People management skills are essential for team and HR specialists. Creating a healthy and productive atmosphere at the workplace is what you need to retain people on your team, win the competition for the best specialists, and improve overall motivation and performance.
Some of us are naturally great communicators but most of us have to intentionally master our ability to lead, resolve conflicts, and motivate team members in a positive way. We’ve collected the list of the best people management courses to help team, project, and HR managers boost their interpersonal skills.
1. The Manager’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Manage People at Work
This course by the University of London offers practical guidance for managers in any field. It combines theoretical HR knowledge with practical steps that translate theory into daily work routines. The course covers such topics as the leader’s role on the team, decision-making, conducting interviews, performance management, positive motivation, and others.
The course provides students with essential people management tools and approaches and is helpful for those who work on creating healthy environment and productive atmosphere within their teams.
2. Preparing to Managing Human Resources
There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to managing employees: this process largely depends on the field, common practices, and specific team culture. That doesn’t mean that people management skills can be only learned through trial and error – knowing basic frameworks and approaches is a great help for new managers.
This course offers a foundation for creating your own employee management strategy and figuring out what works best for your team. It contains basic human resource management theories, information on such common practices as performance management, hiring process, rewards, etc., legal and ethical background, and much more. The course is a great basis for HR and team managers who want to implement efficient people management strategies in their work routines.
3. People Psychology
This course is of great value for those who want to incorporate psychological knowledge into their management practices. Working on understanding and conflict prevention is hardly possible without a basic psychological background, and this is what this course provides. No previous knowledge is needed – just interest in psychology, and understanding why it is important for working with people.
Among the topics of this course, the following are particularly useful for HR and team managers: understanding people through personality, basic psychological needs, psychological drivers of people’s behavior, attitudes, and how they influence our behavior. The course helps develop such essential skills as understanding people, predicting their behavior, and avoiding common mistakes in managing teams.
4. Conflict Resolution Skills
At any workplace and in any environment, conflicts happen and need to be resolved. This is one of the most important responsibilities of an HR or team manager. This course offers theoretical background and practical tasks for developing this skill and becoming an efficient manager.
The course is focused on resolving conflicts in a positive manner: it includes such topics as the ability to listen to people and be heard, developing communication tactics depending on specific personality traits, and preparing conflict management plans. Adopting these strategies and tactics in daily workflow helps maintain a positive work environment and find solutions that work for everyone.
5. What Great Leaders Do
Being a good leader is not an inborn ability: it is a skill that can and needs to be developed. This course is a great help for those who want to make up for the deficiency of their natural leadership skills and habits. Professor Bob Sutton reveals what habits successful leaders have, and which ones undermine the ability to lead. He points out what to pay attention to in a management position and how to not lose sight of important aspects of people management.
The course is a great source of knowledge for business owners, HR specialists, and team and project managers who want to unlock their leadership potential and become successful and respected leaders.
6. Leading with Effective Communication
For a manager who handles teamwork, communication skills are everything. It’s not about getting people to reach goals and resolving conflicts: this work also covers inspiring employees, translating the company’s goals to the team, bringing up and implementing new ideas, and much more. This course helps master the communication skills that any manager or leader needs.
The course covers many topics that are essential for being an effective communicator: approaches and frameworks for building communication on the team, overcoming communication roadblocks (that are unfortunately inevitable on almost any team!), importance of transparency and trust. With it, you’ll learn how to develop strategies for creating a transparent and efficient communication, build healthy relationships within a team, and get more value of your communication strengths.
7. People Skills – How People Tick
Understanding and predicting human behavior is crucial for any manager. It helps achieve better planning and forecasting, get more done as a team, and implement new approaches – not to mention conflict prevention and solving. This course is designed for those who’d like to strengthen their practical management skills with a behavioral theory background.
In this course, you’ll get insights into how people’s behavior works, how it is changed throughout their lifetime, and what influences it. This helps us understand such crucial concepts as trust, sympathy, and engagement. Increasing your emotional intelligence and understanding how to adapt your communication style to people around you means being understood, respected, and successful.
8. Communication skills – Persuasion and Motivation
There’s no need to emphasize the importance of motivation in any teamwork. Being able to engage people, keep their motivation levels up, and introduce new ideas and goals is a crucial skill for any manager. Consider enrolling in this course to develop these skills and start using them in your daily practice.
The course provides a theoretical overview of positive motivation and the difference between persuasion and manipulation. In it, you’ll take a closer look at how it influences our everyday life, and how it can be used for increasing the efficiency of your and your team’s work. The course also provides persuasion and motivation techniques that you can implement in your work process.
9. An Introduction to Assessment of People at Work
Assessing people at work is what many managers struggle with. This course provides theoretical knowledge in the assessment of people and practical suggestions that can be adopted in different work environments. Learning theory, legislation, and ethics in relation to the subject helps develop a deeper understanding of how assessment works and how it can be implemented in the workplace. Practical techniques are also offered that you can adopt to your specific work environment.
10. Managing Employee Performance
Increasing performance and maintaining high productivity levels is often the end point of team managers’ efforts. Just hiring good specialists is not enough: organizing work in a proper way, motivating employees, and maintaining an appropriate work environment are essential for achieving good performance of a team.
Performance management is a process that requires specific knowledge and skills. This course offers ways to use the full potential of employees by using special techniques, approaches, and frameworks. It will be helpful for those who would like to develop and implement a performance management system that will work for a specific company or team.
Summary
People management is hard and requires a combination of solid knowledge, experience, and intuition. Picking the right tools that will take the routine off of your shoulders is no less important. Absence management system actiPLANS helps you track your employees’ schedule deviations and facilitates the calculation of PTOs, salaries, and overtime payments. It’s an indispensable tool to make the life of any HR easier.
