The Top Business Skills Your Employees Need in April 2019

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, by 2030, the demand for critical soft skills is expected to rise by 26% across all industries due to the rise of automation and digital transformation.

To help prepare professionals for workplace trends and digitization, this month, Udemy for Business has added a number of courses on critical business skills. Here are some of the latest trending topics added to our collection:

Business skills

1. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Emotional intelligence is one of the biggest predictors of success at work. By definition, it’s the capacity to be aware of, in control and express one’s emotions and handle interpersonal relationships empathetically. In a professional setting, it’s not only important to be efficient with our work but also important to be smarter with our emotions.

In Emotional Intelligence at Work: Learn from Your Emotions, learners will learn why EQ is so important for their career, how to focus on strategic thinking and exercise self-control while expressing themselves authentically and create rewarding relationships. This course is ideal for employees who want to better manage their emotions and improve their workplace relationships and managers who want to better understand how to motivate and coach their team members. will learn critical EQ skills like collaboration and building effective relationships.

Instructor Leila Bulling Towne is an executive coach and boardroom facilitator for startups and Fortune 500 companies, the former director of L&D at CNET and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. See Leila’s blog post, Why Emotional Intelligence is the Secret to Success at Work.

“I liked the reminder of how important self-awareness is for developing emotional intelligence, and the self-awareness activity is great!” – Course Review

2. Developing talent as a ‘Superboss’

A ‘superboss’ is a leader who creates other leaders. Superbosses are incredibly successful managers who have a track record of generating and regenerating leaders.

Taught by Thinkers50 thought leader Sydney Finkelstein, The Superboss Playbook for Managers is a comprehensive resource to learn best practices used by top industry leaders to create unconventional, creative, and high-performance talent. This brand new course provides practical tips, ideas, and activities on how to take your leadership skills to the next level. Experienced managers who want to adopt new techniques to develop their employees and new managers looking to learn best practices for managing high-performance teams would benefit from this course.

Instructor Sydney Finkelstein is also a professor and director of the Center for Leadership at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, BBC columnist and Harvard Business Review contributor. See Sydney’s blog post, 3 Superboss Strategies That Will Transform Your Managers.

“Compelling framework to become a better manager or Superboss. I appreciate Sydney’s data-driven and story-telling approach to define the practices of successful leaders, and provide managers everywhere with the playbook necessary to elevate their own management practices to strive to become the next superboss. Good mix of inspiration and practical advice. Terrific course.” — Course Review

3. New manager essentials

New managers can often feel unsupported, unsure and stressed out. According to DDI, 60% of new managers would say the stress of transitioning to a new manager position is second only to divorce! Additionally, many employees cite their manager as being one of the most important factors in their happiness and engagement at work.

The Essential Guide for Effective Managers provides learnings for all types of managers. First-time people managers and even seasoned managers who have inherited a new team can learn skills to be a successful manager. This course provides hands-on activities and guidance on how to build effective communication skills, empathy, and situational leadership to help their direct reports succeed in their roles.

Instructor Marie Deveaux is an executive coach who has worked with 120+ executives at companies like Pandora, Prudential, Spotify, and L’Oreal and is passionate about helping professionals advance their soft skills. See Mary’s blog post, 4 Ways New Managers Can Lead Diverse Teams.

“I found the course to be very good—it exceeded my expectations. As a person who’s led and managed teams since 1992, I found that the course included many great reminders and a lot of practical application(s). Well done!” — Course Review

4. Goal setting

Being able to identify what you’re working on and measure yourself is crucial to understanding how you’re performing and succeeding in your career. Setting goals seems like it should be easy to do at work. However, we may have often vague, undefined ideas about what we want to accomplish at work. Without concrete steps to achieve goals or measurable metrics, it’s impossible to know if you’ve reached them.

As an executive coach, Udemy for Business instructor Leila Bulling Towne has spent her career helping professionals and executives improve the way they’re working and set actionable goals. In Goal Setting at Work: Plan for Success and Reach Your Goals, learners will understand why goal setting is important, master the SMART goal setting framework, and put their skills into action by developing a realistic plan to meet newly set goals. This course provides hands-on worksheets, PDFs, and checklists to practice goal setting.

“Leila is an engaging and motivating instructor; she inspires me to move away from vague ideas and use SMART goals to measure and evaluate progress. She provides tangible and actionable guidance, clear explanations of different goal-setting frameworks, and useful resources to practice what we learn. I look forward to setting the next quarter’s goals with my team and increasing our impact together.” — Course Review

5. Mentorship

Mentors provide invaluable guidance and advice in both a professional and personal capacity. At work, great mentoring happens at all levels of the organization. According to ATD, 75% of executives believe mentorship was key to their success.

Mentoring is an important skill for managers who need to guide their employees, subject matter experts who want to mentor junior professionals or peers who want to support their colleagues’ success through peer mentoring. Be a Great Mentor: A Practical Guide to Mentoring is a resource that provides practical tips on how to become better at mentoring. In this course, learners will gain clarity on the value they bring as a mentor, identify and select their ideal mentee, build effective mentorship relationships by asking powerful questions, develop effective listening skills, and give actionable advice.

Instructor JeanAnn Nichols brings 30+ years of experience leading various business functions to Udemy for Business. She is an executive coach and the former VP of Sales and Marketing at Intel. See JeanAnn’s blog post, 4 Tips on How to Be a Great Mentor.

“JeanAnn offers excellent advice from why one might want to be a mentor, to how to ask compelling, powerful questions to providing practical tools to help foster a successful mentor/mentee relationship. Great food for thought for not only mentors, but anyone looking to improve their relationships and communication skills. Great course!” — Course Review