Vermont Public Professional Development

In most organizational settings, you’ll be expected to work in teams. At times, your team members may not be physically in the same office with you. And yet, communicating effectively within these teams is critical to the success of the team, and critical to your personal success on any given project or task. This introductory-level course will help you improve your collaborative communication by providing best practices and effective tips and techniques.

You are not alone if your palms get a little sweaty when you have to speak in front of others. Whether delivering a speech in front of a large audience of professionals or having a direct conversation with one or two friends or coworkers, public speaking is one of the most common anxiety-inducing experiences. Our stress and nerves can impede our ability to deliver a clear message. “Speak with Confidence” will teach you to define and understand speaking anxiety. By understanding the typical causes of speaking anxiety and learning real-world relaxation and confidence-boosting techniques, you will learn practical ways to tackle and overcome your public speaking fears.

Leaders and managers are often called upon to deal with the challenging impacts of change, to work through disputes with partners and customers, and to resolve conflict within the organization. This Certificate in Managing Change and Resolving Conflict covers the key issues and best practices for managers dealing with contentious situations in the workplace. Each of the seven courses in this suite offer examples, videos from practitioners and experts, interactive games, and review questions to ensure mastery of the material. The courses present strategies that managers can use to help deal with conflict, with case studies and scenarios that highlight key issues. Courses included in this certificate program are listed at the bottom of this page. This program can help both current managers, and those advancing in the management ranks, with the necessary knowledge and skills. It is recommended that learners begin with Introduction to Managing Change and Resolving Conflict course first, and then other courses can be taken in any order. Upon successful completion, you can download and print a Certificate of Completion.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is our ability to identify and control our emotions to achieve positive outcomes in our relationships. Managers with high EI are better equipped to deal with subordinates, colleagues, and company executives, and they can do a better job of handling and resolving conflicts. This one-module course reviews the underlying concepts of emotional intelligence and explores how managers can improve and make use of their emotional intelligence.

Almost everything that happens in the workplace requires some form of communication. Frontline managers have to communicate with the workers they supervise, with their colleagues in management, and with their bosses in the executive suite. Being able to communicate clearly and effectively is a vital skill for any frontline manager. This course provides a brief introduction to communication theory, but the main emphasis is on practical approaches to communicating in the workplace. Topics include verbal and nonverbal communication; how to develop a clear message; how to tailor your message to suit your purpose; how to communicate down, to the workers who report directly to you; and how to communicate up, to your bosses in senior management.

This course, aimed at aspiring supervisors and companies that want to improve their employees’ supervisory skills, is designed to help a worker make the transition from individual contributor to a supervisor who oversees the work of others. Self-paced and highly interactive, the course details the fundamental nature of a supervisor’s role and the basic management principles that apply to it. It also provides a close look at seven skills that are essential to any supervisor’s success: managing time and priorities; communicating; organizing the work and setting goals; managing relationships; resolving conflict; guiding the work; and managing performance. Learners will also have a chance to assess their own supervisory skills and get practical tips on dealing with upper management.

What kind of leader are you? Under what conditions does your natural leadership style work well? In this course, you’ll identify your own leadership style and learn how to build on your strengths to improve areas of weakness. The course lays out four effective leadership styles and two problematic ones as well as when to deploy each kind of leadership. You’ll learn how to build the emotional intelligence that underlies all effective leadership and the best ways to approach conflict.

Progressive discipline is a process for handling workplace issues by providing opportunities for employees to correct problems through a series of increasingly severe sanctions. Progressive discipline is considered a best practice because it is corrective rather than punitive and tailored to the seriousness of the issue. This course will provide Frontline Managers with the skills necessary to implement and manage an effective progressive discipline program at their organization.

While the specific duties of a frontline manager will vary depending on the industry in which they work, one skill that all frontline managers need to master is time management. Frontline managers need to be skilled at managing both their time and company time. Specifically, successful frontline managers must learn to optimize how their direct reports spend their time to improve efficiency and productivity.

In this course, you will learn how to become more effective by employing time management and scheduling techniques. The concepts covered in this course will discuss how to plan, organize, and prioritize your schedule, as well as the schedules of those you manage. You will learn what tasks to delegate and how to address procrastination, and how making time management a priority is the first step to keeping on task and managing a productive schedule.

Finding a healthy work-life balance—knowing the right amount of time to devote to your work, to your family, and to yourself—has never been easy, especially for those in managerial positions.

This introductory course is meant for frontline managers, or aspiring frontline managers, who recognize work-life balance as a skill and want to improve their ability to create this balance. This course looks at methods and techniques to reconcile work and family. You will also consider the question of personal fulfillment and the needs and demands of leadership.

If you’re a manager or supervisor, you have probably been faced with a difficult conversation with a direct report. Not only do these conversations require sensitivity, delicacy, and in all likelihood, confidentiality, but how the conversation is handled can greatly impact the outcome. This course seeks to prepare learners to better handle awkward and difficult discussions with employees. Many difficult conversations can impact employee productivity, but as the manager or supervisor, you can learn to coach and counsel employees to create a calmer work environment and increase staff retention and productivity in the process.

As a manager, handling difficult employee behavior is now your job. And it can be overwhelming to try to navigate the psychology of poor behavior to try to figure out how to improve the situation. This course is designed to prepare managers to deal with troublesome and difficult behavior by employees. By effectively addressing, coaching, and counseling employees, you can improve their behavior and improve morale, staff retention, productivity, and teamwork. This course uses videos to illustrate each behavior type so that you can more easily apply the techniques to your current work environment. Focusing on dealing with the behavior (not the person), tools and techniques for positive change are clear and well-defined.

As a manager, you will undoubtedly deal with conflict. And keeping the peace is your responsibility. This course introduces the various forms of conflict that can arise in the workplace and presents strategies that managers can use to help deal with conflict situations. It includes video commentary from an expert in the field and presents some fictitious real-world scenarios that allow learners to practice applying the skills and strategies discussed throughout the course.

Managers who lead and manage through coaching–providing encouragement, feedback, and support–are more successful in “working through others.” This course focuses on the skills and techniques of positive coaching in an organizational setting including listening actively, providing constructive feedback based on observation, reinforcing positive employee performance through recognition and praise, and teaching new skills.

Introduction to Management is designed for current and prospective managers seeking to understand the foundations of effective management. Managers are employed across industries, functions, and organizational structures to oversee different-sized depart-ments, teams, and groups of workers. However, there are fundamental tools, techniques, skills, and competencies that can help all managers navigate workplace relationships, coach and mentor employees, and lead high-performing teams in accordance with HR laws and managerial best practices. This course will dive into these topics and test acquired knowledge through exercises, games, review checkpoints, and a final assessment.

To be successful and move ahead in his or her career, a manager must understand how to manage people, including motivating workers and coordinating their activities. This course will explain how the goals, empowerment, measurement system of management can be employed and how organization structures differ. The course will also cover the difficulty of discipline while trying to maintain productivity and momentum.

As businesses are increasingly turning to technology to handle both internal and external communications, the notion of a centralized workforce that meets face-to-face on a daily basis is becoming less common. Companies are embracing the idea of employing remote workers—from both near and far—who can provide a diverse range of skills and viewpoints without being bound by location. While there are many advantages to remote work for both the company and the individual, managers must be aware of the challenges that can arise when employing remote workers. This course explores the benefits and drawbacks of remote work and provides managers with tips for helping their remote workers stay connected and motivated.

Writing grants is often a critical part of gaining funding for any nonprofit organization’s mission. Strategic grant writing aligns the needs of a nonprofit with funding sources, whether foundations, government agencies, corporations, or individuals. This introductory-level course offers a guide to the basics of grant writing. The course explores the relationship between grant writing and an organization’s strategy for fundraising. It also outlines the six stages of grant writing and highlights grant writing best practices.

The success of any nonprofit organization can rely on the quality of its leadership. You know a good leader when you see one, but how can you become one? This course begins by examining leadership theories as well as key qualities and ethics within leadership. After establishing this foundation, the course focuses on leadership in the nonprofit sector, including the leadership shortage and possible solutions.

Nonprofit Skills^®: Measuring Results addresses how to construct and implement an evaluation framework to measure the results of a nonprofit’s strategic plan. It also includes important metrics for measuring programs and organizational efficiency outside the strategic plan framework. The course includes how to choose KPIs, when to hire an outside evaluator, sources of data, measurement techniques, and how small nonprofits can benefit from measurement.

Inclusive cultures bring cultural awareness, belonging, and mental health to the forefront. Cultural awareness supports inclusivity because it empowers employees to work effectively with people from different demographics. With cultural awareness, organizations can foster a culture of belonging, facilitate collaboration, encourage decision-making, and support employee engagement. A culture of belonging includes employees being their authentic selves. Organizations encourage workplace authenticity and belonging when they support mental health initiatives, foster resilience, and create environments where employees are comfortable discussing mental health challenges. In this course, you will learn about these important aspects of an inclusive culture.

We live in a time where “alternative” work arrangements are becoming more and more the norm. Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are exploring new ways of working and are seeing the benefits of greater adaptability as circumstances continue to change and evolve. Both employers and employees can benefit from flexible work arrangements, but offering greater flexibility is not without risk. In this course, you will explore flexible work arrangements, including remote work, flextime, job sharing, compressed workweeks, contracting, gig work, and permanent part-time positions. You will also learn how these flexible work arrangements affect both the business objectives of an organization and the work-life balance of employees.

Meetings are an important tool for communicating in the workplace. When managed effectively, they provide opportunities for building relationships, solving problems, sharing ideas, making plans, and discussing progress.

In this course, you will learn about some common types of meetings, along with best practices for scheduling, planning, and leading them. We will describe how to create an agenda, take minutes, and use different types of materials. You will also learn how to address some of the common challenges associated with meetings. Finally, we will provide some tips for hosting virtual meetings and describe some key elements of policies related to meetings in the workplace.

Using SMART goals is widely considered a best practice for setting targets and measuring employee progress. SMART goals are goals that include the valuable details that help make them attainable. They provide employees with a sense of direction, keep them motivated, and let them know how and when their progress will be evaluated.

In this course, we describe the five characteristics of SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. You will learn to recognize whether or not a goal is SMART and to outline the process for developing effective SMART goals. Finally, you’ll learn how SMART goals can be evaluated and how they can be used to create an action plan that helps employees set and meet their unique targets.

Leading a team through any task or project requires special skills, and an understanding of the team dynamic and politics. This introductory-level course for managers or anyone interested in leading teams, addresses the key issues surrounding leadership in a team environment. Why is leadership important to team success? What is required of a team leader to lead his team effectively? This course considers how team leaders must account for the special and unique circumstances of working in a team, where responsibility, accountability, communication, and leadership are shared.