Leadership Courses

Bias and assumptions in the workplace are often unavoidable, but mitigating their effects is the key to equity. For leaders, this means practicing behaviors to increase fairness in delegation and support individual growth with high-profile and high-impact work.

Helps leaders:

• Build awareness to common biases and personal tendencies related to delegation.
• Understand the importance of assigning tasks in a way that increases fairness and equal career growth.
• Introduce practical tools and behaviors that will help intentionally delegate and mitigate bias.
• Gain an understanding of the difference between high and low impact and visibility tasks.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment
• Delegation and Empowerment

Interested in delivering this course? Ask us about our facilitator certification options.

The wide range of experiences, work styles, and preferences in diverse teams frequently leads to new ideas and innovative breakthroughs. But diverse teams are also more susceptible to the effects of misunderstandings and biases. If left unchecked, they can escalate to unproductive conflict and cause damage to working relationships. Uncover the inclusive steps a leader can take to engage those involved in cultural conflicts in a participative process that promotes discovery and fair conflict resolution.

Helps leaders:

• Understand their role in resolving cultural conflict.
• Promote discovery of and challenge the mental barriers that block conflict from being resolved.​
• Identify inclusive steps they can take to guide fair resolution.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment
• Resolving Conflict

Leaders are introduced to the Identify, Engage, Advocate framework for inclusive action. Through a series of activities they learn the behaviors leader allies need to create an environment of psychological safety and an equitable workplace.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize the exclusionary behaviors happening around you and within your team and take action to counter them. 
• Develop everyday inclusive leadership habits using a memorable framework of three inclusive practices—Identify, Engage, and Advocate. 
• Model inclusive behaviors in a way that encourages your team members to embrace and practice these behaviors with others.  
• Build and nurture a psychologically safe environment where each person can participate freely, be themselves, and experience success. 

Competencies developed:

• Creating a Culture of Trust
• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.

This course introduces Trust Builders, actions leaders can take to build and sustain trusting relationships, as well as common Trust Breakers that can erode or quickly break trust. Applying these skills to build trusting relationships enables people to take risks, identify and solve problems, and collaborate to achieve business results.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize how trust in the workplace affects business results.
• Analyze their role in building and sustaining trust.
• Identify common workplace behaviors that can build, sustain, or break trust.
• Demonstrate behaviors that show they trust others, as well as give people the confidence to trust them.
• Use interaction skills to foster open communication, build and maintain trusting relationships, and repair damaged ones.

Competencies developed:

• Authenticity
• Creating a Culture of Trust
• Earning Trust

Interested in delivering this course? Ask us about our facilitator certification options.

This course highlights to leaders that engaging the “head”—the business outcome of the conversation—is just as critical as recognizing and addressing the “heart”—people’s feelings such as being respected or appreciated. Leaders will recognize the role of emotional intelligence in success as a leader as they develop foundational leadership skills that apply to the wide range of workplace situations they must handle.

Helps leaders:

• Conduct conversations that achieve the intended business goals.
• Communicate and respond in ways that meet the unique personal needs of team members and others.
• Recognize and react to emotions (their own and others’) present in work situations.
• Use a technique to provide meaningful, supportive feedback.

Competencies developed:

• Building Partnerships
• Communication
• Emotional Intelligence Essentials
• Managing Relationships

Interested in delivering this course? Ask us about our facilitator certification options.

Each of us has a role to play in creating an environment where our colleagues can thrive, not in spite of what makes them unique, but because of it. This course focuses on how you can mitigate the effects of unconscious bias and nurture the culture of inclusivity.

Helps individuals:

• Identify the impact of unconscious bias.
• Recognize the value of inclusion.
• Gain awareness of unconscious bias, disrupt it, and act in ways that ensure fairness.
• Apply the Key Principles to meet people's need to feel valued and respected.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment
• Emotional Intelligence Essentials

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.

This session moves past the numbers game of diverse representation to focus on leaning into and leveraging the unique abilities, perspectives, styles, and ideas of each person. Stereotypes and unconscious bias are explored as well as the differences in who we are, how we think, and what it means to an inclusive workplace. Three practices lay out a personalized path for identifying, engaging with, and advocating for individuals whose voices must and should be heard.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize biases and stereotypes that can affect workplace decisions. 
• Identify those who’ve been excluded and invite them to the table. 
• Engage everyone and encourage their voices and contributions. 
• Advocate for those with different perspectives and ignite their personal success.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Interested in delivering this course? Ask us about our facilitator certification options.

In order to commit to becoming a more inclusive leader, they must first personally understand the problem of exclusion. Leaders experience an immersive simulation, either in VR or a computer-based format, to experience firsthand what it's like to be excluded. Following the simulation, leaders engage in a candid and open discussion where they share personal experiences with inclusion and exclusion. With a shared understanding of the problem and why it's important, leaders learn more about what a culture of inclusion looks like, why it's important, and what they can do to help create one.

Helps leaders:

• Experience firsthand what it feels like to be excluded at work through an immersive simulation.
• Recognize the impact an inclusive workplace can have on an organization’s ability to achieve goals.
• Embrace the role of a leader in creating an inclusive work environment.
• Increase commitment to model and support behaviors that create a more inclusive workplace.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment

As a leader, you want your coaching to help others become their very best, authentic selves. When your coaching is inclusive, it's more likely that your team members will achieve their full potentials and that your team will thrive as a result.

Helps leaders:

• Ask questions to learn and understand the unique identities and experiences of the people they coach, as well as involve people in their own thinking and problem solving.
• Connect with others by listening and empathizing to what the other person has to say and also opening up and authentically sharing their own thoughts and experiences.
• Energize people into action by building the person's ownership of their work and igniting their confidence.

Competencies developed:

• Coaching
• Coaching & Developing Others
• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Everyone attends meetings, and people at all levels are likely to lead meetings too. Meetings have a significant impact on an organization’s culture. So a good place to start building an inclusive, equitable, and diverse organizational culture is with the ubiquitous meeting. This course builds awareness of common behaviors that can make people feel excluded in meetings and introduces practices to apply as a meeting leader to help ensure everyone is heard, valued, and set up for success.

Helps leaders:

• Understand the benefits of meetings that provide psychological safety.
• Recognize threats to psychological safety.
• Apply best practices for including participants.
• Become intentional about practical, inclusive meeting behaviors.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Diversity, equity, and inclusion enable organizations to innovate better, make smarter decisions, retain talent, and achieve greater performance. Three inclusive practices give leaders a framework for taking action when exclusion happens and build and nurture an inclusive culture for their team. Five interaction skills give leaders a voice they can use to conduct everyday inclusive conversations.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize the exclusionary behaviors happening around you and within your team and take action to counter them. 
• Develop everyday inclusive leadership habits using a memorable framework of three inclusive practices—Identify, Engage, and Advocate.
• Model inclusive behaviors in a way that encourages your team members to embrace and practice these behaviors with others.
• Build and nurture a psychologically safe environment where each person can participate freely, be themselves, and experience success.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment

With DDI's Leaders as Allies session, you can create a more equitable and gender-diverse workplace. This onsite or virtual session empowers bosses and colleagues to be allies to women. It uniquely focuses on what allies can do to champion women versus what they cannot do.

Executives are also in a unique and powerful position to make substantial advancements with gender equality within their organization. The Executives as Allies Session includes all foundational content covered in the standard Leaders as Allies course, with activities and content leveled-up to accommodate an audience of top-level leaders. After surfacing top organizational barriers to women in leadership, participants define actions to address and overcome the identified challenges. Participants then establish lead and lag measures to monitor progress toward a more gender diverse leadership pool. Opportunities for ongoing post-session dialogue and consulting are also available.

Competencies developed:

• Building Networks
• Building Partnerships

Interested in delivering this course? Ask us about our facilitator certification options.

Do you value the unique qualities you and your coworkers bring to the workplace? Did you know that people expressing their differences actually enhances an organization's growth? Valuing differences is the right thing to do from both an interpersonal and a business perspective. By leveraging diverse styles, abilities, and motivations (SAMs), you encourage creative solutions and unique approaches that enable your organization to achieve improved results.

Helps individuals:

• Determine their own styles, abilities, and motivations.
• Work more collaboratively and productively with people who have a variety of styles, abilities, and motivations.
• Use Key Principles to support differences and encourage others to share their unique contributions.

Competencies developed:

• Creating a Culture of Trust
• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.

As a leader, it’s important to understand that workplace bullying goes far beyond aggressive behavior. There are psychological power imbalances that cause bullying behaviors to manifest and wreak havoc in the workplace. For this reason, it is important to enact a zero tolerance policy for bullying by encouraging an inclusive work environment.

Helps leaders:

• Know what workplace bullying is and how to promote an inclusive work environment.
• Understand how to cultivate zero tolerance for workplace bullying.

Competencies developed:

• Creating a Culture of Trust
• Emotional Intelligence Essentials
• Resolving Conflict

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.

There are currently five generations in the workplace—the most ever. Longevity trends indicate this will remain the case, with half of children under age 13 predicted to live to 104. Experts agree that people will both need and want to work longer than the traditional retirement age. How do you ensure everyone’s needs are met, regardless of age?

Helps leaders:

• Challenge common assumptions about how people are based on their generation.
• Highlight real, data-based obstacles that affect multigenerational teams.
• Provide actionable tips/best practices for managing an age diverse team.

Competencies developed:

• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.

Everyone has unconscious biases—they’re the result of the way the brain handles the millions of bits of information bombarding us daily. But our biases can get in the way of our good intentions, limit our own success, and cause us to deny development opportunities to others. This microcourse helps learners become aware of their own biases in order to make better decisions.

Helps individuals:

• Learn how the brain influences reactions to the world around them.
• Review common biases and gain insights into their own behavior.
• Interrupt their biases to make better decisions.

Competencies developed:

• Creating a Culture of Trust
• Creating an Inclusive Environment

Microcourses are exclusively available with a leadership development subscription.