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Coursera

Complete New Manager Toolkit: First 100 Days

via Coursera

Overview

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Created by Chris Croft, an internationally respected management trainer, author, and speaker who has helped more than 250,000 people develop their professional skills, this course gives you practical strategies for dealing with a bad boss. You'll learn how to recognise challenging management behaviours, understand what's driving them, and respond effectively without letting a difficult boss derail your confidence, wellbeing, or career. A toxic manager can affect motivation, performance, workplace relationships, and career development. But difficult management doesn't always look the same. Some managers micromanage, some are controlling or overly critical, while others use passive-aggressive behaviour, blame, favouritism, unrealistic expectations, poor communication, or workplace bullying. Learning how to identify these patterns is the first step towards dealing with them. In this course, Chris Croft explores a wide range of bad boss and difficult manager behaviours, using practical examples and real-world workplace scenarios. You'll learn how to handle micromanagement, controlling managers, blame cultures, difficult personalities, conflict, poor communication, favouritism, and other forms of toxic workplace behaviour. You'll also discover practical approaches to managing up, influencing difficult managers, setting boundaries, protecting your wellbeing, and maintaining your performance. The course also looks at what to do when a difficult boss refuses to change. You'll learn how to approach workplace conflict, when and how to escalate problems, and how to decide whether it is better to stay and manage the situation or consider moving on. Whether you're currently dealing with a toxic boss, bad manager, difficult manager, or challenging workplace relationship, or simply want to be prepared for future challenges, this course provides practical tools and strategies to help you navigate difficult people at work with greater confidence and professionalism.

Syllabus

  • Understanding Manager Responsibilities
    • In this module, you will clarify the real work of management so you can shift from doing the work yourself to leading people, systems, and results. You will examine how management overlaps with leadership, how strong managers balance delivery with team development, and how to stay focused while meeting the demands of your boss, your organization, and your own priorities.
  • Your First 100 Days
    • This module provides you with a practical roadmap for navigating the most sensitive phase of your management transition. You will use the SPONGE approach to observe before acting, build trust through listening, understand how work really happens, use data to test assumptions, and decide when to move from learning to action with stronger judgment and organizational support.
  • Your Boss
    • A strong relationship with your boss can accelerate your success, while a weak one can create confusion, friction, and missed opportunities. In this module, you will learn how to set measurable expectations, communicate clearly and consistently, and earn trust by showing sound judgment, reliability, and growing independence.
  • Management Habits
    • Strong management depends on habits that shape how you spend time, make decisions, set standards, and respond to people. In this module, you will evaluate how much technical knowledge you need, practice visible role-model behavior, manage your time more deliberately, strengthen delegation and accountability, and respond more effectively to trust and performance challenges within your team.
  • Things to Avoid When You’re a New Manager
    • New managers can damage trust quickly through habits that seem small but send powerful signals. This module helps you recognize two especially risky patterns: clinging to your old role and creating unfairness through praise or favoritism. By avoiding these mistakes early, you can protect credibility, fairness, and team morale.
  • Good Managers Are Obsessed With
    • This module focuses on the operating disciplines that distinguish strong managers from average ones. You will explore how effective managers build teamwork, avoid micromanagement while staying involved, protect quality and standards, communicate clearly, strengthen problem-solving and delegation, hold people accountable, and use measurement and development to improve results over time.
  • Good Questions to Ask
    • Great managers learn faster by asking sharp, practical questions that reveal how the business really works. In this module, you will build a diagnostic questioning toolkit for strategy, culture, customers, pricing, operations, quality, projects, and planning assumptions so you can uncover risks early and make more informed decisions.
  • Your Routine
    • Sustained management success depends on routines, not one-off effort. In this final module, you will design practical daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and long-term rhythms that help you stay visible, aligned, organized, and focused on both team performance and your own growth as a manager.

Taught by

Chris Croft

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