Taking a management course can literally change your life – even if you don’t consider a corporate career, having this kind of education under your belt is still incredibly useful in many other areas. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that any advanced business career is impossible without management education, you will still require the same set of skills in any kind of managerial or administrative position, be it in your own small business, educational institution, non-profit organization or governmental institution. Here is a list of free online management courses that can set you on the right way.
1. Developing Cultural Intelligence for Leadership
This course will teach you what Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and its basic aspects are, and why it is important for people in leading and managerial positions. Knowing the principles of CQ allows you to interact with other people irrespectively of their cultural, national or gender background (or, rather, with respect and understanding of this background).
2. Project Management
Project management is a mainstay of work in any organization, commercial or non-profit, big or small. By the end of the course you will acquire knowledge and understanding of various aspects of a project that need to be considered when planning it, what phases or stages a project consists of, what the main methods of managing projects in different situations are, and what tools are used to do it.
3. Business Management
This course consists of several dozen videos with an average length of 30 minutes, providing general information on a number of topics ranging from case studies dealing with particular elements of managerial work to insights into marketing strategies, business planning and so on.
4. Discovering Management
Discovering Management by Open University is a graduate-level course covering the subjects of managerial activities in such areas as project, operations, stakeholder and financial management. After completing it, students will acquire enough practical experience and management training to take up real managerial and leading roles. According to the course description, it aims not so much at providing students with all possible answers concerning management and what it entails, but deepening their understanding of the subject by raising a whole lot of new questions they may have not considered before.
5. Management and Leadership: Growing as a Manager
This course is specifically created for new and future managers and is aimed to teach basic skills one needs to be successful in this vocation. It defines basic concepts of leadership, provides outlines of the most important management styles and approaches and, what is probably the most important, lays the foundation for the ongoing process of personal development planning that should be a part of any successful manager’s routine.
The importance of managerial skills and knowledge can hardly be overestimated. No matter how you see your future career and in what area you are going to work, taking a free course in management isn’t going to take up much of your time, but potentially can do you a world of good.