5 online courses to improve your communication skills
Being able to effectively communicate is a foundational skill in both our professional and personal life. Successful communication helps us better understand people and situations, overcome diversities and disagreements, and create conditions for sharing ideas and solving problems.
Developing strong communication skills is essential when it comes to building a successful career. Using, improving and showcasing these skills can help you be competitive when searching for a new job, advance as a professional and be an effective leader.
Moonshot News did some digging and selected 5 interesting online courses to improve your communications skills.
Communicating for Influence and Impact
Harnessing the ability to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills a leader can have. If you are in a leadership or managerial position and looking to communicate effectively and influence stakeholders, or to achieve meaningful change within your team, then this 8-week entirely online course, offered by the University of Cambridge, may be for you.
The course offers:
- The knowledge and tools to improve your storytelling, collaboration and communication strategies to persuade and influence at all levels in your organisation.
- A Personal Impact Plan to maximise your influence and achieve meaningful change within your network.
- Enhanced insights into your purpose as a leader, and how to align this with your communication strategy.
- The ability to drive impact at a systems level via listening, collaboration, and engagement – all key attributes to communicating and influencing positive change.
Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills
We all negotiate on a daily basis. On a personal level, we negotiate with friends, family, and employers, among others. But negotiation is also the key to business success and career advancement.
This Coursera course, offered by the University of Michigan, is one of the most popular and highly-rated MOOCs worldwide. In the course, you’ll learn about and practice the four steps to a successful negotiation:
- Prepare: Plan Your Negotiation Strategy
- Negotiate: Use Key Tactics for Success
- Close: Create a Contract
- Perform and Evaluate: The End Game
The course takes approximately 17 hours to complete.
Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation Specialization
Another interesting Coursera course, offered by the University of Colorado Boulder, is the “Business Writing, Graphic Design, and Successful Presentation,” that can help you hone your written, visual, and verbal business presentation skills.
You’ll learn to write well-organized, clear business documents; to design elegant presentation slides, reports, and posters; and to present and speak with confidence. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll develop a portfolio of work to showcase your communication skills and represent your personal brand.
The course takes approximately 5 months to complete with a suggested pace of 4 hours per week.
Effective Communication for Today’s Leader
Interpersonal communication is one of the most important management skills: everyday we relate with our bosses, collaborators, customers and colleagues. Being a good communicator is synonym to being a good leader.
This edX course can help you understand the importance of communication in people’s lives and thus boost the improvement in our ability to effectively socialize, identify the concept of communication to clarify its importance, develop communication skills: assertiveness and empathy, and apply communication skills to performance feedback and achieve organizational objectives.
The course takes approximately 4 weeks, with a suggested pace of 5–8 hours per week.
The Complete Communication Skills Master Class for Life
“The Complete Communication Skills Masterclass for Life,” course offered by Udemy, covers a vast array of communication needs and scenarios, from how to communicate during a job interview, pitching investors, asking for a raise, speaking one on one or to large groups. And it covers how to speak to big corporations when you have a problem with service, plus public speaking for kids, or even how to deliver a wedding speech.
This course includes 31 hours on-demand video, 3 articles and 5 downloadable resources.
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