Don't Miss Your Chance to Take the 10 Most Popular Courses of the Year

As the Great Reshuffle slows, a new era may be dawning: a breakthrough that brings upskilling culture and career development centre-stage with professionals getting more serious about skill building.

The pandemic accelerated change across industries, and as a result, skills to do a job today have changed even compared to a few years ago. Professionals see the profound changes and opportunities and are responding by learning new skills to future-proof their careers and are ready to learn new skills to meet the moment.

Have we reached, as Forbes has dubbed it, the 'reskilling revolution'?

If the energy we’re seeing from the LinkedIn Learning community is any sign, the answer is a resounding "yes". Globally, 7.3 million learners watched the most popular LinkedIn Learning courses of the year (nearly double the audience from last year!).

In South East Asia learners are building up their skills across a range of areas. Here's what they focused on:

●  The #1 most popular course was Excel Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365) as people and organisations brushed up on their data management skills to be ready to wrestle with spreadsheets with ease
●  Learners leaned into improving communication skills with courses like Communicating with Confidence, Interpersonal Communication and Speaking Confidently and Effectively. A more regular return to the office, or perhaps a look in the job market, has people brushing up on their presentation skills
●  The return to the office may also be driving people looking for guidance in structuring their days and navigating working more closely in teams, with courses like 15 Secrets Successful People Know about Time Management (getAbstract Summary), Critical Thinking for Better Judgement and Decision-Making, Building Resilience, and Effective Listening, among others, also peppering the list throughout
●  A standout in the South East Asian learning results was a focus on data and customer service, no doubt reflecting the region’s fast-growing online marketplaces

From adopting new soft skills to exploring ways to be a more impactful team member, the most popular courses reflect the steadfast growth mindset of South East Asia’s LinkedIn community to future proof themselves.

What you’ll learn:

1. Excel Essential Training (Office 365/Microsoft 365) with Dennis Taylor

We have a lot of data at our fingertips these days. Being spreadsheet savvy can save you time and breathe new life into your data. Excel expert Dennis Taylor leads you through learning basic Excel skills such as organising data and performing calculations with simple functions, then introduces intermediate skills like building charts, PivotTables, and more.

2. Speaking Confidently and Effectively with Pete Mockaitis

Adapted from the podcast How to Be Awesome at Your Job, Pete Mockaitis is joined by professional speaker Diane DiResta to discuss tips and tricks for crafting impactful and informative presentations around what’s important to the audience. The conversation touches on strategies such as shifting your focus away from yourself to gain confidence, using body language and tone to deliver consistent messaging, and crafting a plan to recover from a worst-case scenario incident.

3. Project Management Foundations with Bonnie Biafore

We all have projects to manage – from our personal to-do lists to large-scale corporate projects. Regardless of the scope of work, Bonnie Biafore will teach you the fundamentals of project management such as establishing clear project goals and objectives, meeting deadlines, and closing out projects. Sprinkled throughout the course are tips on how to communicate effectively with your project team.

4. Communicating with Confidence with Jeff Ansell

Even the most gifted communicators can struggle with confidence, and confident individuals can find clear communication difficult. In this course, Jeff Ansell guides you through developing and honing this vital business skill. Topics covered include: how to organize your thoughts, how to use body and language to better express ideas, and how to overcome anxiety.

5. Strategic Thinking with Dorie Clark

People may joke about 4D chess, but having the ability to think strategically in both space and time puts you at an advantage that will help you move forward – and up – in your career. In this course, Dorie Clark will teach you how to embrace a strategic mindset, how learning from the past can shape your vision of the future, how to be detailed in your strategic thinking, and how to share this skill with your team.

6. Critical Thinking for Better Judgement and Decision-Making with Becki Saltzman

The sheer pace of change and volume of information we encounter each day means many of us rely on biases and rule of thumb to make decisions. This course aims to break outmoded thinking to use objective and rational analysis to guide wise decision making. With an organisational focus, the course teaches skills that will improve how your team innovates, tackles challenges and navigates change.

7. Excel: VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP for Beginners with Jess Stratton

Time savings using Excel’s new look up functions isn’t just for power users and spreadsheet svengalis! Everyone can master Excel’s most powerful functions in a few steps once Jess Stratton has walked you through them. Learn how to write error-proof formulas and supercharge your spreadsheet skills in this mini course.

8. Digital Marketing Foundations with Brad Batesole

Digital marketing is constantly changing. Platforms come and go, trends ebb and flow, and then the next thing comes along. In this course, instructor Brad Batesole gives an overview of the building blocks of online marketing, then guides you through how to define your value proposition, identify your target market, and establish your goals and KPIs.

9. Critical Thinking with Mike Figliuolo

Developing the ability to think reflectively and address root-cause issues will make you a better decision-maker and a more reliable resource within your organisation. Leadership trainer and expert Mike Figliuolo outlines a series of techniques to help you develop your critical thinking skills by learning how to define the problem you’re trying to solve. Mike will then teach you a number of critical thinking methodologies that you can employ to better work through problems. He also provides guidance on how to develop this skill across your whole team.

10. Communication Foundations with Brenda Bailey-Hughes and Tatiana Kolovou

Clear communication is essential to career success. In this course, Brenda Bailey-Hughes and Tatiana Kolovou guide you through learning how to communicate more effectively in meetings, email messages, pitches, and presentations. You’ll learn about the four building blocks of communication – people, message, context, and listening – and how to apply them in a variety of professional circumstances.

11. Interpersonal Communication with Dorie Clark

Many of us are seeing new faces around the in-person or virtual workplace. Maybe you're a new face on the team! Dorie Clark’s course will help you navigate the communication side of these new interpersonal relationships. She offers advice and techniques for dealing with complex and nuanced situations like interruptions, receiving critical feedback, and communicating across cultures.

12. Power BI Essential Training with Gini von Courter

Data is only as valuable as the insights it offers. Put your data to work with this course on how to use Power BI, the business analytics tools that allow you to create and share impactful visualisations with others in your organisation. In this course, Gini von Courter explains how to import data, create visualisations, and arrange those visualisations into reports. You will also learn how to use Power BI Mobile and how to use the data modelling capabilities in Power BI Desktop.

13. Learning Python with Joe Marini

If you want to pick up one programming language, Python is it! This versatile, easy-to-learn, object-oriented language is used across many industries and in applications such as software engineering, AI, machine learning, and mobile app development. Developer Joe Marini unpacks basic Python syntax and shares an example of how to construct and run a simple Python program. You will also learn to work with dates and times, read and write files, and retrieve and parse HTML, JSON, and XML data from the web.

14. Developing Your Emotional Intelligence with Gemma Leigh Roberts

Emotional intelligence is a skill that can–and should!–be learned. Executive coach and organisational psychologist Gemma Leigh Roberts will teach you what emotional intelligence is, why it’s important in the workplace, and how to work on honing your own emotional intelligence. Some areas she guides you through include how to become more self-aware about personal triggers and how to align your intentions and your impact so that you can build strong and collaborative relationships.

15. Effective Listening with Brenda Bailey-Hughes and Tatiana Kolovou

We all know when someone is, or perhaps isn’t, listening to us - but do we know how to be good listeners ourselves? Formal training in how to be an effective listener isn’t common, yet it is a key component to our professional lives - whether in a job interview or leading a team. Communications experts Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes give you tools to understand how your listening skills are now, and vitally, how to be an effective listener despite distractions. You won’t just become a better listener - you’ll be a better colleague, mentor, and friend.

16.  15 Secrets Successful People Know about Time Management (getAbstract Summary) with getAbstract

getAbstract have taken Kevin Kruse’s New York Times best-selling book and turned it into an audio summary of the key habits of the world’s most successful people. The common theme Kruse found surveying Olympians, CEOs, and entrepreneurs was that time is their most prized possession. From work, rest, exercise, and play, listen to practical advice, based on how the top achievers manager their time to get the most out of every day.

17.  Agile Foundations with Doug Rose

An agile mindset prepares your team to respond well to whatever comes their way. Doug Rose leads you through the fundamentals of building an agile team. You’ll learn about the values and principles covered in the agile manifesto, as well as how to enhance communication with user stories and cross-functional teams. Doug also provides exercises that can help boost your team's agility and productivity.

18.  Building Resilience with Tatiana Kolovou

Throughout our working lives we all face stress and adversity, but managing how we respond and navigate it is what can set us apart. By developing your resiliency threshold you can bounce back better from challenges and even seize them as opportunities. Kelley School of Business professor and professional communications coach Tatiana Kolovou outlines five training techniques to prepare for difficult situations, and five strategies for reflecting on them afterward. Find out where you are on the resilience scale, identify where you want to be, and learn strategies to close the gap.

19.  Customer Service Foundations with Jeff Toister

How do you show a customer they’re valued, so they’ll keep coming back? Unlocking this can help your business thrive and it all starts with building good relationships. This course teaches three crucials skills needed to bolster customer loyalty, including providing the right help at the right time and defusing angry customers. A must for anyone who wants to build their customer service.

20.  Learning Data Analytics with Robin Hunt

For all those curious about the world of data, this is a foundational course. In it you will master the basics, such as how to think about data, how to get the data you need, the tools you’ll use, such as Excel and Microsoft Access, SQL queries, and PowerBI, and how to properly manage data, including clearing and importing data files. Each chapter comes with a challenge, which helps you evaluate your skills.

Plus check out the top 20 most popular courses on LinkedIn Learning globally, for free until 31 August 2022.