Course description
Have you ever wondered how to effectively build relationships in the workplace and throughout your career? Research shows that individuals who form and maintain strong mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship relationships are significantly more likely to succeed professionally. In this course, we explore each of these developmental relationships and discuss their unique benefits, challenges, and opportunities. We begin by focusing on how you can make the most of these developmental relationships when you are in the learning position (mentee, coachee, or sponsee). We address questions such as: what are the best ways to network so you can build development relationships? Once you are in a meeting with a mentor, coach, or sponsor, what are the right questions to ask them? How do you know when to start or end a developmental relationship? Then, we shift focus and learn how to be an effective mentor, coach, and sponsor to others. We discuss questions such as: how do you give good advice? How do you recognize the type of support that your mentee, coachee, or sponsee needs? How do you evaluate your performance as a mentor, coach, or sponsor? Finally, we discuss how organizational structures affect the extent to which these relationships can be successful. We answer questions such as: when do formalized mentorship or coaching programs work? How should these programs be designed to optimize outcomes? This course is designed to introduce you to different forms of and perspectives on developmental relationships so that you can understand the unique value of different types of developmental relationships in the workplace; learn how to create and make the most of developmental relationships when you are in the learning position; discover how to become a more effective leader by strengthening your mentorship, coaching, and sponsorship skills; and understand how organizational structures can affect developmental relationships within an organization. For complete and current details about this Harvard Extension course, see the description in the DCE Course Search.
