Be A More Inclusive Leader

Developing emotional intelligence is a key to successful leadership. Leaders with a strong mixture of emotional awareness, self-management, and social skills are able to relate better to those around them. Emotionally intelligent leaders navigate relationships more effectively and are more likely to be successful in their personal and professional lives. This course provides an understanding of why emotionally  intelligent leadership is important. It also provides practical, positive techniques for promoting and improving emotional intelligence as a leader within your business environment.

Leading and managing employees in an increasingly diverse workplace can be both rewarding and challenging. What are the expectations of employees? What legislation applies to managing people and their requests? What are the consequences of failing to comply? Managers must operate with sensitivity in handling accommodations for disabilities, religious practices, and medical leave. This requires a basic understanding of anti-discrimination and disability legislation, as well as the employer's policies. This course provides an overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act (as amended), the Family and Medical Leave Act, and other legislation that affects employers' responsibilities in these areas. The course will help managers identify the situations where these laws come into play so that they can respond appropriately to specific requests. This course was developed with subject matter support provided by the Labor, Employment, and Employee Benefits Law Group of the law firm of Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green PA. Please note, however, that the course materials and content are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Nothing herein, or in the course materials, shall be construed as professional advice as to any particular situation or constitute a legal opinion with respect to compliance with any federal, state, or local laws. Transmission of the information is not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. Readers should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. The information contained herein is provided only as general information that may or may not reflect the most current legal developments. This information is not provided in the course of an attorney-client relationship and is not intended to constitute legal advice or to substitute for obtaining legal advice from an attorney licensed in your state.

Companies that support women as business leaders are more successful. Yet women leaders are often held back by gender-based expectations of their roles and behaviors. Organizations and individuals need to take steps to break out of the gendered mindset to help women become competent, focused, and passionate professionals. In this course, you will learn how to challenge your gender mindset, navigate gender-related differences in the workplace, uncover unconscious bias, and address behaviors that marginalize women.

Getting your priorities straight, no matter what your role is in your organization, is about keeping a focus on your goals. It requires you to think about the bigger picture, to ensure your department's work effectively supports the vision and strategic objectives of your organization. In this course, you'll learn about the importance of setting strategic, tactical, and operational goals to meet an organizational vision. You'll also learn how to create effective unit goals and align them with your company’s goals and strategy. Finally, you'll learn how to identify imperatives for action that keep you focused on meeting your objectives.

A positive workplace is paramount to your organization's long-term success. As a manager, you play a key role in establishing a positive work culture, and noticing when negativity takes the place of positivity. As a leader, you can foster a positive work environment by communicating honestly, respecting, supporting, and engaging others, and maintaining a good attitude. This course will introduce you to best practices for creating a positive work environment. You'll learn the benefits of establishing a positive and engaged workforce, its characteristics, and concrete steps to create one. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs and impacts of negativity, and how to take corrective action if necessary to engage employees.

Any leader is only as good as the people they lead, and it is the very rare leader whose team is comprised only of skilled experts at every position. For everyone else, employee development is key for effective leadership. Individual and team development must be a priority for you and your organization when seeking a competitive edge in the marketplace.   In this course, you'll learn how to use motivational factors and actions for developing your team. You'll explore strategies for performance improvement, as well as how to set and maintain high standards. You'll also learn how to overcome common myths about development, and how to mitigate the challenges leaders face in developing people.

An engaged workforce creates a positive work environment that boosts productivity, encourages creativity, and helps you engage and retain talented employees. This in turn will make your organization more profitable and innovative, and will strengthen your employees’ work ethic. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of engaging your workforce and of establishing a positive work culture. You'll learn how to recognize common qualities of engaged employees, understand what drives employee motivation, and recognize commitment challenges. You'll also learn how employee engagement links to the bottom line by reducing turnover.

This is a recorded replay of the Embracing Allyship Leadercamp Live session that ran on August 25th at 10 AM ET led by La'Wana Harris, author of Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias. " The Embracing Allyship Leadercamp will illuminate how embracing your role as an ally can help you achieve significant and lasting change — as an individual, a team member, and a leader in your organization.

Innovating is the only way to adapt and keep speed with the pace of change in today's business world. Building and supporting an innovative culture is the responsibility of leaders and employees across organizational hierarchies and is aided by an effective change management process. In this course, you'll learn about business innovation cultures and types of innovation leadership. You'll also learn about the importance of experimenting, managing change, and executing a project. Finally, you'll learn how to attract and nurture innovation in your organization.

Creating your own leadership development plan is a significant part of any successful and valuable leadership development strategy. This plan will help ensure you remain focused on what is required to continually grow and develop as a leader. In this course, you'll learn about how to assess yourself as a leader, establish a vision for the future, and identify obstacles to that vision. You'll also learn about practical approaches for setting objectives, identifying appropriate actions, and sustaining your leadership development plan. Finally, you'll learn how to evaluate your plan.

Women face unique challenges in the workplace, including the difficulty in balancing work and family. Their experience in running both a family and a career also provides them with unique value and perspective. In this course, you'll learn how to conquer some of the challenges of career and family, including building a support system, overcoming the perfection mindset, and reframing your limiting beliefs.

This is a recorded replay of the Leading Incuslively Live session that ran on June 24th at 10 AM ET led by La'Wana Harris, author of Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias, "Leading Inclusively" will provide guidance and a safe discussion forum to start you on the journey toward inclusive leadership. You will also gain insights and tools to help you and your organization value and leverage the unique strengths and talents of all individuals.

No matter who you are, you are prey to unconscious biases. To be part of a complex, diverse team you must take steps to overcome implicit and explicit biases and reject social stereotypes. Understanding you own bias, whether conscious or unconscious, is the key. In this course you'll learn about the characteristics of unconscious bias and the nature of buried prejudice. You'll discover how they can inadvertently affect your thinking and decision-making. And you'll learn about the positive things that can happen when you take an anti-biased approach to people and situations in the workplace.

Diversity is a fact of life in the modern marketplace and workforce. In this course, you'll learn skills to help you manage and leverage diversity for the benefit of the organization.

This is a recorded replay of the Removing Systemic Bias from Organizational Culture Leadercamp Live session that ran on January 26th at 10 AM ET led by Su Joun, Diversity & Inclusion Practitioner. For organizational leaders who want to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in workplace, recognizing and removing systemic bias continues to be a challenge. This Leadercamp will share proven methods to mitigate embedded biases that exist in our organizations, will provide a safe learning environment for assessment, and collaboration, and will allow for ample time for attendees to ask questions.

As a manager, it can be daunting to find yourself in charge of a diverse group, comprised of different age ranges, backgrounds, and experiences. It's inevitable that you'll encounter difficulties. Effectively handling conflict, whether it's team conflict or difficult employee behavior, is essential to productivity and requires developing conflict management skills. This course covers useful techniques and processes for conflict resolution. You'll learn methods for resolving conflict when dealing with an employee's difficult behavior. You'll also learn ways of effectively managing team conflict and understanding and dealing with conflict in the workplace as a whole.

If your organization creates a positive learning culture that focuses on developing people, it will not only weather difficult times better than most, but will flourish in an ultracompetitive global market. In this course, you’ll be introduced to organizational learning and its benefits to your organization. You'll examine the role of training, knowledge management, and technology in developing employees, and learn about the pivotal role of the continuous learning. By exploring the essential elements and indicators of a self-development culture, the course prepares you to assess your current workplace and determine how conducive it is to learning. Developing talent will increase your competitiveness and create more satisfied, goal-oriented employees – which leads to a more profitable organization.

An increased focus on the importance of DEI in the workplace has shed light on the fact that everyone has bias. Though it's rooted in human nature, it's important to understand what implicit bias is in order to develop the thoughtful inclusion mindset. In this course, you'll learn about the different kinds of implicit bias and how to recognize them in action. You'll also learn about the importance of committing to thoughtful inclusion in the workplace.

This is a recorded replay of the Truth, Hope, and Equity in a Disrupted World Leadercamp Live session that ran on October 20th at 10 AM ET led by La'Wana Harris, author of Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias. "  Truth, Hope, and Equity in a Disrupted World is a constructive conversation that calls people in rather than calling them out. There’ll be no finger pointing, blame, or shame. With pragmatic, expert guidance from our world-class coach — and conversations with peers from all over the world — you’ll learn ways to maximize productivity, engagement, and equity for all in your own organization.

All leaders need to possess certain competencies that help them to be good leaders. Women leaders still face challenges in the workplace, when it comes to being viewed as equally competent to men. By developing key leadership competencies, women can make the best use of both the traditionally feminine qualities as well as those that are traditionally seen as masculine. In this course, you will learn how to build confidence through competence, develop your leadership presence, communicate like a leader, demonstrate your emotional intelligence, and network and connect with other women leaders.

Globalization is a reality. Once, only explorers and world travelers needed to be culturally knowledgeable, but now most of us work with people from different cultural backgrounds. Our variations in attitudes, beliefs, and communication styles present daily challenges for business leaders charged with managing across cultures. Managing diversity is now a necessary skill. In this course, you’ll learn about leading diversity. You’ll explore the dynamic nature of cultural intelligence (CQ) and how to grow it and use it to bridge cultural differences. You’ll also discover techniques for motivating, influencing, and managing across cultures, and adapting your own leadership style. Finally, you’ll learn about managing conflict across cultures by identifying and navigating cultural barriers and minefields.

Micro-behaviors are a macro problem. Dr. Alvin Poussaint described the cumulative impact of micro-aggressions as “death by a thousand nicks.” Subtle acts of exclusion – often unconscious – left unchecked will take a toll on your employees. These subtle forms of bias and discrimination often leave people frustrated and lead to decreased productivity. In this course, you'll learn to recognize the characteristics of the different types of micro-behaviors and how to decode the messages they send. You'll also learn to identify when and how to take action to address micro-aggressions, and how to use micro-inclusions as an antidote to micro-aggressions.

It's not just individuals who face unconscious biases in the workplace; teams and organizations can also operate with shared institutionalized biases. Ensuring a diverse workplace requires actively participating in and advocating for DEI supports. In this course, you'll learn about the power of inclusion and how to support DEI at work. You’ll also learn the basics of inclusive recruitment and hiring, and what it looks like when a company supports inclusion from onboarding through to retirement.

Recognizing and responding to global initiatives, current events, and trends can influence both domestic and global business practices. In this course, you'll learn about human resources in a global context. The course provides an overview of global HR trends and strategies, as well as legal systems and practices. HR's role in globalization is explored, along with approaches for enhancing diversity and inclusion. The content in this course is based on the Body of Competency and Knowledge (BoCK), 2015 of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). While the course helps learners to prepare for the SHRM-CP/SCP certification exams, it is equally useful for HR professionals who want to develop capabilities for improving their effectiveness in the workplace and advancing their careers.