Building Resilience in Your Personal and Professional Life

It's safe to say that the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every human life on the planet. It has brought with it significant changes to the ways we live and work, turning terms like social distancing and quarantine into household words. In the aftermath of the worst of it, the world is struggling to create an evolving new normal. What that will look like for businesses and employees as we unplug from working remotely and return to work? How will we reconnect with our coworkers and reestablish working routines? How can we help create a safe working environment by following new procedures? This course focuses on how employees can foster their flexibility and resiliency in the post-pandemic workplace. Materials in this course are based upon content provided in partnership with MIT Sloan Management Review.

Business today is a complex undertaking. Accomplishing tasks an staying focused on achieving your goals requires grit and persistence. An adaptive mindset helps you focus through the distractions, information overload, demanding pace, and the accompanying stresses that can often pull you off task. In this course, you'll learn to develop personal resiliency, adaptability, and perseverance. You'll explore the resources and people it takes to sustain perseverance, and you'll discover actions to help you build a work-life balance, sharpen your focus, and foster the resilience perseverance to face and overcome setbacks.

A positive workplace is paramount to your organization's long-term success. As a manager, you play a key role in establishing a positive work culture, and noticing when negativity takes the place of positivity. As a leader, you can foster a positive work environment by communicating honestly, respecting, supporting, and engaging others, and maintaining a good attitude. This course will introduce you to best practices for creating a positive work environment. You'll learn the benefits of establishing a positive and engaged workforce, its characteristics, and concrete steps to create one. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs and impacts of negativity, and how to take corrective action if necessary to engage employees.

If your organization creates a positive learning culture that focuses on developing people, it will not only weather difficult times better than most, but will flourish in an ultracompetitive global market. In this course, you'll be introduced to organizational learning and its benefits to your organization. You'll examine the role of training, knowledge management, and technology in developing employees, and learn about the pivotal role of the continuous learning. By exploring the essential elements and indicators of a self-development culture, the course prepares you to assess your current workplace and determine how conducive it is to learning. Developing talent will increase your competitiveness and create more satisfied, goal-oriented employees - which leads to a more profitable organization.

People react to high pressure differently. Learning to cope with pressure and handling stress are very important, because you don't want pressure to have a negative impact on your performance. In this course, you'll learn about managing stress and pressure, situations that trigger pressure, and how pressure can become stress. You'll also look at how stress affects you emotionally and physically, and how to respond to it. And you'll also learn strategies for managing stress by ensuring you have the right attitude, taking control under pressure, and using performance management to cultivate a "success mentality." You can then optimize your own performance, and prepare to cope with stressed colleagues.

People with a healthy work-life balance are satisfied with both their work and home lives. They can fulfill their multiple family responsibilities at home, as well as work and community commitments without guilt or regret. They're healthy physically, emotionally, and socially. They're not over-worked. In fact, they have a sense of control over their life, and feel that the decisions they make are informed choices. In this course, you'll learn about how to detect imbalance between home and work and how to achieve a healthy compromise between work balance and life balance. And you'll assess your current work/life balance so you can overcome internal and external obstacles to achieving harmony.

Achieving a healthy work/life balance gives you the chance to practice mindfulness and focus on what's important in all aspects of your life. Maintaining this work/life balance requires constant vigilance. This course focuses on techniques for managing stress and recognizing the behaviors like passivity, aggressiveness, and assertiveness, and how these affect your ability to find balance in life. Techniques that can be used to achieve and preserve balance are also discussed. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.

When you're constantly adding items to your never-ending to-do list, feeling overwhelmed at work and at home, and finding your health and relationships negatively impacted, you are likely experiencing stress. Stress is produced by your own feelings and reactions to certain external events, rather than by the events themselves. But while you may not always be able to control the external events causing your stress, by applying mindfulness techniques, you can control your reactions to them. This course explains the physiological, behavioral, and psychological signs and symptoms of stress and where it can come from. It outlines strategies for maintaining work/life balance and managing stress. It also covers ways to change your responses to stress and make them more positive and how to use relaxation techniques and adopting mindfulness to help you focus.

Companies often opt to create virtual teams in place of on-site teams. This allows employees to work from home or remote locations. However, if not managed appropriately, remote working may cause breakdowns in communication, collaboration, and teamwork. In this course, you'll learn how to develop the skills you need to show team leadership and be an effective member of a virtual team. You'll explore personal traits that are useful when working on a team remotely. You'll also learn strategies to stay connected with other team members, and ways to manage your time and overcome the challenges associated with managing teams remotely.

A virtual team can face the same difficulties as other teams, but remote teamwork also has unique challenges. In this course, you'll learn about tactics for managing teams that blend onsite and offsite members across time zones and geography. You'll be introduced to team leadership strategies for overcoming internal conflicts and handling collaboration and communication challenges. Finally, you'll learn how to evaluate and adapt your management style and approach to working on a team that is virtual.

The amount of time available to you is constant - you can't buy more and you can't save it for later. However, by managing your time, you can increase your productivity. And the better you understand your own personal productivity, the easier it will be to manage your time effectively. In this course, you'll learn about how you can use task management to maximize your productivity. You'll discover the benefits of using time management and assessing the value of your tasks. You'll learn about benefits of setting goals and how productivity is tied to your ability to assess time and set priorities. And you'll also learn about the process of "chunking" your time and how to use different types of to-do lists effectively.

A busy personal life has a direct correlation to your productivity level at your job. By getting control of your productivity at home, you can improve your productivity work too, making you better able to stick to schedules and meet deadlines by reducing the stress and distractions that come from trying to juggle home and work at the same time. In this course, you'll learn how to prepare for trips, plan personal and household tasks, and become more organized as a parent. You'll also explore tips for achieving an effective work/life balance and taking care of your personal health and well-being.

The relationship between you and your boss is a key factor in your career. Careful relationship management will make your job more enjoyable. You'll find that to work more effectively with your boss, you need to develop a rapport and good networking skills. Managing up can help you find enjoyment and reward in your current position. In this course, you'll learn the importance of managing relationships, and ways to build great boss relationships by recognizing their agenda and management style. You'll also learn strategies for building a strong professional relationship with your boss, and about various ways you can become aligned with your boss.

Working for a difficult boss can be challenging. In this course, you will learn about the management styles, communication styles, and personality types of difficult bosses. You will also learn strategies for working with a difficult boss and what to do if a boss becomes abusive.

Does your job require you to communicate critical information to c-suite executives, such as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)? Perhaps you have opportunities to influence executive decision making, but don't know how best to deliver your message. In order to make the most of your communication with senior executives, you need to be prepared. In this course, you'll learn how to shape your message so it's communicated clearly to your organization's c suite. You'll discover how to build your credibility with those at the senior level, such as the CFO, CIO, and COO. And you'll explore how to approach and plan meetings with senior executives, and how to make your case - whether it's with an elevator pitch or a formal report.

Communicating effectively can be challenging when having difficult conversations. Because these challenges typically involve emotions such as hurt, anger, or confusion, it's not uncommon for people to avoid one another or shut down, preventing what could be a productive exchange at many levels. In this course, you'll examine some common communication challenges and how you can successfully navigate them. By showing patience, perseverance, and accountability, you can effectively deal with tough conversations, communicate your message, and reach mutual understanding and agreement.

There is a science behind communication, including how we react neuro-physiologically to others - through verbal communication such as their words and tone, as well as the non-verbal communication of their actions and body language. There's also an art to communication, allowing your authentic self to shine through and allowing the exchange with another person to unfold naturally. In this course, you'll learn about the art and science of communication. You'll explore techniques for connecting with your audience and building trust with them so that your communication intention is clear and understood. You'll also learn the basic principles of assertive communication that is positive and not aggressive.

Managing teams successfully involves ensuring that team members can communicate with you and with one another and that they will collaborate effectively as a team. To achieve this, clear channels of communication are required for both on-site and virtual teams. In this course, you'll learn how to demonstrate team leadership by encouraging effective communication and overcoming communication problems. You'll explore strategies for encouraging team collaboration. Finally, you'll learn about tools and technologies that are commonly used for virtual teamwork and key considerations for establishing virtual communication guidelines.

For managers, difficult conversations can be immensely stressful. Handled the wrong way, this kind of conversation can also damage your work relationships and leave you feeling unsure of your abilities. However, with the right preparation and mindset, you can make sure that you communicate difficult news with tact and diplomacy. In this course, you'll learn some basic guidelines about when and where to initiate difficult conversations, and useful steps for managing the associated stress. You'll learn how to prepare for a difficult conversation using a four-step process, so that you're confident and can make the conversation as constructive and diplomatic as possible. Finally, you'll learn how to demonstrate that you have the right mindset when communicating bad news to an employee.

Making a real, positive difference on a team is not necessarily about showing team leadership. Even if your role doesn't involve managing teams, you can still make an important contribution by being a strong team member. This course covers strategies and techniques to help you become a more effective and valued team member. You'll explore ways to adopt a positive mindset toward teamwork, so that you can make a significant contribution. Because your success when working on a team depends on pulling together with other people, you'll also learn constructive ways to acknowledge differences and show respect for teams, and specific strategies for team collaboration.

Team cohesion, or the strength of the links between team members, determines how effective teams will be, especially in responding to outside pressures. A team has to be cohesive if its members are to function as a unit, working closely and efficiently to achieve common goals. In this course, you'll learn methods for effectively building and managing teams that focus on improvements in three areas: communication, cooperation, and trust. You'll learn specific strategies for improving communication and promoting collaboration among staff members working on a team. You'll also learn what signs suggest a lack of trust on a team, and how you can show team leadership by using the right techniques to build trust and improve teamwork.

It's vital to maintain open, effective communication when working on a team. However, it's all too easy for teams to adopt bad habits. Without realizing how badly it affects your team, you or another team member may communicate in ways that lead to misunderstandings in teamwork, cause unnecessary conflict, keep others from having their say, and prevent collaboration. In this course, you'll learn about different verbal barriers to effective team communication and strategies for overcoming them. But speaking is only one part of communication; effective team leadership is about listening too. So you'll also learn about some active listening techniques that can help you be a better listener when managing teams.

When organizations are recruiting, one of the top skills they look for in a candidate is their ability to collaborate. Today's hiring managers know that collaboration leads to improved problem-solving, increased productivity and promotes interconnected team members who share expertise and learn from one another. Defining collaboration is tricky because it means different things across industries, departments and roles. In this course you'll learn about the meaning of collaboration, the concept of teaming in collaboration, and best practices for being a good team member and for being a successful collaborator. You'll examine conflict management styles to determine which one is yours, and the impact on your team.