Improving Communication Skills

University of Pennsylvania via Coursera

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

9 hours 52 minutes
Sessions

On-Demand
Subtitles

Chinese, Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Kazakh, Hindi, Swedish, Korean, Greek, Thai, Ukrainian, Japanese, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Hungarian, Bengali, Pashto, Urdu, Azerbaijani, Farsi

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Learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals. Taught by award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author Maurice Schweitzer, Improving Communications Skills is an essential course designed to give you both the tools you need to improve your communication skills, and the most successful strategies for using them to your advantage. You'll learn how to discover if someone is lying (and how to react if they are), how to develop trust, the best method of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. You'll also learn when to cooperate and when to compete, how to create persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages. By the end of the course, you'll be able to understand what others want, respond strategically to their wants and needs, craft convincing and clear messages, and develop the critical communication skills you need to get ahead in business and in life.

Syllabus

Cooperation, Competition, and Comparisons

In this module, you'll learn when to compete and when to cooperate to achieve success. You’ll explore the three key principles of cooperation and competition: scarcity, sociability and dynamic instability, and learn how to determine which approach to use based on your situation. You'll also discover how to use comparisons to provide motivation, and how to avoid "invidious" comparisons which can lead to discouragement or unethical behavior. By the end of this module, you'll be able to attain a better balance between competitive motivation and cooperative satisfaction to make your interactions more productive and successful.

Trust

In this module, you'll explore how to gain and built trust to develop cooperation, and understand why this critical step can be so challenging. You'll examine the factors that develop a trusting relationship: demonstrating vulnerability, building rapport, and expressing warmth, and learn how to increase trust by uncovering common goals, common enemies, and interdependence. You'll also learn how to communicate with team members, friends, and opponents in a way that encourages trust. By the end of this module, you’ll understand how to build trusting relationships to achieve cooperation and mutual satisfaction.

Deception

In this module, you’ll learn what deception is, how to detect it, and what to do once you know it's taken place. You'll examine the most common cues that indicate deception and explore practical steps to take when you discover deception. You'll also be able to evaluate deceptions and transgressions to determine whether they are core or non-core violations. Finally, you'll analyze the components of successful apologies, so you can create your own, if necessary. By the conclusion of this module, you'll be able to better detect deception, and devise an appropriate reaction that will help you achieve your objectives.

Effective Communication

This module was designed to teach you both the key principles of effective communication, and how to harness the power of setting goals to improve your performance. You’ll learn how to create memorable and persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages. You'll also learn the how to use goal setting for maximum benefit while avoiding the common pitfalls of overly ambitious targets. By the end of this module, you'll be able to communicate effectively using the right medium, and use goal-setting to increase your productivity and boost your performance.

Taught by

Maurice Schweitzer

Reviews

4.6 rating, based on 25 Class Central reviews

4.7 rating at Coursera based on 2026 ratings

Start your review of Improving Communication Skills

Anonymous

The course looks very promising, but I find the marketing misleading. It claims to be a free course, but it is mandatory to add a payment method before proceeding with a free 7 days trial. Please be honest in the description of the courses offers, or you loose reliability.
Rodney John Valencia

It can helps to each people who has not confidence in communication skill.
Learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals. Improving Communications Skills is an essential course designed to give you both the tools you need to improve your communication skills, and the most successful strategies for using them to your advantage. You'll learn how to discover if someone is lying (and how to react if they are), how to develop trust, the best method of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. You'll also learn when to cooperate and when to compete, how to create persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions.
Enakshi Khamrui

Learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals. Taught by award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author Maurice Schweitzer, Improving Communications Skills is an essential course designed to give you both the tool…

Learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals. Taught by award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author Maurice Schweitzer, Improving Communications Skills is an essential course designed to give you both the tools you need to improve your communication skills, and the most successful strategies for using them to your advantage. You'll learn how to discover if someone is lying (and how to react if they are), how to develop trust, the best method of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. You'll also learn when to cooperate and when to compete, how to create persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages. By the end of the course, you'll be able to understand what others want, respond strategically to their wants and needs, craft convincing and clear messages, and develop the critical communication skills you need to get ahead in business and in life.
Anonymous

I want to learn more of this website to help me to pass my Examination and specialy i want learn how to improve or express my knowledge
Anonymous

Really good course , it gives you the basic for communication skills which u Know already but you have to improve it in a good way.
Anonymous

I am happy to find this course with your university to increasing my communication skills to improving my business type
Riddhi Tiwari

What a great class!! I enjoyed every bit of it! and learned alot about how trust and deception work. The mechanism of Goal setting and ideas about how to have an effective conversation.
SAID SABI

Ilmu komunikasi merupakan suatu ilmu yang yang membutuhkan cara dan strategi tertentu, dengan mengetahui cara berkomunikasi tentu dapat memberikan suatu manfaat dalam melakukan berbagai hal. Dengan menguasi ilmu komunikasi tentu diharapkan dapat memberikan dampak yang berarti dalam mengusahakan sesuatu bisnis, maupun usaha lainnya.
Wahidrahmani

Communication is an important part of life, to succeed in life, everyone must learn the skills in this area

I have a degree in agriculture, I have to have good relations with farmers. Therefore, I need to learn communication skills in order to establish a relationship between the Ministry of Agriculture and farmers
Anonymous

I've found the course to be quite entertaining and of some value, at the same time it is rather narrowly focussed on professional or company communications and negotiations and does not cover communications in more personal or informal settings. I am also not impressed with the quizes - they are mostly rather straightforward.
Nuvvula Purnachandrarao

Good communication skills about my knowledge and thank-you about of my knowledgeand submitted of my best experience and best future
Kartik Pol

Course is very interesting and will help to improve ove the communication in the future It will also help to improve socioal commucation in day today life and make people to impress with our personality
Manimaran

It's very to learn , computer courses to our knowledge improve to our brain, no need age, improving our knowledge, teaching knowledge, business knowledge, educational knowledge, online computer knowledge, evrything improve.
Anonymous

It is very useful and helps to improve the communication skills and it can be easily understood by everyone who wants to improve their communication skills
Mukarab

This course is very good, it is also good to understand and it gives good education about business and also provides education to progress through this course.
Vidyasagar Tiwari

Very good knowledge improvement in my self. That is very useful course in my future. I have informe to my friends for this course.
Anonymous

Good learning through e learning because of corona virus we area working from home and learning good things. A nice experience durning locked down
Varadaraj

Im learned this course are Good one buy required more points to improve communication skill examples like extr for better to understanding the subject
Anonymous

Really good course , it gives you the basic for communication skills which u Know already but you have to improve it in a good way.
Anonymous

Ainda não fiz, mas acho muito interessante poder realizar esse curso, é uma boa oportunidade de poder está fazendo algo que possa me ajudar na minha vida profissional.