County Officials Certificate Training Program

Are you prepared to advocate for yourself at work, or are you unsure how to seize opportunities and overcome challenges? In this course Selena Rezvani gets you equipped and ready to be your own self-advocate. Learn how to amplify your voice by being prepared for obvious and less obvious scenarios. Discover how to recognize opportunities to back yourself. Find out how to rebalance the dynamics of a conversation when you are being demeaned or diminished. Selena shares how you can get the respect you deserve while maintaining a reputation as a positive team player. She provides techniques you can use to make your strengths visible, ensure your credibility is known, and ultimately reduce blockers to your success.

High-performing teams are critical to maintaining an organization's competitive advantage. These teams consistently show high levels of collaboration and innovation, and outperform their peers. In this course, leadership-training expert Mike Figliuolo shows you how to create and lead the teams that get more done for their organizations. Learn about the seven elements of a high-performance team, and the techniques necessary to set direction, gather and deploy the right resources, prioritize work, motivate employees, and help team members develop their individual strengths.

This online course covers email, text, and phone etiquette for business communication. Learn how to set up email signatures, use autoresponders, and follow up on unanswered emails. Discover what to say and what not to say in text messages. Lastly, master phone etiquette, including greetings, voicemails, and out-of-office messages.

Learn how to shift from a command-and-control style of management to a manager-as-coach style of leadership. Establish a coaching relationship with your reports to increase employee engagement and bottom-line results. Develop skills like open-ended questioning, listening, challenging for growth, and accountability to boost your team's problem-solving capacities. This course includes assessments, exercises, and tools to help your team capture goals, map a career trajectory, and accelerate growth.

Are your meetings ineffective? Are you finding that you run out of time without completing the agenda? Do attendees seem dissatisfied or bored? Trainer Chris Croft outlines the top 10 meeting problems and explains how to manage each one. He covers meetings that aren't necessary; noises and other distractions that throw meetings off track; attendees showing up late; disruptive behavior; lack of focus; meetings that take too long; lack of progress; and lack of participation. Plus, get tips for eliminating some of the most common technology issues that occur during virtual meetings.

Discussions about cultural differences can be uncomfortable. They take courage. In this course, business communication professor Daisy Lovelace shares principles and strategies that can help you have more productive, meaningful conversations on topics related to diversity. Daisy helps you understand that everyone has a unique lens based on their experiences, and that understanding and appreciating that difference is the first step in being able to discuss sensitive topics. She also outlines a number of techniques to help you navigate these difficult conversations.

Most people are afraid of speaking in public, but effective oral communication is a key skill in business. Jeff Ansell provides simple communication tools, strategies, and tips that are easy to use and produce immediate results. He'll help you sound more confident, use body and language to better express ideas, and overcome anxiety. In the last chapter of the course, all these concepts are brought together in two real-world coaching exercises that will help you see the techniques in action.

Toxic workplaces cost organizations money in the form of lost productivity, poor employee health, and, in extreme cases, lawsuits. HR consultant Catherine Mattice Zundel explains how companies that invest in a positive workplace can see an amazing return on their investment. If you have a negative workplace, you can turn it around by creating a vision for change—and a positive culture committee to help you deliver a new culture to your workforce. Catherine provides insight into conducting surveys and updating your performance management system, and offers tools such as a sample strategic plan and an exercise for creating core values.

Accessibility means making sure your content is available to as many people as possible. When you make your PDFs accessible, it means adding tags, bookmarks, alt text, and other information that makes the files readable and navigable to users who are visually or mobility impaired. Using the latest versions of Adobe Acrobat DC, Microsoft Word, and Adobe InDesign, it's now much easier to create valid, accessible PDFs. In this course, Chad Chelius shows how to take an existing PDF file and remediate it for users of assistive software. He then introduces two workflows for creating accessible PDFs from scratch—one in Word and one in InDesign—with some special considerations for Excel and PowerPoint. Along the way, he offers techniques, tips, and tricks to make accessibility easy to incorporate in every document you publish.

Changing our behavior patterns can be challenging, especially when we aim to make long-lasting changes. But making meaningful and permanent changes is crucial to achieving our goals. This course by leadership coach Ramona Shaw will teach you how to identify barriers to change, overcome them, and create new habits for greater success. You'll learn about change, barriers to creating new habits, and strategies to overcome them. By the end of this course, you'll be equipped with the tools to make long-lasting and meaningful changes in your life.
 

Customer service leadership is an exciting responsibility—and it's never been more important. Fast-evolving customer expectations, emerging service channels, and the multifaceted nature of delivering service are just a few of the challenges customer service teams face. Learn to lead with intention, and set a direction that is right for your customers, employees, and organization. This practical course covers how to align customer service with company goals, identify and meet customer expectations, cultivate an engaged team, and get the support and resources you need. Whether your approach involves in-person services, contact centers, social media, self-service, or any combination, this course is designed to get you up to speed fast on the factors essential for success.

What is the best way to handle a customer who steps into dangerous territory? What strategies will help diffuse and refocus a bad interaction, and when is it appropriate to walk away? In this course, join customer service expert David Brownlee—the author of Rock Star Customer Service—as he shares real-life examples and actionable steps that can help you confidently handle abusive customers in a variety of contexts. Upon wrapping up this course, you'll have the knowledge you need to formulate a plan of action and navigate difficult customer service interactions with poise and professionalism.

Delivering bad news is one of the most common derailers for managers and leaders. But while you can't completely avoid bad news, you can control how you deliver it. By bolstering this key leadership skill, you can confidently communicate bad news with tact, skill, and candor, achieving the best possible result in a tricky situation. In this course, organizational psychologist and executive coach Gemma Roberts explains how to prepare to deliver bad news, manage the meeting itself, and then follow up to ensure clarity and next steps.

Customer service is about providing the best experience to a customer—yet, a lot of the time customer service reps find that their hands are tied, and that what the customer wants is not something the rep can deliver. How can CSRs work to keep the relationship with the company strong and intact? This course outlines a simple four-step approach that can be used in variety of customer service settings. Learn about communication styles, methods, and approaches that can be applied to challenging situations like delivering bad news, handling concerns, and more.

For new graduates transitioning from school to the world of work, creating a professional image isn't always intuitive. In this course, executive coach and organizational psychologist Gemma Leigh Roberts provides tips and guidance that can help you successfully navigate the start of your professional career. Gemma highlights the main differences between campus life and being part of the workforce, and explains how to develop the right mindset for dealing with workplace challenges and getting ahead in your career. Plus, she shares tips for acclimating to a new workplace, and discusses how to create a career strategy that sets you up for success, focusing on your vision, mission, goals, and targets.

Understanding what you do best is essential to succeeding professionally. But often we are unclear on our own strengths. Join leadership expert Dave Crenshaw on a journey of self-discovery, as he walks you through a simple framework to identify your strengths. Discover your natural gifts, your passions, your skills, and your greatest abilities. Dave shares specific exercises to help you pinpoint what you should focus on doing (and what you should avoid) to develop your strengths and increase your value as an employee. The exercises can also help you clarify if your current job is a fit and what you can do to address a mismatch.

Conflict is inevitable—in work and in life. Managers must address performance issues, and colleagues with competing priorities must figure out how to work together. These situations call for having difficult conversations. In this course, Marlene Chism explains how to have difficult conversations, build your communication skills, and improve your relationships, teamwork, and business performance. She explains how to identify underlying differences in work styles, goals, and power dynamics and change the way you view conflict. She provides a model to move the conversation in a positive direction and to determine next steps. Plus, learn how to check for resistance with a single useful phrase.

Whatever business you're in, there's a fundamental need to support the people that work there. That's where human resources comes in. In this course, HR expert Wayne Cascio provides a comprehensive guide to the field of human resources. Wayne ensures new HR professionals are well versed in their core responsibilities: from attracting, interviewing, and hiring candidates to establishing a pay strategy and creating systems for internal training and development. Wayne also discusses the role that HR plays in career development, performance management, and managing an international workforce.

An effective performance management system drives employee performance and behavior in the right direction. It's more than a series of forms; it comes from the top and is tied to company culture and values. Learn how to build an effective performance management system that drives your organization's success in this course with Catherine Mattice Zundel. Discover a simple model for setting expectations, appraising performance, coaching employees, and documenting disciplinary measures. Discover how to involve leaders and managers in the program, and tie it back to the organization's vision, mission, and core values. Catherine also reviews other important best practices, such as continuous coaching and feedback, and the importance of documentation.

Payroll is a core function in HR. Complex tax and labor laws can make it seem daunting, but with the right tools and techniques, your payroll can function like a well-oiled machine. This course teaches HR professionals how to set up and administer a payroll system. HR consultant Gabriella Parente-Neubert covers 13 of the most common payroll topics, including classifying workers, understanding exempt vs. nonexempt employees, retaining records, and picking a payroll system. She also reviews details such as paying sick and vacation time, understanding the role of benefits in compensation, and processing final wages as the result of termination. Using her guidance, you'll be able to build a successful payroll system that ensures employees are paid correctly and punctually every time.

Workplace conflict is inevitable. But it doesn't have to end badly. In this course, author and conflict expert Craig Runde helps you manage workplace conflict more effectively. He first explains the dynamics that create conflict, and helps you become aware of what your conflict response is. Once you are aware of how conflict arises, learn some practical steps you can take to manage your emotions and engage with others constructively.

In our hectic world, time management alone doesn't cut it. To truly increase your efficiency, it's crucial that you improve your focus as well as tend to your calendar. In this course, productivity expert and best-selling author Dave Crenshaw helps you develop the survival skills to both avoid daily distractions and stay focused on what's most valuable. Curate your digital and physical space to strengthen concentration, discover ways to keep your mind on task, and protect your relationships—both at work and at home—by focusing on what's most important.

Join global workforce management expert Dr. Shirley Davis as she shares how to create and lead an organization that leverages the diverse talents of all contributors. Dr. Davis reveals the benefits of inclusive leadership, including the positive impacts it can have on employee engagement, innovation, and creativity. She then outlines a best practice framework for developing inclusive leaders in an organization, and shares tips for avoiding common leadership pitfalls. Upon wrapping up this course, you'll be equipped with practical strategies you can use to cultivate a more inclusive workforce.

Successful hiring means successful interviewing. The right techniques can attract the best talent—while eliminating bias and emotion from the process. With a new generation of candidates on the horizon, it’s a great time to refresh your interview skills. In this course, expert recruiter Barbara Bruno highlights practical strategies for planning and conducting job interviews. Barbara explains how to determine the purpose of the interview, set interview expectations up front, and ask effective questions. She also teaches you how to conduct different types of interviews—including screening, courtesy, and panel interviews—and evaluate and select the best candidate. Plus, learn how to improve the candidate’s experience, stay in touch with new hires, and connect and network with future talent.

Want to get ahead? Inspire others? Nurture the next gen? Become the leader of the pack? You need to learn to lead like a boss. Dr. Todd Dewett has been coaching leaders for over 20 years. The lessons he teaches are short and frank. They make you think; they make you laugh; they make you change. Here he explains what it takes to not just survive but thrive in meetings, navigate politics at work, balance servant leadership with self-care, build a rapport with colleagues, understand why smart isn't always superior-and more. These are leadership lessons like you've never heard before. Whether you're managing a team, a company, or a critical project, these tips can help lead you in the right direction.

Countless sources have documented the difficulties women face in reaching the top tiers of today's businesses. Women leaders face different expectations, norms, and realities—and are paid and promoted less. Creating an environment of inclusive excellence, where both women and men can thrive, takes the right skills and strategy. This course is for anyone who wants to build a more equitable and collaborative culture at their organization, including women leaders and the men who work with them. Business professors, colleagues, and coaches Daisy L. Lovelace and Carolyn Goerner discuss the common challenges that women in leadership face—including gender bias, communication barriers, and imposter syndrome—and introduce strategies to overcome them. Plus, get tips for championing women's leadership and becoming a strong ally.

Leadership isn't just a skill for managers. Demonstrating leadership is important for employees at every level of an organization. There are opportunities to lead every day, whether you hold a formal leadership position or not. In this course, leadership and personal development experts Lisa Earle McLeod and Elizabeth McLeod outline how individual contributors or SMEs can exhibit leadership by influencing, inspiring, mentoring, and motivating others. They also help you overcome unique challenges such as how to communicate when you think your boss or team is headed in the wrong direction.

Microsoft Excel puts a wealth of functionality at your fingertips. This course was designed to focus on the most essential of these functions, covering the features and capabilities that brand-new users need to get going with the 2019 version of Excel. Instructor David Rivers covers creating and opening workbooks, entering text and numbers, working with formulas, basic formatting, inserting charts, and sharing and printing workbooks. Upon wrapping up this course, you'll have the skills you need to start building easy-to-use, accurate spreadsheets with this hugely popular program.

Collaborate more seamlessly using Zoom, the popular video conferencing tool. In this course, staff instructor Garrick Chow shows how to schedule, moderate, and participate in Zoom meetings. Garrick begins by showing how to set up your Zoom account and adjust audio and video settings. Next, he walks through joining and participating in meetings scheduled by others. Garrick covers how to use a variety of options during meetings such as adjusting views, muting your microphone, turning your video camera on and off, and sharing your screen. Finally, Garrick demonstrates how to host your own Zoom meetings, from scheduling and adjusting moderator settings to recording meetings.

The workforce is more diverse than ever, especially when it comes to age. Getting multiple generations to work together effectively is critical for business success. In this course, leadership expert Roberta Matuson helps managers gain an understanding of the complexity of leading a workgroup comprised of four or even five generations: traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers. She explains the differences in the cultures in which each generation was raised, and what you can do when managing an employee young enough to be your child and old enough to be your parent. Plus, learn how to leverage each generation's unique strengths.

We all get anxious at times. But what do you do when anxiety is disrupting your job? This course provides resources to help you manage your anxiety and be more effective and successful at work. Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard-trained psychologist, explains how to recognize anxiety and understand when you need clinical help. For those who can manage day to day, he provides guidance to navigate the ins and outs of the workplace: from finding a job to having more successful interactions with coworkers. He also provides productivity strategies designed to help you manage conflict, technology hiccups, and work-related stress. Plus, learn how to manage and lead with anxiety in mind—so you can guide your reports through challenging times and overcome imposter syndrome and other anxiety-related traps.

Depression can make even simple tasks feel challenging. But there are simple strategies that can help you manage and even improve your well-being and productivity. In this course, Dr. Srini Pillay shares practical techniques to help individuals dealing with depression approach work more effectively, manage mood and fatigue, talk about depression with coworkers, and lead others while dealing with depression. 

To be a high-performing manager, you need an advanced understanding of the principles of great leadership. In this course, author and business coach Dr. Todd Dewett shares the secrets businesses large and small use to manage teams, achieve precise results, and intelligently execute business strategies. He focuses on three key areas: motivation, positive change, and decision making. Discover how to shift your mindset, create a culture of motivation and accountability, make decisions that matter, and maintain excellence over time.

This course covers how stress can be used to fuel positive change. Instructor Heidi Hanna, PhD discusses how to use stress effectively, how to reduce employee stress during difficult times, and how managers can create an environment that helps connect employees to the bigger picture.

This online course is designed for county government workers to enhance customer service skills, foster community satisfaction, and contribute to the overall success of county operations. It provides practical strategies and knowledge necessary to offer exceptional customer service tailored to the unique challenges within county government.

There are more opportunities than ever to get your ideas in front of large audiences. You have TV, radio, and digital news, but you also have podcasts and social media sites. Many of these interviews can also be conducted from almost anywhere in the world. In this course, Jessica Chen, the founder and CEO of Soulcast Media--a global business communications agency--takes you through exactly what you need to do to prepare for any media interview. As a former Emmy Award-winning TV news reporter, Jessica knows firsthand the kinds of questions interviewers ask, and how you can navigate the conversation strategically using your words, tone of voice, and body language. After watching this course, you’ll be better prepared to project confidence and control your own narrative in all media interview settings.

An organization's culture is evidenced in its values, policies, attitudes, structures, and beliefs. It is a tangible asset that impacts morale and company performance, and it can be built, nurtured, and changed. In this course, leadership speaker and consultant Sara Canaday defines organizational culture and explores the different types of cultures prevalent today. She provides clear strategies for young companies to develop a healthy culture from the beginning. For established, merged, or stagnant companies, Sara introduces tools and practices required to successfully assess, refine, and change an existing culture. Plus, she highlights the leader's pivotal role in shaping and managing culture.

Microsoft Outlook—one of the most widely used email and calendaring apps in the world—boasts tools that can help you work smarter and collaborate more effectively. In this course, follow along with Jess Stratton as she shows how to set up and manage your email and calendars in Outlook 2019. Jess begins by familiarizing you with the interface and explaining how to add Exchange and IMAP accounts. She then shares practical strategies and tips that can help you efficiently read, organize, and send mail; add delegates who can act on your behalf; stay on schedule with the calendar; create and assign tasks; and work with Outlook data.

Pressure is an inevitable part of work and our daily lives. Those who are able to maintain their cool in challenging, high-pressure situations—or even thrive—put themselves in a better position to succeed. In this course, learn how to identify pressure situations and tackle them with confidence. Instructor Eddie Davila helps you identify your unique pressure points, and explains how to approach them through preparation and planning, as well as what to do when the big moment arrives.

Before you affect change in your role or organization, you need to develop and manage yourself. In this series, personal branding and career expert Dorie Clark shares research-based best practices to help you establish your credibility, identify your leadership blind spots, deal with change, find mentors and sponsors to guide you, and more.

Harassment is still pervasive in many workplaces—despite the fact that nearly every organization has an anti-harassment policy in place and offers related training. How can HR leaders—and leaders in general—proactively create safe and healthy workplaces? What are the standards required? In this course, Catherine Mattice Zundel explains how to approach this critical topic so that real, positive change can occur at your organization. Catherine dives into the realities of harassment, defining what it actually is and why many targets choose not to report it. Discover how to help prevent harassment by placing a greater focus on culture in conjunction with policy and training. In addition, learn tips that can help you talk openly about behaviors so that you don't cross boundaries.

In this self-paced online series, you will learn how to communicate with the public effectively.

Are you ready to embrace a way of communicating with your community? If you have been awake in the past 20 years, you understand that social media is KING when it comes to communication. Don't be left in the Dark Ages! Sit back, relax, and prepare yourself to learn all you need to know to get started with social media as a county official. This course will provide an overview of why county officials might want to use social media; how to get started; learn about First Amendment considerations; and some best practices to keep you on the right track. 

Move beyond administrative HR with its focus on payroll, forms, and policies to develop a strategic focus on your most important asset: people. HR expert Catherine Mattice defines the components of strategic HR planning, including assessing current needs, forecasting the future, and supporting the overall organizational strategy and vision. She helps you define your talent needs, and provide guidance on how to recruit, onboard, train, compensate, manage, and engage employees. She also helps you tie training and other HR activities to business results and ROI—to show your leaders the true value of your HR programs.

Join executive leadership consultant and coach Mike Figliuolo as he reveals how to implement a strategic planning process in your organization—a process that can be repeated yearly and ensures you get input from all relevant stakeholders. In this course, Mike shows you how to establish and articulate your organization's core competencies, vision, mission, and strategic filters. Using these criteria, he shows how to prioritize competing initiatives, how to allocate resources to best support those initiatives, and how all of these factors combine to create a compelling strategic plan.

Live a life filled with less stress, greater well-being, and enhanced productivity by learning how to make transformational changes. Continue your Thrive journey and discover how to go from coping and surviving to actually thriving. In this course, Arianna Huffington and Joey Hubbard—the director of trainings at Thrive Global—discuss how well-being can contribute to your productivity and success at work.

Effective time management is an indispensable skill. Best-selling author and business coach Dave Crenshaw lays the theoretical and practical foundations for managing your time and becoming more productive. Learn how to get more done in the shortest time possible and avoid the obstacles and distractions that can get in the way of good time management. Dave gives practical strategies for increasing productivity in three main areas: developing habits to be more organized and reducing clutter in your workspace; staying mentally on task and eliminate the to-dos you have floating in your head; and developing a time budget to get the most done during your workday and focus on your most valuable activities.

Working from home is a wonderful opportunity, but time management can be a challenge. With so many demands on your time and attention, it's a tricky balancing act to stay productive. In this course, bestselling author and productivity expert Dave Crenshaw offers best practices for anyone who works full-time or occasionally from home. Dave begins by showing how to set up a dedicated workspace for maximum productivity, including tips on setting up your computer to ensure you stay focused. Then Dave walks through how to craft your daily schedule for peak productivity and plan meaningful breaks to avoid burnout. He explains how to collaborate with remote coworkers, including how to use virtual meetings productively. Finally, Dave offers advice for working parents and other caregivers who might be balancing professional and personal responsibilities in the home.

Want to advance your communication skills? Improve your writing. Clear and concise writing is the key to helping your audience understand your message, whether it's delivered in an email, report, memo, or white paper. This course, designed by Adcom Designs and Write It Well managing director, Natasha Terk, provides relevant, actionable tips to improve the quality and impact of your writing. Learn how to plan a message, format it for easy reading, and use the right words to communicate clearly. Plus, learn how to reduce or eliminate errors to maintain your professional image and credibility.

Inspirational leaders can create transformation within themselves and their teams, in the form of pursuing services and missions that matter. This course is designed to help leaders create cultures of innovation, engagement, and growth. Leadership expert Henna Inam shares specific practices any leader, or aspiring leader, can leverage to discover values, identify a purpose, and define a vision. Learn how to lead with integrity and empower others to be their best.

In this course, Chris Croft shares methods for recognizing the characteristics of some of the most common types of difficult people, and gives you strategies for dealing with these individuals more effectively. Chris provides practical techniques for dealing with a variety of different behaviors, including negativity, aggression, childishness, and selfishness. Plus, he explains how to overcome your own negative thinking, and get the best from a difficult boss.

In this course, you will learn how to write effective emails that leave a positive impression. You'll discover how to be personal and direct, and how to use different types of emails such as inquiry, transactional, and marketing. You'll also learn how to write engaging and clear emails that grab your customer's attention, convert prospects to customers, and how to craft a relevant call to action. Additionally, you'll learn how to reuse emails for different purposes, and how to leverage email content to improve your website's FAQ and About Us pages.

 

Plain English is writing that is clear, straightforward, and free of jargon, wordiness, and clichés. It's the standard for all business and government communication in the US. In this course, instructor Judy Steiner-Williams explains plain English characteristics and importance, introduces online tools to analyze your writing, provides 11 rules to make your writing clear, and offers exercises and suggestions for revision. Learning plain English can save you time, money, and reputation. Watch now to improve your writing skills.