Developing Your Business Ethics
It’s not always easy to decide between right and wrong at work. Making ethical decisions can help you to discern the right thing to do in difficult situations. You might think that business ethics are only an issue for upper management, but in fact, every employee should understand the importance of ethical decision making.
In this course, you’ll learn some common myths about business ethics. You’ll learn about different approaches to ethics, the values and standards in a typical code of conduct, and how to develop your own code. You’ll also learn ways to overcome obstacles to ethical behavior and steps for making ethical decisions.
Target Audience
0.4Hours
- Recognize common myths about business ethics
- Define ethical approaches
- Recognize the values associated with the code of conduct standards of fairness and respect
- Recognize the values associated with the code of conduct standards of responsibility and honesty
- Recognize the steps for developing a personal code of conduct
- Identify appropriate strategies for removing obstacles to ethical behavior
- Sequence the steps for making an ethically defensible decision
Writing and Preparing an Effective Speech
Not everybody is a natural public speaker. Public speaking is a skill , one that requires significant planning and preparation. It involves developing written communication skills and learning how to deliver your writing in public.
In this course, you’ll learn how to write a speech by setting the aim of your speech and considering your audience and theme. You’ll also be introduced to best practices for planning and researching a speech. And you’ll learn how to check your written speech and ensure the grammar is correct.
0.4 Hours
- Recognize ways of using aim and audience to select a speech topic
- Identify how to use theme and encapsulation to select a speech topic
- Recognize good practices to use when researching a speech
- Recognize methods to use when preparing to give a speech
- Sequence the steps for writing a speech
- Identify ways of practicing a speech
Unleashing Personal and Team Creativity
Believe it or not, everyone has the potential to be creative. If you’re struggling to express your creativity then something is getting in the way. The good news is that these barriers can be overcome.
At work, it can be especially difficult for individuals to express themselves freely and interact in teams. But with the right approach and techniques, team leaders can provide a safe space that allows everyone to share and contribute their ideas.
This course describes personal barriers to creativity and how to overcome them. It provides strategies for enhancing creativity in the workplace. In addition, it outlines key requirements for promoting creativity in a work environment. And it explores techniques for fostering creativity in teams, including brainstorming and role playing.
0.5 Hours
- Recognize the importance of various personal characteristics of creative people
- Recognize solutions for overcoming personal barriers to creativity
- Match techniques for enhancing creativity with examples of how to execute them
- Recognize characteristics that foster team creativity in a work environment
- Recognize actions performed during each of the five brainstorming steps
- Recognize how role playing helps teams generate creative ideas
Verifying and Building on Creative Ideas
The initial stages of idea generation require an open approach uninhibited by rationale and critique. But sometimes to put those ideas into practice, you need to make sure they’ll actually work. This involves checking whether they’re grounded in reality and feasible from an organizational viewpoint.
Some techniques that can help verify ideas are getting the opinions of key people and using simulations. Building on ideas continues the verifying process by making them more clear, relevant, and practical.
This course covers a variety of techniques used to verify and build on creative ideas. It outlines when to use research and when to use simulations to check the work-ability of an idea. In addition, it discusses ways to build on ideas effectively.
0.4 Hours
- Match each stage of the creative process with the description of its purpose
- Identify statements that describe the purpose and activities of the verifying stage of the creative process
- Identify criteria for adopting the canvassing and simulation methods
- Recognize the three steps you take when building on an idea
- Identify criteria-based questions that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a suggestion made to build on an idea
Conquering the Challenges of Public Speaking
Most people find the task of public speaking daunting. But with enough practice and preparation, anyone can be effective at delivering a speech. Being a competent public speaker allows you to showcase your work and deliver an effective presentation.
However, you won’t convey your message if you fail to engage your audience, handle audience challenges that arise, and tackle your nerves and anxiety.
In this course, you’ll learn about the basics of good speech delivery and dealing with some of the most common challenges of public speaking, such as handling difficult questions or hecklers in your audience. You’ll also find out methods of overcoming public speaking anxiety.
0.4 Hours
- Recognize the basic rules of good speech delivery
- Identify techniques for regaining an audience’s attention
- Recognize how to deal with uncooperative audiences
- Identify techniques to deal with difficult questions
- Recognize techniques for dealing with heckling
- Recognize typical behaviors associated with public-speaking anxiety
- Identify ways of overcoming public-speaking anxiety
Aligning Goals and Priorities to Manage Time
Too much to do and too little time? Everything is urgent? Modern technology means our employers can reach us 24/7, so schedule management and goal setting are more important than ever.
When you’re under pressure to deliver, you need to know your priorities. Meeting targets and achieving goals consistently regardless of the business situation isn’t easy. And this means managing your time effectively.
In this course, you’ll learn about aligning each goal with your employer’s expectations, clarifying your goals, and prioritizing your most important work. You’ll also learn how to ask questions to clarify goals, and how to establish and schedule priorities based on these goals.
0.4 Hours
- Recognize how misaligned goals can result in a lack of clarity at work
- Sequence examples of the steps for using a goal alignment worksheet to align your goals with organizational goals
- Ask questions that will help you clarify your goals so you know what is important
- Identify some guiding principles that can help you prioritize your work effectively
- Match tasks to their appropriate level of urgency and importance as defined in a Priority Matrix
- Determine your goals and then prioritize your work tasks according to their importance and urgency
Make the Time You Need: Get Organized
If you want to manage your schedule and make your time count, you have to be organized. But to stay organized, you need to check your progress. This mean developing schedule management skills. The stress and potential for mistakes grows when you don’t spend time organizing your time.
In this course, you’ll discover how schedule management can help you regain control of your time. You’ll learn how to leverage your personality to boost your productivity and explore techniques for dealing with time stealers. And you’ll learn how to create practical to-do lists and keep them relevant and realistic.
0.5 Hours
- Recognize strategies for increasing productivity for social and analytical time management personalities
- Recognize productivity strategies suitable for driving or inspirational personality types
- Recognize techniques for dealing with time stealers
- Recognize techniques you can use to deal with people who are time stealers
- Sort key job tasks into macro and micro to-do lists
- Determine what action to take with your scheduled tasks after reassessing them as part of your regular check-ins
- Organize tasks using a time management system
The Art of Staying Focused
Even if you know what’s important to do, losing focus can stop your progress. No matter who you are or what job you do, focusing at work can be hard. Even with great schedule management and organizing skills, it’s easy to get off track if you’re not careful.
In this course, you’ll learn how to stay focused and stay on top of your schedule. You’ll learn strategies for dealing with focus challenges and distractions at work.
You’ll also find out how to beat fatigue, manage your time, and decline work-related requests. And you’ll explore how to adjust your focus to deal with change, and how to regain focus when you’ve lost it.
0.5 Hours
- Recognize tactics for avoiding procrastination and temptation and keeping focused
- Recognize tactics to beat fatigue and manage multitasking to maintain your focus
- Identify strategies for minimizing distractions in your environment
- Select the most effective response for declining a request
- Strategically adjust your focus in response to changing circumstances
- Recognize techniques for regaining focus
- Maintain your focus on a task despite internal and external challenges