Top 10 Executive Courses to Improve Your Soft Skills

New York University’s Stern School of Business puts on the Communication Strategies: Developing Leadership Presence program. Participants practice developing and delivering messages that support their personal brand. Through videotaped sessions, they identify strengths and weaknesses in their communication style. They also get feedback from faculty to make improvements, leaving the course with a stronger leadership presence. 

University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business runs the Communications Excellence program. Participants are empowered to overcome public speaking anxiety and hone their presentation abilities to captivate their audiences, important factors in soft skill development. They learn to leverage their breath, body and voice to maximize their presence and impact while speaking. They also learn to recognize when something is not working, and how to pivot on-the-fly. 

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business offers a Communicating with Impact module within its LEAD Online Business Program. The soft skill module is designed to help participants become better communications. Throughout the hands-on course, executives sharpen their communication skills through role-playing exercises, learning how to deliver praise, account for mistakes, build rapport and become more persuasive. They also learn about communication biases, and how to lead meetings. 

London Business School has its High Performance People Skills for Leaders program, that helps leaders to build the confidence and capabilities to communicate with their teams. Participants in this executive course learn how to develop influential relationships with diverse groups of people, as well as motivate and inspire people, building teams that work together in harmony. What’s more, the participants gain coaching skills to help others realize their potential and confront poor performance or difficult people. 

King’s Business School runs a practical, soft skill-oriented short course called Emotional Intelligence for Leadership. Contrary to popular opinion, EQ is a skill that can be learnt and honed. On this program, participants learn skills for building high performance teams, resolving conflict and managing effectively. They also develop their own resilience while learning powerful techniques to enhance their working relationships. 

Darden Executive Education puts on the Leading with Humanity: New Skills for the Digital Age course. The program is about how soft skills such as empathy, communication and encouragement can help participants to raise organizational performance by helping others achieve their potential. Participants learn to lead and engage people more deeply, and cultivate an environment of transparency and collaboration when everyone has equal input. 

The Refining Your Leadership Approach and Style program at Texas Executive Education helps leaders to identify, optimize and adapt their personal leadership style. Through a combination of classroom instruction, peer discussion and practical exercises, participants learn how to deploy the most effective leadership style for a given situation, and define the legacy they want to leave behind as a leader. 

Babson College’s program, Conscious Leadership: Leading with Authenticity and Purpose, helps develop leaders who are inclusive and team-oriented, who inspire and bring out the best in those around them. In this course, participants learn how to adapt their approach to leadership—a critical soft skill—to become more conscious and to lead with authenticity, putting employee wellbeing at the core of what they do.  

Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management runs the Interpersonal Dynamics course, which provides executives with the skills to become more effective leaders and to influence those around them. Participants learn the soft skills to improve the functioning of their teams, how to overcome differences and toxic behavior.

Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School puts on the Foundations of Leadership and Management course. In this program, participants learn the fundamentals of leading and managing teams with purpose. More specifically, they learn how to select and motivate the right people to join their teams, and how to leverage group processes and personal networks to become more effective leaders.