How to Develop Leadership Skills: 10 Best Free Online Courses

Ever feel like you’re just “going with the flow” at work? You’re not alone. Studies show that only 25% of employees feel truly engaged in their work. What if you could unlock the leader within and create a more positive, impactful work environment for yourself and your team?

Find out the methods for developing into a powerful leader! Learn what leadership skills are, how to develop and improve them, and which behaviors demonstrate strong leadership in a team. We’ve curated a selection of the best free online Leadership skills courses. These courses can help you realize your potential and accomplish your objectives. With this comprehensive guide, you’ll have the resources you need to develop your leadership skills and achieve success.

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How to Develop Leadership Skills: 20+ Best Free Online Courses–

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Diploma in Leadership and Management Styles

This leadership certificate will teach you how to be an effective manager and how to be a good leader. The content provides you with an opportunity to understand and manage yourself and grow as a professional, sharpen your leadership and management skills, increase the efficiency of your organization, and make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

HarvardX: Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles

In this introductory course, you will explore strategies for leading in a changing world where adaptive pressures will continue to challenge all of us. You will discover new ways to approach complex organizational systems and take thoughtful action on the work we all face ahead. Most importantly, you will reflect on how to move forward on the leadership challenges you care about most.

Ethical Leadership

In this free online course, you’ll study the tried and tested traits of good leadership, ranging from honesty, moral courage and vision to creative thinking and selflessness. Also explore why these leadership elements frequently overlap with the classical ideals of virtuous leadership.

HarvardX: Leadership: Creating Public Value

Through the course, you will use an integrated analytic framework to help you understand concrete problems or opportunities for collective action. This framework focuses on the three key elements of producing a publicly valued result: understanding the specific conditions you hope to improve; designing and developing the necessary operational capacities; and securing the public support and financial resources required to launch and sustain your effort at the desired scope and scale.

Strategic Leadership and Management Specialization

Through this course Specialization in Strategic Leadership and Management, you will learn the fundamentals of effectively leading people, teams, and organizations and develop tools to analyze business situations. In addition to building a conceptual framework for leadership, learners will develop and practice strategies for immediate impact. The Specialization covers the strategic, human resource, and organizational foundations for creating and capturing value for sustainable competitive advantage both within a single business and across a portfolio of businesses.

CatalystX: Becoming a Successful Leader (Inclusive Leadership Training)

In this course, you will learn what successful 21st-century leaders look like and how you can adopt their inclusive leadership style. Using research and best practices, as well as stories from great leaders and everyday people, you will practice empowerment, accountability, courage, and humility—key leadership skills linked to inclusive, successful teams. Throughout the course, you will meet people like yourself, who want to be the best leaders they possibly can by incorporating inclusive leadership into their everyday lives. With short quizzes and compelling case studies, you will refine your skills each section. Most importantly, you will apply your new leadership skills through exciting real-life exercises. At the end of the course, you will create a Personal Leadership Plan that will help you continue to develop your skills, knowledge, and awareness in your quest to become a successful, inclusive leader.

Inclusive Leadership for Diverse Teams

This course offers strategies for navigating contemporary organisational challenges by prioritising diversity and inclusivity. It emphasises the tangible benefits, key pillars, and defining characteristics of inclusive leadership. It covers effective communication in diverse teams, empowering strategies, and measurement methods that will equip learners with essential skills for success in diverse workplaces, maximising organisational potential.

Leadership Skills

This is a beginner course designed for professionals from diverse work backgrounds. The course helps you lean on your experiences and strengthen your capacity to lead across boundaries, from any political or organizational position, with or without authority. The course will also enable you to learn important leadership skills, clarifying the relationships among key concepts such as definitions of leadership, self-management, authority, power, influence, politics, negotiations, change management, decision-making, and various leadership styles. This knowledge will provide you with a practical and coherent theoretical framework for applying and exercising leadership. Lastly, the course explores the challenge of managing the inevitable personal stresses and dangers of leading a team. The course draws from business management, philosophy, spirituality, history, literature, sports, communications, and psychology.

CEO Mastery: Leadership and Strategy

This course is meticulously crafted to explore the key leadership, management and financial literacy skills and insights necessary for a CEO. Enroll to this course and elevate your leadership prowess, master financial finesse, foster innovation, and lead globally.

Classical Leadership and Decision-Making

This free online leadership course, Explores what good management and leadership entails, and how to apply practical methods from this course to better your decision-making skills and take your leadership from good to great by inspiring others to constantly do better and aim higher for the sake of themselves and the team.

Introduction to Leadership in Teaching

Master the leadership skills required to influence learning and development in this free online course. Equip yourself with the skills that will enable you as a teacher to effectively direct and communicate to others in a way that engages them enough to act as you need them to. As a result, you can produce an inspiring future vision by mentoring and building a more constructive team to achieve the concept. In addition, you will learn about stress, how to manage it and live a stress-reducing lifestyle to lead successfully.

Leadership Essentials – Driving Quality Projects

Use the leadership skills found in this free online leadership course to inspire teams and improve project management. Forming and managing new teams can be challenging for organizational leaders and managers. This task becomes even more difficult when completing projects that are concerned with quality assurance. This leadership training course provides the leadership principles you need to form, manage, modify and support teams across an organization. Learn the role that quality engineers play in ensuring the quality of your products and processes.

How to Develop Leadership Skills

This free online course teaches you successful leadership skills, traits and techniques to become a successful leader. Leadership is not bestowed upon everybody but conferred upon the elect. Everybody else is just a face in the crowd. But there is good news. The skills, knowledge and techniques needed to climb the leadership ladder can be learned, developed and honed by each of us to move ahead. This course bundles all the relevant skills and modern techniques to help you become a charismatic and powerful leader. Join now and become the leader you long to be.

Transformational Leadership

Discover cutting-edge tools and strategies that will improve your ability to lead others with this free online course. This free online Transformational Leadership course will teach you the most effective tips and techniques you can use to improve your relationship with your team, and help your team members become as effective as they can be. In this free online course CEO & Celebrity Trainer Prof. Paul Cline will teach you the knowledge and skills that can be used to distinguish yourself as a leader and make the most of your team.

Beginner in Classical Leadership

Learn to lead with ease by mastering the core fundamentals of classical leadership covered in this free online course This free online course reveals the secret formula to becoming a true ethical leader. We will provide you with life-changing techniques to help you become a great leader in every area of your life. We’ll cover leadership from A to Z, learning the core fundamentals from great leaders themselves. You’ll explore the classical Greek philosophical tradition of virtuous leadership and more. This course will help you lead with confidence

Leadership Skills For Beginners

Learn how to connect with those around you to become an effective and inspirational leader in this free online course. Do you want to become a leader in your field as you move upwards in the workplace? Such success requires that you polish your social skills and develop qualities like vision, compassion, self-discipline and decisive problem-solving. This free online course teaches you how to pursue your passions while convincing others to follow your example.

Diploma in Nursing Leadership and Care Management

Discover the essential role of a nurse leader today, and learn more about nursing leadership and care management skills.

This free online nursing course overviews the most important elements of a nursing leader’s daily role. The nursing profession has evolved significantly over the years. Today, professional nurses are also team leaders and healthcare teachers. By the end of the course you will have learned the skills and approaches used by nurse leaders to improve healthcare delivery, and will have greatly boosted your care management skills.

Education Leadership and Collaboration

Learn how to work with others and become an effective educational leader in this free online school management course. Education flourishes when stakeholders work together towards a shared goal. This course explains how leadership plays a key role in maintaining such teamwork and provides the skills required to make a lasting educational impact. Learn how leadership helps school staff meet their responsibilities, from teachers, support staff and governors to parents and the government.

Residential Childcare Leadership and Management

This free online course, explores the skills and knowledge required to become an effective residential childcare manager A residential childcare setting is just as vital as any other institution that supports and nurtures children. Thus, possessing essential leadership and childcare abilities is crucial for effectively managing or operating such a facility. This course offers comprehensive insights into residential childcare leadership, covering aspects such as fostering teamwork and promoting child development.

Leadership Skills and Team Management

This free course will help you achieve those goals by guiding you through management and decision making, showing you how to take and give feedback, and demonstrating how to manage and defuse potential conflict situations. You will discover how to manage your business and employees remotely to find the right balance between supervision and independence.

Effective Leadership Skills and Strategies

Get ahead and learn the skills and strategies required of an effective leader in this free online leadership course. Leadership entails the ability to influence others towards attaining a common goal. The hallmark of any great leader is the success of each individual member of the team. However, every team comprises individuals with diverse backgrounds and personal philosophies. The primary responsibility of every good leader is to consider these individual differences and harness them towards achieving the team’s objective and success.

Workplace Leadership and Management Skills

Learn how to manage and lead a company productively by maintaining a healthy workplace in this free online course. This course aims to help you master the skills needed to manage your organisation successfully and increase your management and leadership abilities. You will learn the process of creating a succession plan and the strategies essential to motivate your employees. Start learning about corporate responsibility and risk management, including dealing with office politics and managing conflicts, time and stress.

The Principles of Emotional Intelligence, Leadership and Coaching

This free online course will enable you to develop your leadership and coaching skills using emotional intelligence. How Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills can build your leadership and coaching capabilities, and improve your brand of leadership. The emphasis is on the workplace, but the teaching can also be applied to your personal life. Your learning includes how to use EI as a leader in order to coach, influence, persuade, develop people’s emotional skills, and improve their and your performance.

Remote Team Management and Leadership

This free online course will teach you the best practices for working remotely from home and managing teams. You will learn how to hold meaningful virtual meetings and manage the personal differences of a remote team. Explore how to deal with inclusivity, employee productivity and mental health challenges from afar.

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Employment

In this free online course, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Employment, you will learn about the characteristics of a good CEO, founder, or non-founder, along with the power and responsibility of advocacy in entrepreneurship. You will also be enlightened on the issues that founders, co-founders, and family firms encounter including youth unemployment trends. Start this course today and improve your awareness of entrepreneurial issues.

Leadership & Management Skills For Business – Managing Employees

In this free online leadership and management course you will learn about the challenges facing companies that can make or break a business. You will learn the specific leadership and management tools, strategies and techniques to beat these challenges. In this training you will study the 4 key areas to business success: Leadership skills; management skills; how to create a great business culture and how to build high performance teams.

Unlock Your MBA Potential: Leadership and Management Mastery

Unlock MBA success and master key leadership and management fundamentals with this free online course. Explore critical leadership and management principles across diverse organisational landscapes. From communication to strategic planning, delve into decision-making, conflict resolution, team dynamics, and ethical leadership. Designed to empower students in leading and managing teams, projects, and corporate initiatives with confidence and efficacy. By the end of this course, you are able to apply these skills in real-world situations.

Empowering Women to Lead and Change the World

Discover the power of female leadership in this free online course and elevate your managerial mastery. Are you looking to develop your leadership potential? with this free online course, you’ll gain insights that will help you become a confident female leader. You’ll acquire vital skills like communication and decision-making for success. You’ll also discover how to overcome challenges and lead positive change. Unlock your leadership potential and equip yourself with the tools and mastery to be a thriving leader.

Becoming a Team Leader

This free online management course provides the transformational leadership skills used to build high-performing teams. In today’s global economy, finding solutions to complex problems requires smart collaboration and teamwork. This management training course explains the concept of holistic ‘transformational leadership’ to help you assemble high-performing teams. You’ll learn the management of talent, performance, time, stress, risk and continuous process improvement.

FAQ:

What are leadership skills?

Think of them as the tools you use to inspire and guide others. It’s about communication, decision-making, problem-solving, and motivating people to work towards a shared goal.

How to develop leadership skills?

It’s like learning any new skill – practice, practice, practice! Take on challenges, seek feedback, and learn from others. There are tons of resources out there – books, courses, and even just observing strong leaders around you.

How to improve leadership skills?

Be open to feedback and actively seek ways to learn. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, and identify areas where you can grow. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things.

What are some leadership skills?

There are lots, but some key ones include communication, delegation, problem-solving, motivation, decision-making, and building relationships.

What is leadership skills?

In a nutshell, it’s the ability to influence and guide others toward a shared vision. It’s about inspiring, empowering, and encouraging your team to perform at their best.

How to improve leadership skills in the workplace?

Take on new responsibilities, volunteer for projects, and participate in team activities. Seek opportunities to lead meetings, present ideas, and mentor colleagues.

Why are leadership skills important?

Because they’re the key to success in any field! Whether you’re leading a team, managing a project, or simply trying to achieve your own personal goals, strong leadership skills will help you get there.

Which behavior demonstrates leadership skills in a team?

It’s not just about giving orders. Strong leaders are active listeners, they empower their team members, and they celebrate successes. They also take responsibility, make tough decisions, and inspire others to be their best selves.