Professional Development

Lead more productive and efficient meetings by implementing the simple guidelines offered in this management training course designed to help you meet with purpose and focus. We’ll guide you through the steps of preparing for an upcoming meeting and executing your role as meeting facilitator. You'll gain tips on how to set a professional pace and tone during your meeting, as well as how to conduct appropriate post-meeting follow-up and self-reflection exercises to evaluate the success of your meeting. Run time: 10 minutes

Effective coaching is the single most important factor in employee development today. Courage 2 Coach™ turns common sense into common practice with a four-step process that can be applied to any employee performance situation. This course walks each user through a realistic range of tough employee performance situations make this program ideal for organizations committed to supervisory success. This course outlines a specific four-step process for coaching that will work in any employee performance situation. It begins with a critical first step—call it like you see it. You will also learn how to reach an agreement on the problem, develop an action plan for correcting the problem and follow up with the employee. Run time: 40 minutes

So, you're a part of a mentoring program, and you've been successfully paired up. What's next? How do both the mentor and mentee actually take advantage of this opportunity? How do you create a successful mentoring relationship that bears fruit? In this course, we'll discuss the keys to a successful mentoring relationship, including establishing trust, setting clear expectations, being prepared, and giving/receiving feedback. We'll also touch on some do's and don'ts for both mentors and mentees to follow. Run time: 6 minutes

Learn an effective 7-step strategy for solving problems and use critical thinking skills to come up with the best solutions and outcomes. Being a good problem solver is a valuable skill for the workplace. In this course, you will learn how to define a problem, consider solutions and anticipate outcomes, select the best strategy, and evaluate and measure the results. You'll also gain helpful tips, such as how to brainstorm and collaborate with colleagues to generate more effective solutions. This 35-minute course includes engaging narration, self-diagnostic tools, quizzes and a final test for a complete learning experience. Empower your employees by helping them strengthen their critical thinking skills and solve problems. Run time: 35 minutes

This is a short course full of stories, advice, and simple steps that you can take to turn your customers into loyal fans. Run time: 10 minutes

We all love to receive great customer service. As consumers it makes us feel good. So much so, consumers now rate customer service as the most important factor when deciding to do business with a company. So it’s really important to understand and avoid certain behaviors that make our customers angry. Run time: 10 minutes

How to make the caller feel glad they called from hello to goodbye. Have you ever experienced calling what you thought was a well-run professional company, only to be disappointed by the manner in which people answered the phone, transferred your call, put you on hold, or ended the call? If they weren’t professional, how could the rest of the company be? What kind of workmanship or service would you expect? It's not just the receptionist who answers the phone either. Almost everyone in the company has one on their desk and they use them to talk to internal or external customers every day. The definition of professional includes “exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace.” Telephone behavior can set either a positive or a negative stage for any conversation with both internal and external customers. This course provides the necessary guidelines to ensure a positive impact with all callers. This course is based on the Amazon Top 100 Best Selling ebook, Telephone Etiquette by Robert DeGroot. Run time: 45 minutes

As a leader you are responsible for the overall development of the employees. As a part of this responsibility you have to decide when to provide coaching and when to mentor an employee. Many leaders have a misconception that coaching and mentoring are the same. In this course, you will learn the difference between coaching and mentoring, learn the components of coaching, and be able to evaluate your coaching skills. This course will help you decide if the trainee needs coaching or mentoring. Run time: 14 minutes

Delegation is one of the most important business skills you can learn. Your ability to delegate is largely shaped by your experiences. However, there are core skills you can improve to fast track your effectiveness and help you avoid the common pitfalls. This course can assist in improving those core skills. Run time: 20 minutes

This engaging course takes you through various listening styles and provides approaches and practical advice on how to become a better listener. Unlike hearing which happens automatically, listening is a skill that needs to be developed and maintained to remain effective. In this course, communication expert Brian Shapiro explains the difference between listening and hearing, shares insight into the listening process, discusses types of listening responses, and provides practical advice on how you can become a better listener. This 45-minute course features video and audio narration to guide you through the subject matter. The easy-to-navigate menu bar allows you to select your topic, replay points of interest and control the speed at which you learn. Run time: 45 minutes