Best Free MOOCs In Business In January

Conversations That Inspire: Coaching Learning, Leadership and Change

School: Case Western Reserve University

Registration: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: 2-3 Hours Per Week 

Grades: Students will receive a signed Statement of Accomplishment for successfully completing the course.

Instructors: Richard Boyatzis, PhD; Melvin Smith, PhD; Ellen VanOosten, PhD

Credentials: Boyatzis teaches leadership, change management, emotional and social intelligence, and coaching at Case Western Reserve University. A highly-regarded author, Boyatzis was ranked as the ninth-most influential thinker in a survey by HR Magazine. A pioneer in Intentional Change Theory (ICT), Boyatzis also co-authored the international best-seller Primal Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee. He has taught at the university for 27 years and has earned the school’s Distinguished University Professor Award and the John Diekhoff Award for Graduate Student Teaching. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard.

Smith serves as the faculty director of executive of executive education at Case Western Reserve University, where he also teaches courses in the department of organizational behavior. His interests center on leadership and emotional intelligence. Before entering academia, he spent nearly two decades in Fortune 500 leadership, including sales and marketing leadership roles at HJ Heinz and the Pepsi Bottling Group. He holds a Ph.D. from the University’s Katz Graduate School of Business.

VanOosten is the Director of the Coaching Research Lab, along with being an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior there. Her research interests include executive development, experiential learning and emotional intelligence. Outside of the classroom, she is an executive coach whose clients include Fifth Third Bank and Sherwin Williams. She earned her Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve in 2012.

Description: Many times, coaching is treated as a pat on the back or a kick in the pants. In fact, “coaching for compliance” is a term for the latter, where coaches push their charges in a certain direction as a means of “fixing” their reports.  It doesn’t work, argue the instructors in this course. Instead, they recommend “coaching with compassion,” where “the person is brought into the positive emotional attractor by initially discussing their dreams, values, and invoking hope, mindfulness, compassion and even playfulness.” So how do you do that? Drawing on decades of research, the instructors will share frameworks and techniques for tying their employees’ dreams with the larger mission. In particular, the course will examine the five points for fostering sustained change; how neuroscience shapes reaction and retention; and examples of Positive (PEA) and Negative Emotional Attractors (NEA).

During this five-week course, students will learn the content through videos and readings, along with writing their thoughts in a personal learning journal and participating in online discussions. Students will also be required conduct two personal coaching sessions, with write ups of the sessions reviewed and graded by peers.

Review: “This class has been one of the best courses I have taken so far online and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has an interest in psychology, self-discovery, and theories of change.. While the title of the course may come off as a bunch of buzz word ideas, the content of the course is highly focused on developing an understanding of self in relation to a particular leadership theory. After developing a sense of self, the student is encouraged to explore where they want to be going, how they can achieve that, how it looks within organization, and how to make sustained change on that level. Dr. Boyatzis provides very clear and concise lectures during the course with assignments that are invaluable to the course as a whole.” For additional review, click here.

Additional Note: This course is part of a five-part specialization called “Inspired Leadership.” To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.