12 Best Online Leadership Courses and Certificate Programs

Top Leadership Online Courses and Certificate Programs

Taking leadership courses is critical for acquiring the necessary abilities, improving self-awareness, and boosting self-esteem and credibility. They give people the information and resources they need to handle difficult situations, encourage productive communication, and motivate and lead groups. Additionally, leadership courses foster innovation, network building, and peer learning, all of which help students develop their careers. In the end, leadership programs are essential for creating capable leaders who can enhance organizational success and foster a healthy work environment.

List of best online leadership program courses and certificate programs

The Complete Management Skills certification course – Udemy

Similar to MIT’s Advanced Management Program, and available here for a tiny fraction of the cost. By taking this course, you can develop a higher level of leadership and management skills to help you reach your fullest potential and deliver extraordinary value to your team, your organization, and the communities you serve.   

Course Highlights:

  • Innovate, execute good ideas, and diffuse the ideas throughout the organization.
  • Unlock more strategic information and find better ways of working together.
  • Succeed in a world where smart, orchestrated networks and tiny firms that do not need much capital to compete with larger organizations.
  • Make their organizations more agile, responsive, and creative.

Course duration 4 hours 38 mins

Sign up for this course:

[2023] The Complete Management Skills Certification Course | Udemy

2. Effective leadership skills and strategies- Alison

This leadership course focuses on assisting leaders in maximizing the potential of their team members by giving constructive criticism, reprograming their mentality for achievement, regulating emotions, accepting responsibility for errors, resolving conflicts, and skillfully saying “no.” The course emphasizes the value of excellent leadership in attaining team goals and provides tools and techniques for effective leadership. Participants will acquire the skills they need to guide their teams to superior outcomes by completing this course.

Course Highlights

  • Identify behaviors that will elevate your personal brand and leadership style.
  • Explain how to give and receive feedback in a way that builds relationships.
  • Recognize how to adopt ‘super leader’ attitudes and reframe limiting beliefs.
  • Discuss which communication approach to adopt based on what you want the outcome of the conversation to be.
  • Recognize how and when to change your leadership style in order to make your team accountable to you.
  • Describe how to say ‘no’ in the most appropriate and acceptable manner.

Course duration- 3 hours

Sign up for this course

Learn Leadership Principles and Skills in this free online course (alison.com)

3. Connected Leadership- Coursera

The goal of this course is to improve your capacity to affect change at the individual, team, and system levels. You can create a strong connection between your purpose, priorities, potential, and progress by engaging in study, contemplation, and useful tools. In actuality, this is mastering a straightforward technique to help you reflect on your purpose, define your priorities, see your potential, and strive towards your objectives.

By utilizing your individual talents and styles, you will also improve your leadership abilities and work with others to help your team perform to its fullest potential. Additionally, you will learn how to use systems thinking to effect change while comprehending its strength and complexity. In the end, the course equips you to take the lead and effect change in a variety of settings.

Course Highlights:

  • Improve your ability to get the most out of life
  • Strengthen your leadership toolkit
  • Practice and apply systems thinking to plan for change

Learning hours 31 hours

Sign up link

Connected Leadership | Coursera

4. Leadership skills- Coursera

This is a beginner course designed for professionals from diverse work backgrounds. The course helps you lean on your experiences and strengthen your capacity to lead across boundaries, from any political or organizational position, with or without authority. The course will also enable you to learn important leadership skills, clarifying the relationships among key concepts such as definitions of leadership, self-management, authority, power, influence, politics, negotiations, change management, decision-making, and various leadership styles.

This knowledge will provide you with a practical and coherent theoretical framework for applying and exercising leadership. Lastly, the course explores the challenge of managing the inevitable personal stresses and dangers of leading a team. The course draws from business management, philosophy, spirituality, history, literature, sports, communications, and psychology.

Course Highlights:

  • Acquire an understanding of oneself and build inner stability.
  • Describe various leadership styles and how to lead downwards.
  • Explain the biases that impact communication and a leader’s decision-making capability.
  • Explore the art of leading upward and sideways.

Learning hours 23 hours

Sign up link

Leadership Skills | Coursera

5. Public leadership credential- Harvard University

The Public Leadership Credential from Harvard Kennedy School is designed for professionals with a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of five years of experience, and a commitment to the public good. Learners do not need to have advanced experience with statistics. Participation in the program requires proficiency in English and 10 to 12 hours per week dedicated to reading, viewing multimedia materials, participating in group learning activities and discussions with peers, and completing interactive assignments.

Course Highlights:

  • Learn how to utilize the power of analytical evidence to problem solve, measure effectiveness and develop impactful policy.
  • Examine real-world policy challenges and learn how to analyze, design, and recommend effective policy solutions.
  • Develop fundamental skills for moral leadership and learn to instill lasting change in communities.

 Learning hours– 10-12 hours per week

Sign up for this course

Public Leadership Credential | Harvard University

6. Unlocking your leadership signature -MIT education

This unique program encourages introspection to help you identify and cultivate your personal leadership signature. It also demonstrates how to apply your leadership signature to your specific circumstances, regardless of where you are along your professional development path. In the process, it will enable you to increase your value to the growing number of organizations that are seeking transformational approaches to meeting their leadership development goals.

Course Highlights:

  • This course runs over 6 weeks with an estimated 6-8 hours per week of study time
  • This course is delivered in our Self-Paced Online format which enables you to participate at your own pace within weekly modules
  • You will learn through a variety of formats including interactive videos, practice quizzes, presentations, assignments, and discussion forums
  • You will have access to a Success Adviser who will help you manage your time, and support you with any administrative or technical queries you might have
  • You will earn a certificate of course completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management

Sign up for this course

Unlocking Your Leadership Signature (mit.edu)

7. Stanford lead program- Stanford education

Stanford LEAD helps you discover your purpose and maximize your potential to meet the demands of today’s dynamic world. Taught by the same world-renowned Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty who teach in our MBA program, this year-long experiential learning journey is highly flexible, customizable, and actionable. Emerge with the fundamental business skills and innovation mindset needed to successfully navigate and implement real change.

LEAD is more than a program; it’s a community. Collaborate with a diverse, accomplished, and energized cohort of peers. Join clubs to connect with other LEADers with shared goals and interests and participate in extended learning opportunities beyond your coursework to get even more out of the program. After the program ends, stay connected with the entire LEAD community — thousands of past participants who are ready to learn, engage, accelerate, and disrupt their organizations, industries, and the world.

Course Highlights:

  • Tackle your own real-world obstacles and opportunities by integrating course concepts with daily business and leadership challenges.
  • Expand your perspectives, broaden your understanding of course concepts, and exchange ideas with an incredibly diverse and global cohort of peers.
  • Get personalized, actionable feedback from Stanford GSB faculty, course facilitators, and peers to achieve your learning objectives.
  • Gain access to the Stanford GSB community with exclusive invitations to guest speakers and special events.

Course duration- 5- 10 hours per week

Sign up here

Stanford LEAD Program | Program | Stanford Online

8. Leading people and team specialization

In this specialization, you will learn essential leadership skills, including how to inspire and motivate individuals, manage talent, influence without authority, and lead teams. In this specialization, you will not only learn from Michigan faculty. You will also learn directly from exceptional leaders including Jeff Brodsky, Global Head of HR for Morgan Stanley, and John Beilein, previous Head Coach of the University of Michigan Men’s Basketball Team.

We will share with you our research on how to lead people and teams effectively and work with you to apply these insights to your own teams and leadership. In every course, you will have an opportunity to apply new leadership skills by working through a series of practical leadership assignments. In addition, the capstone will enable you to work on live leadership challenges.

Course Highlights:

  • Create and communicate your vision as a leader
  • Manage talent to improve employee performance, development and retention
  • Use the Michigan Model of Leadership to define organizational goals
  • Create a high-quality team charter that enhances team performance

Sign up here

Leading People and Teams | Coursera

9. Leadership skills training: Become an inspiring leader

In this course, experienced facilitator Tony Hunt explores the qualities that every leader should aspire to attain. He will guide you through the key aspects that constitute great leadership.Every team is defined by its leader. He or she needs to be able to motivate, challenge, and—most importantly—steer their team in the right direction.

Course Highlights:

  • Create mission statements
  • Manage their time effectively
  • Develop strategic overviews
  • Understand the individual needs of team members
  • Align a coaching approach
  • Create effective appraisals

Course duration- 2 hours

Sign up here

Leadership Skills Training: Become an Inspiring Leader! | Udemy

10. Leadership skills for the digital age

Leadership Skills for the Digital Age is a high-impact online program that will help you to lead at your best in a globally connected, ever-changing world. You will undertake a comprehensive 360-degree competency assessment and work with executive leadership coaches to understand how to capitalize on your strengths and overcome your weaknesses.

You will explore the latest evidence-based insights on leading in the digital age, including which competencies are core for success in today’s faced-paced environment, how to motivate and empower teams in the virtual space, how to influence and persuade others around your digital vision, and how to manage a diverse, multi-generational workforce.

Course Highlights:

  • Define your learning objectives
  • Review your progress on a weekly basis
  • Overcome your challenges
  • Translate what you learn into your own context

Course duration – 4- 5 hours per week

Sign up here

Leadership Essentials Online Course – Build core leadership skills (imd.org)

11. Leadership communication with impact

Building effective communication skills becomes even more important in today’s rapidly changing business landscape, where technological disruption is leading to increased volatility and uncertainty. Leaders can help their people navigate the complexities of the digital age and make meaning in this change. Leadership communication capabilities that foster meaningful collaboration, interaction and engagement are must-have skills for executives today.

Leadership Communication with Impact is an online program designed to help leaders improve their impact, performance and effectiveness as communicators. The aim is to equip you – as leaders – with the tools, techniques and skills you need to build your communication capacity at all levels – whether it be interpersonal, organizational or external, and enable you to become a leader communicator who connects and resonates with any stakeholder.

Course Highlights:

  • Discover the inner strengths of your communication potential by harnessing your communication intelligence
  • Learn about your communication approach and how to adjust your communication style to increase your influence as a leader
  • Build skills in creating compelling and relevant messages as well as displaying impactful leadership presence
  • Expand your communication capacity to motivate and inspire people, as well as successfully connect organizational vision, strategy and execution
  • Create dynamic ways to continually hone and improve your communication skills in the future

Course duration- 5 weeks

Sign up here- Leadership Communication with Impact | INSEAD

12. Leadership and Management certification program- Wharton Online

This course delivers the specialized information and skill development that contribute to an executive’s success. During the program, you will develop management and decision-making skills, learning how to scale leadership and adapt to corporate challenges. You will learn from world-class faculty all over the world and can progress through the program at your own pace.

Course Highlights:

  • Leadership in the 21st Century
  • Managing and Motivating Talent
  • Managing the Global Firm
  • Strategic Management

Course duration 4-6 weeks

Sign up here

Leadership and Management Certificate Program Online – Wharton (upenn.edu)