Drives Accountability & Results

Accountability is about taking ownership of your own actions, and it's key to your organization's success. In this course, you'll learn how to foster and determine accountability, in your workplace, your team, and yourself.

Along with being credible and trustworthy, you can get results without direct authority by using your influence. Effective influence skills are probably the biggest differentiator when getting results without authority. When you influence, you engage and enlist others in getting results – without necessarily having formal power. Influence is not about forcing or exerting – it's about getting people on your side for good reasons. Three ways to promote influence are through language/effective communication, reciprocity/exchanging 'currencies', and persevering through resistance.

The time has come to make a final decision. In this course, you'll learn how to make smart decisions based on key criteria and decision-making styles. You'll also learn how to plan, manage, evaluate, and celebrate solution implementation.

Having a performance management system in place can focus attention on results that count, boost productivity, align team and individual activities with organizational goals, and improve morale, all of which help ensure individual and team performance produce the desired outcomes for organizational success. In this course, you'll learn about the nature and benefits of performance management. The course outlines the five phases of a performance management system. It then explains how to recognize critical success factors and ensure effective key performance indicators, and explains the key components of developing role profiles.

You make decisions all day long; many are quick and simple. But when decisions have a far reaching impact, you need to take care to fully understand the issue, consider diverse viewpoints, and evaluate various options against the right criteria, avoiding traps of bias and hasty conclusions along the way. Once you've made the best decision, put it in action and verify the results. In this Challenge, you'll play the role of a Facilities Manager using a problem-solving approach to choose the right building and location for your company's next move.

Part of problem solving is creating alternative solutions. In this course, you'll learn how to define ideal states and generate and evaluate problem solutions. You'll also learn how to recognize and avoid common problem-solving pitfalls.

When you recognize performance problems early and diagnose them accurately, you can help turn them around and avoid serious consequences. Whatever their scope, frequency, or magnitude, you must intervene early, involve the employee, and uncover the true root causes in order to find the best possible solution. This course explains how you can detect, identify, and question problems in your workplace. It enables you to determine the scope, frequency, and impact when they occur. And it shows you how to diagnose root causes, both external and internal, on your way to finding the best solution.

High expectations are often placed on first-time managers. Along with these expectations comes the pressure to succeed and the need to prove you belong in a management position. Establishing credibility early and building new working relationships can go a long way in helping a first-time manager succeed in adjusting to his or her new responsibilities. This course describes ways to establish credibility and manage former colleagues effectively. You'll also learn how to balance conflicting expectations as a manager.

Though valuable, feedback can be hard to accept. This course covers the value of feedback and how it differs from praise. You'll also learn how to manage your reactions and response to feedback, and how to use it for professional growth.

Articulating a problem requires asking the right people the right questions. In this course, you'll learn about identifying stakeholders, gaining their input and trust, and using analysis techniques to get to the root cause of a problem.

How do you move your company to drive results and take a prominent place in the market? By engaging your top performers – those employees who consistently bring high levels of performance and positively influence the culture of your organization. Managers and leaders need to know who their top performers are, how they're different from other employees, and how to ensure they stay committed and engaged by providing challenging work and development opportunities. In this course, you'll learn about the characteristics of top performers and the benefits they bring to an organization. You'll learn how to improve your workplace and leadership skills so that they both attract and meet the needs of top performers. You'll also learn how to communicate effectively with top performers and explore the ways top performers like to communicate with others.

The hallmark of leadership is being able to work through problems and make tough decisions using the skills and experience of your team. In this course, you'll learn how to use a three stage approach to engage your team in this effort.

Authority carries a certain type of power – typically position power. A person is granted the power and authority to meet goals and get results through a responsible job definition and accountability. The police officer that cites you for speeding. The financial manager that calls for an audit. The company manager that decides how to allocate the budget. People may comply, rebel, resist, or gripe about those in authority, but there is a reason and purpose for such positional power. On the other hand, most of the results that get accomplished in organizations come from the use of personal power and not solely reliant on direct authority. This is especially true in our work environments today, where information sources and networking contacts are accessible to all as means to results. But ultimately it comes down to personal credibility, influence, and political savvy. This course focuses on the power that comes with being credible and trustworthy.

Preparing for appraisals takes time, but the extra effort can transform a routine bureaucratic chore into a process that helps you, your employees, and your organization. In this course, you'll learn why performance appraisals are important. You'll be introduced to the elements that contribute to an employee performance plan. You'll also learn how to monitor ongoing performance, which will help prepare you for future employee appraisals.

Giving feedback is vital in the workplace. This course covers when and how to give feedback positively, how to handle bad reactions and your own nervousness, and how to give feedback to people at different organizational levels.

Most new managers don't realize how much their new role differs from that of an individual contributor. Often, they have misconceptions about what managing entails, and they may be surprised to learn that the skills and methods required for success as an individual contributor and those needed for success as a manager are very different. This course describes some of the myths about management and their corresponding truths in order to clarify what managers really do. It also points to the typical demands and constraints of a manager's job. Finally, it describes strategies for dealing with common mistakes of first-time managers.