10 Free Manager Soft Skills Courses
We've handpicked 10 manager soft skills courses to help new and existing managers, as well as aspiring leaders, hone their interpersonal skills, foster strong work ethic, and build stronger relationships with their clients and team members. Keep scrolling to learn more.
1. Expectations Setting
Setting clear expectations for subordinates is a vital role of every team manager. By bringing everyone on the same page, no one will be left off and confused about their tasks or deadlines. This, in turn, will ensure higher productivity and efficiency in the workplace. SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s course on Expectations Setting will provide you with an insightful take on improving this soft skill, helping you establish and maintain a culture of clarity and accountability, as well as foster good communication. Here, you’ll go through the crucial steps of deconstructing and framing performance expectations, and the psychological effects of setting high and low expectations. This manager soft skills course will also show you why it's important to listen to your employees, alongside a list of questions that you can ask them to find out their personal goals and expectations.
Perfect for all the busy bees out there, this course only contains 4 micro-lessons that you can complete in just a few minutes. Applying the principles of the microlearning design model, each slide only contains bite-sized chunks of information, reducing cognitive overload. This strategy puts managers in a better position to absorb the key messages of this course.
Cost: Free (up to 10 users)
Scope: Deconstructing and framing performance expectations, knowing your employees’ expectations
Created By SC Training (formerly EdApp)
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2. How to be a Passionate Leader
The mission of this SC Training (formerly EdApp) manager soft skills course is to help managers become a positive influence on their employees and inspire them to perform better in their jobs. It starts with a lesson highlighting the significance of personal passion and assertiveness, and how it attracts and inspires employees to perform better. It also emphasizes the importance of being outspoken with your beliefs and following them through with your behavior and actions. Another key concept discussed in this course is the importance of building trust and harmonious relationships with your employees and how they can gain their loyalty and commitment.
Like all SC Training (formerly EdApp) courses, lessons are delivered in bite-size to stay true to their micro elearning platform. It also contains a gamified quiz at the end of the lesson to find out how much you've learned so far.
Cost: Free (up to 10 users)
Scope: Project manager traits, techniques and methods used by most successful managers
Created By SC Training (formerly EdApp)
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3. Performance Management
The Performance Management course is another manager soft skills and leadership training course by SC Training (formerly EdApp) that focuses on establishing role clarity, addressing weaknesses, and managing underperforming employees. This course begins by explaining role clarity and identifying the responsibilities and tasks of each of your employees to spot performance gaps. Then, it proceeds with discussing how to give, receive, and process feedback effectively through radical candor. Lastly, it provides significant techniques on how you can undergo negotiation and communicate effectively with underperforming employees. This course is delivered through SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s mobile learning app, where you can enjoy self-paced learning using your hand-held mobile device.
Cost: Free (up to 10 users)
Scope: Understanding performance management, establishing role clarity, giving, receiving, and processing feedback, objective management of underperformance
Created By SC Training (formerly EdApp)
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4. Time Management 101
Time management is essential for effective leadership and successful management. Learn how to balance your management work and personal life through this time management course by Universal Class. It has a wide range of topics, such as goal setting, task management, and productivity tool usage. It also highlights how your own values and beliefs can help achieve team goals and success while improving your time management skills. Just a quick heads up that this is a lengthy course, which will take 6 months to complete. It can also provide you with a Continuing Education Unit (CEU) certificate if needed.
Cost: 50 USD (no certification); 75 USD (with CEU certification)
Scope: Project management, goal setting, time management techniques
Created by Universal Class
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5. Leading People and Teams Specialization
This Coursera course is facilitated by exceptional leaders from the University of Michigan and Morgan Stanley. Here, they will share their insights, experiences, and some expert recommendations on creating a shared vision for your team and communicating it to them without authority. Expect a series of lectures and practical leadership assignments, where you will learn how to effectively manage, inspire, and motivate people and teams and help bring out the best in them. Apart from discussions, they will also guide you on how you can put their theories into practice and apply them to your own teams and leadership, developing your leadership and social skills and allowing you to become a more effective leader. This course is 100% online, which can be accessed anytime using desktop and mobile devices.
Cost: Free
Scope: The complete cycle of managing people and teams, inspiring and motivating individuals, influencing people without authority
Created by Coursera
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6. Communication Skills and Teamwork
This edX course was designed to help managers develop positive attitudes and high communication skills that they can use to effectively inform and persuade their teams and build strong relationships at work. It consists of a total of 4 sections, covering topics like the fundamentals of professional communications, strategies for in-person communication and virtual presentation, and tips for writing effective email invitations. It will also go through the step-by-step process on how you can apply these skills to implement effective teamwork and project management so that everyone on your team be a team-player, hone their verbal communication skills, improve their ability to communicate, and grow their presentation skills. A final assessment and course recap will be provided at the end of this course to demonstrate your mastery of the content. While it’s not free, this course can be taken and completed at your own pace.
Cost: 149 USD
Scope: Fundamentals of communication, communication strategies, effective teamwork and project planning
Created by edX
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7. Soft Skills for Managers
Take advantage of this course by Study.com to improve your soft skills and establish a better-functioning work environment that you and your employees will all benefit from. In this course, you'll get to know the true definition of soft skills, their role in the business environment, and how you can use them to promote better business productivity. You will also learn the vital relationship between soft skills and self-management, and how you can combine these skills to achieve team success.
The content of this course will be delivered through insightful videos, lectures from field experts, lesson quizzes, and end-course assessments to ensure retention.
Cost: Starts at 39.99 USD/ month (subscription basis)
Scope: Managerial soft skills, improving soft skills, using soft skills in communication, self-management skills
Created by Study.com
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8. Emotional Intelligence at Work
Emotional intelligence is a sought-after skill that gives managers the ability not only to build positive relationships with others but also with themselves. In this manager soft skills course by FutureLearn, you’ll be able to dig deeper into the key concepts surrounding emotional intelligence, its connection to empathy and patience, and how it drives better leadership and management in the workplace. It will also walk you through the central components of this vital soft skill and how you can develop and apply them in certain situations to better your self-awareness and boost your active listening, problem-solving, and conflict-resolution skills.
The lessons of this course are split into weeks and delivered into bite-sized videos and modules, which you can complete at your own pace.
Cost: Free for 14 days
Scope: Key concepts and importance of emotional intelligence, how emotional intelligence improves performance in the workplace, central components of emotional intelligence skills, how to apply them in certain situations.
Created by FutureLearn
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9. Building and Maintaining Trust
Building and maintaining a culture of trust can help you drive better teamwork and collaboration in your workplace. After all, employees who have strong faith in their managers are more likely to give their all at work and collaborate with one another to reach a common goal. In this SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s manager soft skills course, you’ll get to know the key elements that make a manager trustworthy in the eyes of their people, along some tips on how trust can be maintained from a leadership perspective. For those planning to adopt a blended workforce, it also contains a helpful guide on building and maintaining a trusting relationship with your people, despite this challenging work setup.
At the end of this course, there will be a series of quizzes to improve your knowledge retention. For a more fun and exciting learning experience, they are delivered through game formats, like matching words, true or false, missing words, the classic multiple-choice, and more.
Cost: Free (up to 10 users)
Scope: The elements of trust, maintaining trust as a leader, building trust in a blended workforce
Created By SC Training (formerly EdApp)
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10. Maintaining Culture
Achieving and maintaining a strong workplace culture creates a more structured and more productive work environment that inspires everyone in the team to achieve greater success. SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s course on Maintaining Culture will open your eyes to the most significant contributors to forming a culture, its role and essence in an organization, and most of all, how to maintain it with consistency. You’ll also learn how to keep open and transparent communication with all levels of the organization, encourage critical thinking, prevent the set-and-forget mindset, and become a responsive leader.
The content of this course is delivered in a series of micro modules, combined with timed and untimed games in between slides to ensure higher engagement and participation rates. Yet the best part? This course is mobile-friendly, so feel free to take and complete this course anytime and anywhere using your smartphone devices.
Cost: Free (up to 10 users)
Scope: Understanding how to form culture, maintain culture as a leader, the power of consistency
Created By SC Training (formerly EdApp)
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As a manager, it’s not enough to be an expert in your field—you must also possess a strong set of soft skills. This includes the ability to foster good teamwork within your organization, communicate effectively with clients, and solve problems and difficult situations at all times. Every single one of these manager soft skills is a key driving factor to long-term management success, which is why they should be given the same amount of attention and focus as hard skills. While excelling in this field isn't exactly rocket science, manager soft skills can be learned and developed through continuous learning and training. It will take a lot of work and dedication to master your soft skills, but the benefits you'll reap at the end of this journey will reward you with a thriving workplace environment with successful leadership and effective management.