16 Best Free Online Leadership Courses with Certificates

Improve your leadership capabilities with our Premier Leadership Online Courses. They are designed to enhance your influence and organizational impact.

Key Takeaways

• Improve your essential leadership skills and strategies.
• Courses are suited best for new and experienced leaders.
• Learn at your own ease and pace.

What are the best online leadership courses?

Our best Online Leadership Courses equip learners with insights into effective management techniques. You will also learn about strategic thinking and team motivation.

Online Leadership Courses Evaluation & Selection Criteria

We select each leadership course based on the instructor’s experience in leadership, the transformative impact of course content, and positive learner feedback.

Best Free Online Leadership Courses with Certificates:

Below are the names and short descriptions of the best online leadership certification free and paid courses.

Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

University of Illinois via Coursera
154,114 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (5,165 Ratings)
This Online Leadership Courses is Part of Strategic Leadership Specialization & Master of Business Administration (iMBA) degree.

In the Online free Leadership courses, you will get access to all the learning material that will help you understand what leadership is? Training first module is the head and heart of everyday leadership. You will get to examine what it takes for an everyday leader to accomplish all its core tasks.

• From making to implementing all the decisions, you will understand even the minute concept in detail. You will understand the importance of inclusiveness in leadership. Similarly, in the next module, the focus will be on the management of information on everyday leadership.
• You will examine decision analysis as a systematic approach and also how you can use it to make decisions and understand the weaknesses and limitations of decision analysis. Thus this and many other topics will collectively help you understand the foundations of the everyday leader. You might also be interested in best ways to develop leadership skills.

“RELATED COURSES”

Introduction to Project Management

• University of Adelaide via edX
• 492,346+ already enrolled!
• ★★★★★ (155 Ratings)

International Project Management

• RIT via edX
• 53,735+ already enrolled!
• ★★★★★ (17 Ratings)

Agile Meets Design Thinking

• University of Virginia via Coursera
• 160,854+ already enrolled!
• ★★★★★ (3,337 Ratings)

Leadership Theory: The Basics

Coventry University via FutureLearn
2 Weeks (3 hours) of effort required
5,319 Students enrolled!
★★★★★ (19 Ratings)

Do you want to understand the theory that is behind leadership and leadership styles and find out the difference between leaders and managers? From the list of Online Leadership Courses In this course, you will get access to everything you need to understand leadership theory.

• What are the fundamentals of leadership? What are the evolutionary process of leadership theories and many more topics like these will be taught in this course? Similarly, going further, you’ll understand the skills approach to leadership.
• After that, you will understand the major conclusions of behavioral theories in detail. Furthermore, the instructor will help you identify the major components of behavioral theories and also give you clarity of what transactional and transformational leadership is.
• Thus with this course, you will get a chance to understand the theoretical underpinnings of leadership and different styles of leadership and also their respective strengths and weaknesses

Leadership in 21st Century Organizations

Copenhagen Business School via Coursera
51,767 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (772 Ratings)

This free online leadership course focuses on Jim Barton’s leadership approach, focusing on understanding concepts and frameworks. It helps avoid outdated actions in the 21st-century world, navigating challenges like specialized workers and responding to external scrutiny in a transparent world.

• Going further, the instructor will explain to you different ways to avoid slippery slope ethical failures and also how to think more clearly about the separation between public and private life for a 21st-century leader.
• The skills you will develop from this course are relevant to strategic management, leadership, communication management, and collaboration. So enroll today in these Online free Leadership and management courses to learn all about leadership. You can also checkout why leadership training for managers fail?

Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence

CASE WESTERN RESERVE University via Coursera
93,563 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (1,183 Ratings)
These Online Leadership Courses is Part of an Inspired Leadership Specialization

Not many people understand that emotional intelligence, compassion, hope, and mindfulness can help a person reverse the damage of chronic stress and help a person build great leadership relationships easily. From the list of Online Leadership Courses In this course, you will learn to do that the right way.

Discover some of the Best Programs for Leadership Certification to enhance your managerial skills.

• The instructor will help you understand the positive and negative emotional attractors that inspire sustained and desired to learn at many levels. The course contains different topics that together will help you develop a good understanding of leadership.
• You will understand what resonant leadership is and how it can be used to move people and change their viewpoint. Then the instructor will make you understand how renewal acts as an antidote to chronic stress.
• Going further, you will understand how emotional intelligence has a connection to leadership, and more topics will be taught. On completion of every module, you need to solve a quiz that will help you evaluate yourself.
• Thus enrolling in the course will be the best way for you to understand what leadership is and how it is connected to emotional intelligence. Check out the best + free economics courses with certificates.

21st Century Leadership Training: Inspiring Excellence and Engagement [On-site/Online]

via Learning Tree
03 Days of effort required!
Study Level: Intermediate

In this advanced-level course, you will learn to manage the sea of change that is revolutionizing our businesses. Here you will get to develop the 21st-century leadership style to achieve outstanding results.

• The best thing about this course is its focus on explaining how to navigate multi-generational and diverse teams and champion change in the contemporary workplace.
• This course is for those who wish to understand the needs of a culturally diverse and multi-generational workforce in an uncertain business environment.

High-Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork, and Negotiation

Northwestern University via Coursera
65,631 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (2,163 Ratings)
This Course is Part of an Organizational Leadership Specialization

Do you wish to learn the essential skills that can help you develop and expand your leadership repertoire? In this course, you will get access to such learning content that will serve the purpose. You will learn to design teams for collaboration and craft win-win negotiation strategies here.

• With that, you will be engaged in self-assessments for analyzing your leadership style ad develop team charters to optimize the group. You will be given all the necessary instructions to develop a game plan for effective negotiations.
• The skills you will develop from this course are relevant to negotiation, leadership, collaboration, and team management. So, enroll today and start learning at your ease and pace. You can also checkout the comparison between transactional vs transformational leadership here.

Agile Leadership Principles

University of Maryland via edX
35,590 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (Advanced Level)
This course is part of the Agile Project Management Professional Certificate

Among Online Leadership Courses this is a complete course that will help you accelerate and improve team decisions by understanding agile’s facilitating leadership principles. You will get all the guidelines you need to unleash your team’s productivity, motivation, and problem-solving.

• You will get an overview of agile and an overview of the key roles which include scrum master, product owner, and agile team member. The instructor will give you all the guidelines you need to build self-organizing teams for agile projects. Similarly, you will also understand what leadership is and the power of play.
• Going further, you will be given an introduction to the human mind heuristics and negotiation styles and techniques. Furthermore, you will also learn to manage bias with the help of mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Thus, learn all agile leadership principles from the comfort of your home through this course.

Building Your Leadership Skills

HEC Paris via Coursera
89,636 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (2,010 Ratings)
This Course is Part of an Inspirational Leadership: Leading with Sense Specialization

Among Free Online Leadership Courses,This course will help you raise your own self-awareness by giving you a set of guidelines that will lead you to build your leadership skills. The instructor will help you gain self-confidence for better leadership.

• Starting the course, you will discover a new approach to leadership that is based on trust and sense. You will get to know all about the “Savior-Relier” leadership that will enable better team leadership and encourages people to retain their relationships with one another in spite of their differences of opinion.
• Next, you will get to develop relational skills, self-knowledge, and self-awareness as well that will help you unfold your own leadership style. Similarly, the skills you will develop from this course are relevant to confidence, human resources (HR), communication, and leadership.

“RELATED COURSES”

Agile Innovation and Problem Solving Skills

• University of MaryLand via edX
• 25,373+ already enrolled!
• ★★★★★ (18 Ratings)

Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management

• via FutureLearn

Getting Started with Agile and Design Thinking

• University of Virginia via FutureLearn
• 32,619+ already enrolled!
• ★★★★★ (38 Ratings)

Entrepreneurial Leadership Toolbox

BABSON via edX
12,450 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (Advanced Level)
This course is part of the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Leadership Professional Certificate

Among Online Leadership Courses In this course, you will get a chance to discover the different ways to generate positive results in your organization. This includes adopting key leadership behaviors and an entrepreneurial mindset. Through this course, you will develop the ability to frame leadership duties with an entrepreneurial perspective.

• The instructor will be talking about the key ways to motivate, mobilize, and then enlist others as a creator of positive results. In this way, you’ll come to understand the fact that the best leaders are always the ones who tend to keep learning.
• You will be looking at old heroic paradigms of leadership that will make you understand that they might not fit today’s world. Similarly, you will also look at what it takes to lead in a world where you cannot know everything. This and many more topics will be a part of this course that will give you all the knowledge you need to bring a positive change to your organization.

Project Manager Leadership Training: Building and Leading High-Performance Teams [On-site/Online]

via Learning Tree
03 Days of effort required!
Study Level: Advanced

This course is all about explaining how you can transition to an effective project team leader who has the ability to inspire a diverse team for working together and delivering customer success.

• The reason why we chose this course is its focus on explaining how to increase productivity by challenging your processes and motivating your people to perform well. You will learn to develop team identity and how to empower others as well.
• This course is for those who wish to understand how to build a high-performing team and foster productive team communication at their own ease and pace.

Adaptive Leadership in Development

The University of Queensland via edX
★★★★★ (Advanced Level)
This course is Part of Global Development MicroMasters® Program

From the list of Free Online Leadership Courses, this is a course that will help you gain different skills so that you can become an adaptive leader in the development and learn all the ways to uncover local solutions to complex problems. Taking this course will help you appreciate the fundamental mismatch that is between the policy and practice in development. You will be taught the importance of having context and how to find local solutions to local problems. The learning content of this course will help you develop skills in adaptive development practice and the cycles of experimentation, learning, iteration, and then adaptation. Similarly, you will learn to discern strategies to overcome political challenges and broker new collaborations. Moreover, you will also be taught how to measure progress and manage performance while working adaptively.

Leadership: The Emotionally Intelligent Leader

Robin Hills via Udemy
18,435 students enrolled!
★★★★★ 4.5 (5,614 Ratings)

In this course, you will discover ways to work with emotional intelligence that can lead to better outcomes with people you are working with.

• The reason why we chose this course is its focus on determining the best ways to manage and work with energy and using the best sources of energy to support energy dimensions.
• This course is for those who wish to explore behavioral preferences and understand how to work with others with different preferences.

Leading Teams

University of Michigan via Coursera
68,657 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (1,936 Ratings)
This Course is Part of a Leading People and Teams Specialization

This course aims to teach you all the ways to build your team and then make them work efficiently. You will learn ways that will lead you to improved teamwork and collaboration and sustain team performance through continuous learning and improvement.

• Among Online Leadership Courses The main purpose of this course is to make you learn best practices for composing a team and then aligning all the individuals and team goals. You will be taught how to establish roles and build structures.
• Similarly, how to manage decision making so that your team performs well will also be taught. Not just that, the course will also be helping you manage critical team processes such as conflict resolution in a step-by-step guide and much more as you go further.
• The skills you’ll develop from this course are relevant to leadership dynamics, management, team management, leadership, and more. You can also find out more Top free online Courses with certificates at takethiscourse.net Platform.

Applying Leadership and Strategy Fundamentals in Healthcare

DOANEX via edX
50 Hours of effort required!
Study Type: Self-paced
This course is Part of the Certified Lifestyle Medicine Executive

This course will help you understand how a variety of things work within a leadership role. And these things include individual development, communication skills, mentoring, negotiation, coaching, and more.

• You will understand all about the motivation theory and its role in leadership. Similarly, you will also examine team development through the topics of facilitation and collaboration in detail. Going further, you will get a chance to analyze individual strengths and areas of improvement within your leadership. Next, you will learn how to assess your personal style of leadership.
• After that, the instructor will explain to you the practical strategic thinking practices and leadership theories in detail. From the list of Free Online Leadership courses when you completing this course will enable you to evaluate how leadership style can be used to think and act strategically on your own.

International Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Bocconi via Coursera
65,281 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (2,050 Ratings)

From the list of Free Online Leadership Courses In this course, you will be exploring the theory and practice of international and intercultural leadership and organizational behavior very thoroughly. Social science research has shown some systematic ways in which our behavior differs across cultural contexts.

• We shall be studying such ways that enable us to work across borders more meticulously. The instructor will be talking about the facts that shape an individual and group decision making. Similarly, you will also understand the factors that enhance or weaken a team’s performance. You will be taught how to build and use social networks in detail.
• Furthermore among all Online Leadership Course in this course, you will also get to know about the practical experience of international leaders that will allow us to identify concrete steps in boosting intercultural leadership competence. So, enroll today and learn everything there is about international leadership and organizational behavior from the comfort of your home.

Principles of Leadership: Leading Oneself Specialization

University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
2,101 students enrolled!
★★★★★ (44 Ratings)

How Leaders are different from Managers?

Leaders are quite different from managers in many ways. But here we are only going to tell you the main difference between them. Leaders are those who have people follow them. And if we talk about managers, then they have people who work for them.  Managers usually have to supervise their team and make sure that they are on the right track. But leaders on the other hand are supposed to coach their entire team. It is the need to act as both a strong leader and manager to become a successful business owner.

Leadership Courses FAQs

Why Leadership is important in business?

In any business, effective leadership plays a very important role, as it can bolster and promote teamwork. With that, leadership can cultivate a sense of greater good and motivate team members to move in a right direction.

In other words, good influence of a leader can resonate in an organization and lead to a good output by the members.

What are the best courses in Leadership?

There are many competitive online leadership courses offered by different platforms. Below are the 5 best leadership courses to consider which are exclusively available at takethiscourse.net.

• Foundations of Everyday Leadership
• Leadership Theory: The Basics
• Leadership in 21st Century Organizations
• Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence
• High-Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork, and Negotiation
• Agile Leadership Principles

Which certification is best for Leadership?

Below are the certification programs suitable for Leadership:

• Strategic Leadership and Management Program – University of Pennsylvania
• Inspired Leadership Specialization Program – CASE WESTERN RESERVE University
• Entrepreneurial Mindset and Leadership Professional Certificate – BABSON
• Leadership in Global Development – The University of Queensland
• Organizational Leadership Certificate free Course — Northwestern University

Are Leadership Certifications worth it?

If you have a certification in leadership and management then surely it can enhance or upgrade your potential to work. The skills that you earn from the certification can be applied to improve the systems and effectiveness of your organization, and thus can lead to a raise or a senior position. So, yes leadership certifications are worth your time, effort, and money.

Are free Leadership Certifications available?

Yes, free leadership certifications training programs are available. Normally, a leadership program comprises of multiple courses available for free to audit, but in order to get the certificate, one has to pay a minor fee.

What is the average cost of Leadership training?

If you are planning to go for leadership training, then the cost can be around $150 to $200 per hour. And this rate is for mid-level executive training. If we talk about top executives, then the cost could be $500 per hour. Similarly, classroom-based leadership training can cost you around $1500 to $4000 depending on the school.

What are the types of Leadership training?

There are many types of leadership training and some of them are mentioned below;

• Authoritarian Leadership:

A style where the leader is dictating different policies and procedures in the organization.

• Participative Leadership:

A type where the leader employs a democratic approach to team engagement.

• Delegative Leadership:

Also known as “laissez-faire leadership”, this style or type focuses on delegating tasks to team members.

• Transactional Leadership:

This type focuses on organization, its supervision, and overall performance.

• Transformational Leadership:

This style inspires positive changes in those who are following the leader.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is known to be having an ability to put influence on others and guide them. In any organization, the job of a leader is to guide his team or any other member of an organization. In organization, if any such qualities are depicted by an individual, he can then ascend to executive management or C-level positions easily.

Importance of Leadership:

Leadership plays an important part in the success of any business or organization.

• A leader helps his team to make sure that the organization’s resources are directed for improved efficiency and goals are achieved on time.
• An effective leader always provides clarity of purpose.
• Similarly, without an effective leader, a team can never stay focused and determined.
• It is the leader who guides his team to realize its mission.

Top 5 Leadership Skills:

Below are the required top 5 leadership skills.

• According to today’s company requirements, having the ability to think strategically has become quite important. Thus leaders must have the ability to act and think strategically.
• Innovation is another skill that is highly demanded by organizations in leaders.
• A leader must be an effective communicator.
• Similarly, a leader must have the ability to solve real-world problems in real time.
• Lastly, a leader must have a spirit of team player.

Conclusion:

So these are the details of the best free online leadership courses with certificates that you can enroll in and start learning today. Read what each of these courses has to offer and then choose one and never stop learning.