Unlock 1.0: Upskill with these free online courses before office starts full time (and get a certificate!)

In today's times, soft skills are power. They add to your personality, resume, and are in demand all over industries. These may include activities like communication and social intelligence skills. These free online courses will give you more than they take (obviously!). Because a strong foundation of communication skills, planning, leadership, teamwork, attention to detail, and critical thinking is critical to success in the workplace; these skills will help build relationships. They will also improve productivity with internal and external clients.

Also, if you get a Soft Skills Professional Certificate, you will be able to showcase skills that are a game-changer for career growth. For this, I have compiled a list of 7 such courses free online courses. They are inline with the 7 important soft skills necessary in any organisation.

Soft skills free online courses with certificate

1. Communication Skills with Coursera

This a free course that provides a certificate after you complete it. With this course, you can learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals.  Maurice Schweitzer, award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author will teach this course.

This course is designed for improving communications skills. It will also teach you how to discover if someone is lying (and how to react if they are), how to develop trust, the best method of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. Further, you'll also learn when to cooperate and when to compete. Also, how to create persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages.

By the end of the course, you'll be able to understand what others want, respond strategically to their wants and needs, craft convincing and clear messages, and develop the critical communication skills you need to get ahead in business and life. This is a self-paced course that will complete in 10-12 hours. Apart from English, this course is also available in Chinese.

You can enrol here.

2. Problem Solving Skills with Coursera

Problem-solving includes critical thinking. That is, you should know how to apply scientific methods and logical reasoning to problems and decisions. With this course, you will learn various problem solving and decision-making methods. Further, you will also learn how to use these to assess conceptual blocks and situational challenges. This course uses case studies and situations that class members have encountered. It also explores successful models and proven methods that are readily transferable on-the-job.

It is a self-paced course that will take nearly 5 hours to finish. You will get a certificate after you complete the course.

You can enrol here.

3. Leadership Skills with edX

In this business and management course, you will learn how to achieve organizational success through positive and growth-focused employee management. You will also learn the concepts within personal leadership development and how to apply skill-based competencies within an organization. Further, you will learn how to design effective strategy processes and to spot fundamental market and technology changes in the industry. This foundational course enables you to analyze shifting industry structures and develop new capabilities in times of industry transition by covering different parts of strategies. The course began on May 27. It will take 48-50 hours.

You can still enrol in the course here.

4. Teamwork Skills with Alison

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. Further, in this free online course CEO and 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. It will take 5-6 hours and you will get a certificate upon completion.

You can join the self-paced course here.

5. Emotional Intelligence skills with Udemy

This free online Develop Your Emotional Intelligence (EI) course will teach you how to understand and improve your emotional intelligence. Also, strong emotional intelligence skills allow us to understand and interact with our feelings in a way that allows us to build good quality relationships and make decisions effectively. EI affects every aspect of your life, this course is ideal for anyone interested in leading a happier and better-balanced life. This self-paced course will take 3 hours to complete.

Enrol in the course here.

6. Adaptability skills with Learn Skills Academy

The Adaptability theme aims to understand the entry role individual’s ability to adjust and be successful in a variety of workplaces. Here, both people skills and ability to handle situational aspects are assessed. For example, this theme aims to gain insight into an individual’s tendencies towards aspects such as teamwork, cooperation with others, empathy, and helpfulness to peers. Also, the ability to learn what to do when situations change, tendencies towards learning, and how stress is tolerated are additional types of elements evaluated in this theme.

Take free YouTube lectures from here.

7. Work ethics with Coursera

This course offers an action-oriented introduction to Giving Voice to Values (or GVV), an exciting new approach to values-driven leadership development in the workplace, in business education and life.

Further, through positive, real-life examples, pre-scripting, rehearsal and peer coaching, GVV builds the skill, the confidence and likelihood that we will act on our values more often and more successfully. Also, through research and practice, with over 1,000 pilots in educational settings and companies on all seven continents, GVV helps answer the questions: “What if I were going to act on my values? What would I say and do? And finally: How could I be most effective?”

Enrol in the 11-hours long course here.

Also Read: 7 Online Free Courses with Certificate to do during Lockdown