on the priority of job objectives and the fundamental problem of conflict between priority of importance and priority of time.