Leadership IQ · Online certificate courses
What Great Managers Do Differently
Build the everyday management skills that should have come with the job.
- Format
- Online · self-paced
- Duration
- 6 weeks
- Weekly commitment
- ~90 minutes
Inside the course
Practical tools for the conversations managers face every week.
Clear expectations, useful feedback, and better coaching make daily management more effective. In this six-week course, learn the scripts and frameworks to handle difficult personalities, retain high performers, and protect your time.
- Set clear expectations and deliver feedback people can use.
- Coach for higher performance and respond to difficult employee behaviors.
- Support high performers while prioritizing and delegating your own work.
For new and experienced managers who want a practical, consistent approach to leading people.
Week by week
What you’ll learn
Week 01Setting Crystal-Clear Expectations: The Power of Word Pictures
Setting Crystal-Clear Expectations: The Power of Word Pictures
Most managers lose more performance to fuzzy expectations than to anything else, and they usually have no idea it’s happening. Word Pictures fix that by defining what needs work, good work, and great work actually look like in your team’s own language. Once everybody can see the same target, the arguing about whether something was done well tends to stop on its own.
- The Word Picture technique, a three-level system that eliminates ambiguity for any role or goal
- Why management clichés like “think outside the box” quietly destroy accountability
- How to turn abstract goals into concrete, measurable achievements your team can actually hit
- Coaching questions that spark self-awareness and ownership in your regular team meetings
- How defining “needs work,” “good work,” and “great work” aligns a team without micromanaging
- A billionaire’s productivity secret, and how maximizing 1.2 million labor hours a day transformed his company
- How Caesars Palace used five simple principles to improve service and generate millions in new revenue
Week 02Giving Feedback Without Making People Angry
Giving Feedback Without Making People Angry
Most feedback fails for one reason: it’s loaded with interpretations, reactions, and ultimatums that put people on the defensive before you get to the point. The FIRE model strips all of that out and leaves the facts, which turns a dreaded confrontation into a conversation that changes behavior.
- A six-step script that turns feedback conversations into collaborative problem-solving
- The FIRE Model, and how stripping out emotional baggage converts reactions into results
- Why the compliment sandwich fails, and the science-backed technique that replaces it
- How to approach your most sensitive employees with confidence instead of dread
- A proven method for the stubborn team member who refuses feedback, without escalating into conflict
- The neuroscience of feedback, and how primacy and recency effects make your message stick
- How to frame feedback as an opportunity rather than a reprimand
Week 03Managing Narcissists, Blamers, Dramatics, and More
Managing Narcissists, Blamers, Dramatics, and More
Narcissists, blamers, dramatics, and chronic negativists drain more energy and morale than almost anything else on a team, and most managers absorb it because they don’t have a script. This week hands you the scripts. You’ll learn how to redirect emotional chaos back to facts, enforce accountability, and stop toxic behavior from spreading to everyone else.
- The four words that disarm dramatic personalities and stop an emotional overreaction cold
- How to deflate narcissistic behavior without wrecking their confidence or your team’s morale
- A conversational tactic that redirects blame-prone employees to accountability in under five minutes
- A last-ditch script for talented terrors before they do real damage to your team
- A three-step reframing technique that turns chronic defeatism into something workable
- The psychology of why narcissists thrive, and how to use their own insecurities to manage them
- What to do when nothing works and the attitude is genuinely beyond repair
Week 04Do More Coaching and Less Managing
Do More Coaching and Less Managing
Most teams are sitting on a goldmine of untapped talent, and most managers try to unlock it with lectures. It doesn’t work. Coaching does, and coaching is mostly a matter of asking the right questions. This week turns middle performers into high performers, reignites career ambition, and gets people chasing goals that actually matter to them.
- The 4-step framework that moves middle performers into high achievement
- Why SMART goals fall flat, and how HARD Goals produce inspiration and results instead
- The one question every manager should ask to turn a “meh” employee into a motivated one
- A coaching strategy proven to reduce burnout while reigniting passion in high-potentials
- A psychological technique for building the confidence and resilience that fuel top performance
- How to use self-efficacy and resilience exercises to lift the whole team
- The counterintuitive reason asking fewer questions may be sabotaging your coaching, and the fix
Week 05Solving the High Performer Crisis
Solving the High Performer Crisis
The quiet burnout of high performers is one of the most overlooked threats to any team, and it usually starts with rewarding great work with silence and more work. This week replaces that with Shoves and Tugs conversations, the 5 motivational drivers, and coaching moments short enough to actually happen. It’s the difference between keeping your best people and replacing them.
- A method for identifying what motivates or frustrates each high performer, and acting on it this week
- The Shoves and Tugs framework for uncovering the real reasons people stay or leave
- How to recognize great work with precision, without inflating egos or breeding resentment
- Why high performers so often feel undervalued, and the five-minute conversation that reverses it
- Why failing to differentiate between high and low performers tanks morale, and the data-backed fix
- How to decode any employee’s motivational drivers using five simple categories
- A Nobel Prize-winning insight that makes your feedback build trust instead of eroding it
Week 06The Leadership Time Hack: Prioritize, Delegate, and Excel
The Leadership Time Hack: Prioritize, Delegate, and Excel
This week flips the usual time-management advice. It’s not about squeezing more into the day, it’s about clearing space for the work only you can do. You’ll identify your green light work and protect it with time tracking, delegation, time chunking, and the green-yellow-orange-red framework.
- The Green, Yellow, Red framework for prioritizing impact and cutting the time-wasters
- Why to-do lists fail, and how a Top 3 Green Light Priorities list replaces them
- How to reclaim hours of deep focus by mastering time-blocking and shutting down interruptions
- A six-question system that turns delegation into employee development instead of dumping
- A WWII sabotage manual’s unexpected lesson on meetings, and what modern leaders should avoid
- How to find your team’s peak productivity hours and synchronize around them
- The psychology of interruptions, and how hospitals use safe zones to eliminate critical errors
Included with your course
A toolkit for everyday management.
6+ hours of training
High-impact video built on Leadership IQ’s research, with no filler between the useful parts.
Word-for-word scripts
Conversation guides, coaching questions, and delegation frameworks you can use in your next one-on-one.
Weekly assignments
Each one puts that week’s technique to work with your real team, so the learning hardwires instead of fading.
The full toolkit
FIRE Feedback Model, Word Pictures, Green-Yellow-Red, 5 Motivational Drivers, Shoves and Tugs, HARD Goals.
Reflection exercises
Short weekly prompts that build the confidence to actually use these techniques when it counts.
Certificate of Completion
Proof of what you’ve mastered, and it looks good on a LinkedIn profile and a resume.
Who it’s for
Is this for you?
Who this course is for
If you’re responsible for other people’s performance, you’re in the right place.
People leaders at every level
New manager, mid-career leader, or seasoned executive, this gives you the current people-leadership skills so you can lead with clarity and get results you can point to.
HR and talent development professionals
Built for HR leaders who want to raise their managers’ effectiveness with science-backed tools rather than another round of generic leadership training.
High-potential future leaders
For emerging leaders who want the real skills of managing people, running tough conversations, and developing talent before they get thrown into the deep end.
Leadership teams
When an intact leadership team takes this together, they build a shared language, apply the techniques more consistently, and change the culture from the inside out.
Meet your instructor
Who teaches it
Taught by Mark Murphy
Every technique in this course came out of Leadership IQ’s own research, not a summary of somebody else’s framework.
You’re not getting leadership theory. You’re getting the scripts.
Mark is the Founder of Leadership IQ and a New York Times bestselling author. His research and techniques have run in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Harvard Business Review.
He’s trained leaders at Harvard Business School, the United Nations, Microsoft, IBM, MasterCard, and Merck, along with thousands of other organizations. What he teaches here is what he teaches them.
Schedule & participation
Learn on your schedule. Finish with a certificate.
- Starts
- November 2, 2026
- Complete by
- December 20, 2026
- Weekly commitment
- ~90 minutes
Study when it suits your schedule. Complete the required coursework by the deadline to earn your certificate.
Coursework, access, and certificate requirements
Program structure
How the course works
Self-paced inside a fixed six-week window, so it fits around your actual job.
Start date
Starting the week of November 2, you’ll take one course per week for six weeks. There’s no set log-in time, so you can work through each week whenever it fits your schedule.
Weekly work
Each week you’ll watch about one hour of video, complete one assignment that hardwires the learning, and take a short quiz. Figure on roughly 90 minutes a week.
Completion
You can work ahead and you won’t be penalized for falling behind, but all modules, assignments, and quizzes are due by 11:59 PM PST on the final day of the program: Sunday, December 20.
Questions & answers
Questions
Everything else you might be wondering
If your question isn’t here, email Jill and she’ll sort it out.
How does the program actually work?
The program runs at a pace of one course per week for six weeks. There’s no set log-in time, so you work through each week whenever it suits your schedule. Each week is about an hour of video, one assignment, and a short quiz, which usually comes to around 90 minutes.
You can work ahead, and you won’t be penalized for falling behind. All modules, assignments, and quizzes need to be finished by 11:59 PM PST on the final day of the program, Sunday, December 20.
How do I register?
Click any Enroll button on this page, which takes you to the purchase form, and check out from there. Each registration covers a single user.
Every participant gets an email with their log-in information in the days before the program begins. If you’re registering multiple people, contact Jill Sutherland at jill@leadershipiq.com first so she can set you up properly.
What if several leaders from my organization want to attend?
That’s the best way to do it. Intact teams tend to get more out of the program, because everyone finishes it speaking the same language.
Each person needs their own registration. If you’re signing up several people at once, contact Jill Sutherland, Director of Client Services, at jill@leadershipiq.com, and she’ll help you coordinate.
Why does the certificate matter?
To advance your career and earn your team’s confidence, it helps to have proof that you’ve done the work. The Certificate of Completion documents that you’ve mastered what great managers do differently, and it looks good on a LinkedIn profile and a resume. If you’re working toward a broader credential, it’s a useful addition to the file.
Do I get CEUs?
We don’t offer a specific accredited CEU or PDU, mostly because there are so many different state and professional associations. What usually happens is that attendees send the program description to their own licensing authority and receive approval that way. The program is 6+ hours of professional development content, which is generally the number those bodies want to see.
What if I fall behind?
You won’t be penalized for it. The program is self-paced inside the six-week window, so a busy week isn’t a problem as long as everything is finished by the final deadline. Plenty of people work ahead in the early weeks to buy themselves room later.
I need my boss to approve this. Can you help?
Yes. We wrote a template letter you can adapt and send to your CEO or manager, covering what the program includes and what it’s meant to change. Use the approval template here.
Registering a team?
Each participant needs their own registration. If you’re signing up several people at once, contact Jill Sutherland, Director of Client Services, at jill@leadershipiq.com, and she’ll help you coordinate.
Your next step
Enroll in What Great Managers Do Differently
Choose your seats now. Add each participant’s name and email after checkout.