John C. Maxwell is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold over 19 million books. When it comes to talking about leadership, John Maxwell is one of the gurus in this area. We’ve explored John Maxwell’s leadership work, books, and famous quotes in this article.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

Top 5 John Maxwell Leadership Books

John Maxwell speaks to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and audiences as diverse as the United States Military Academy at West Point, the National Football League, and ambassadors at the United Nations. He is an awarded bestseller by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. Maxwell was named the World’s Top Leadership Guru by Leadershipgurus.net.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace article.

We’ve examined John Maxwell’s leadership books and picked the top 5 most popular ones in this article. While we are picking the top 5 books, we’ve gone through the review ratings and number of reviews on Amazon and Good Reads. The combined rating is the weighted average of the Amazon and Good Reads ratings.

If you like reading books for your self-development, you should add these leadership books to your reading list. Let’s go through each of these John Maxwell books and examine them.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

1- The Most Popular John Maxwell Book- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

The most popular and best John Maxwell leadership book is “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You”.

This book has over 8,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7. There are even more ratings on Good Reads with over 51,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.15.

John Maxwell focuses on the fundamental pillars of successful leadership such as vision, influence, responsibility, and commitment in this book. While defining leadership, it focuses on how to set targets for yourself and for your team. The book shows how to manage the emotional balance in hard times as well. While the book goes over the 21 laws, each law is justified by scenarios and examples from John Maxell’s leadership experience.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership book by John Maxwell is a go-to resource for exploring the ways to become a leader and be successful in the workplace. This book is the best John Maxwell leadership book people can read if they want to:

• Learn leadership on their own,
• Develop as leaders in a group
• Teach leadership to others as a mentor.

Watch 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace YouTube Video

If you like watching videos rather than reading, you can watch our Top 21 Leadership Skills YouTube video.

2- The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

The second John Maxwell book in our list is “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential”.

This book has over 5,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.8, and over 8,000 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.32.

John C. Maxwell wrote his tested and true principles for maximum personal growth. According to John Maxwell, there are tested and correct principles that can help personal growth. The book focuses on:

• The Law of the Mirror: You Must See Value in Yourself to Add Value to Yourself
• The Law of Awareness: You Must Know Yourself to Grow Yourself
• The Law of Modeling: It’s Hard to Improve When You Have No One But Yourself to Follow
• The Law of the Rubber Band: Growth Stops When You Lose the Tension Between Where You Are and Where You Could Be
• The Law of Contribution: Developing Yourself Enables You to Develop Others

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One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

3- The 5 Levels of Leadership

The third John Maxwell leadership book is “The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential”.

This book has over 4,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 6,000 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.29.

You can read this John Maxwell book to learn about the leadership tools to fuel success, grow your team, and become the visionary you were meant to be.

True leadership is not related to having particular jobs or titles. In order to grow your career, you must be successful and reach targets with your team. You must act as a servant leader and help your people to improve their skills to become leaders as well.

The book focuses on the following 5 Levels of Leadership:
1. Position—People follow because they have to.
2. Permission—People follow because they want to.
3. Production—People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development—People follow because of what you have done for them personally.
5. Pinnacle—People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

John Maxwell goes over each of these five levels of leadership through insights and examples.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

4- How Successful People Think

The fourth John Maxwell leadership book on our list is “How Successful People Think: Change Your Life”.

This John Maxwell leadership book has over 3,800 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 12,500 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 3.93.

How Successful People Think, a Wall Street Journal best-seller, is the ideal, concise read for the fast-paced world of today. John C. Maxwell writes about how to be innovative and challenge traditional traits. The book teaches you to see the big picture while you are focusing on day-to-day activities.

5- Developing the Leader Within You 2.0

The fifth and last leadership book by John Maxwell on our list is “Developing the Leader Within You 2.0”.

This John Maxwell leadership book has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 23,500 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.21.

This book can help you develop the influence, character, service, and vision that it takes to be a leader in every aspect of your life. John Maxwell analyzes the different types of leadership styles and lists the following fundamental principles for inspiration, motivation, and influence.

• Influence – using the 5 Levels of Leadership as a roadmap to influence others
• Character – embracing good ethics, practicing self-leadership, and valuing people
• Service – asking eight questions to develop into a leader who serves others daily
• Vision – including eight components when painting a vision for your people so they can experience it

Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 book will help you transform the way you think about leadership.

Top 10 John Maxwell Quotes

There are thousands of famous quotes by John Maxwell. We’ve picked the top 10 quotes voted on Good Reads.

Quote #1 – “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”

Quote #2 – “Seven Steps to Success
1) Make a commitment to grow daily.
2) Value the process more than events.
3) Don’t wait for inspiration.
4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity.
5) Dream big.
6) Plan your priorities.
7) Give up to go up.”

Quote #3 – “We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.”

Quote #4 – “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”

Quote #5 – “The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.”

Quote #6 – “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”

Quote #7 – “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”

Quote #8 – “Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.”

Quote #9 – “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”

Quote #10 –  “Success is…
knowing your purpose in life,
growing to reach your maximum potential, and
sowing seeds that benefit others.”

All of them are inspirational, which one is your favorite?

Summary – John Maxwell

John Calvin Maxwell (born February 20, 1947) is an American author, speaker, and pastor who has written many books, primarily focusing on leadership. We’ve reviewed the hundreds of books written by John Maxwell and picked the top 5 based on Amazon and Good Reads.

The top 5 John Maxwell books are: 

• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
• The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential
• The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential
• How Successful People Think: Change Your Life
• Developing the Leader Within You 2.0

John Maxwell has thousands of quotes about leadership as well. We’ve picked the top 10 for our article as well.

The post John C. Maxwell – Top 5 Leadership Books & Tips appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

ISACA requires CISA certification holders to earn 120 CISA CPE credits every three years to renew their certification. There are certain CISA CPE requirements. We’ve explored the ways to earn ISACA CPE credits in this post.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE CISA CPE resources throughout the article.

CISA CPE Requirements

Before diving into the ways of earning CISA CPE credits, you need to know how many CPEs you need to renew your CISA certification and which activities count as CPE credits. CPE stands for continuing professional education and typically, one hour spent on an activity earns one CPE credit.

ISACA requires CISA certification holders to earn 120 CPEs every three years. You must earn at least 20 CISA CPE credits every year and pay the annual maintenance fee as well. Read more on CISA renewal article.

The annual reporting period begins on 1 January of each year. The three-year certification period varies and is indicated on each annual invoice and on the letter confirming annual compliance. For newly certified CISAs, the annual and three-year certification period begins on 1 January of the year succeeding certification. Reporting CISA CPE hours attained during the year of certification is not required. However, hours attained between the date of certification and 31 December of that year can be used and reported as hours earned in the initial reporting period.

Watch 10 Ways to Earn CISA CPE Credits Video

We’ve listed the 10 ways to earn CPE credits in our following YouTube video.

There are 10 different ways to earn CISA CPE hours. Let’s go over each way to earn CPE credits.

1st & Best Way to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Online Courses

While there are 10 different ways to earn CISA CPE credits, the most popular way to earn CPEs for professionals is through online courses. Here are the top 5 reasons why professionals choose CPE courses to renew their CISA certification.

1. No Caps: There is no maximum limit for the Education category, so, you can earn all ISACA CPE needs in one program, and renew your certification. You do not need to go elsewhere to find additional CISA CPE credits to renew ISACA certification.
2. Self-Paced: You do not need to attend an event, conference, or seminar. You can follow the courses at your place, at your pace.
3. Affordable: Depending on the program content, you can enroll in a self-paced CISA CPE Online Course for ~$200-300. However, seminars or conferences start from $1,000, not only that, you may not earn all CPE needs in one event.
4. Requires less effort: When you enroll in CISA CPE Courses, all you have to do is follow the curriculum, earn CPEs, and renew your ISACA certification. However, other CPE credits earning ways require significant effort from the ISACA certification holder such as creating content, sharing a presentation, authoring, etc.
5. Less prone to ISACA® audit: Since the ISACA CPE training programs are used by many certified professionals, ISACA already has a track and record of the activities. However, for other categories, CPE submissions are more unique and may be more likely to hit an audit.

60 CISA CPE Credits Program

San Francisco Business School offers a CISA CPE Course program.

The program offers three self-paced business training programs: Executive Leadership, Strategy Creation & Execution, and Marketing Strategy. For each course in the program, SFBS awards a certificate of graduation. While earning CPEs, you will earn reputable business merits to highlight in your resume and LinkedIn.

3 Types of Educational CPEs

ISACA classifies educational CPEs into three different categories.

• Self-study courses (no limit): These activities include structured courses designed for self-study that offer CPE hours. These courses will only be accepted if the course provider issues a certificate of completion and the certificate contains the number of CPE hours earned for the course. SFBS 60 ISACA CPE course program goes into this category.
• ISACA professional education activities and meetings (no limit): These activities include ISACA conferences, seminars, workshops, chapter program meetings, and related activities. CISAs earn CPE hours according to the number of hours of active participation.
• Non-ISACA professional education activities and meetings (no limit): These activities include in-house corporate training, university courses, conferences, seminars, workshops, professional meetings and related activities not sponsored by ISACA. In addition, successfully completed university courses in related fields, including university online courses, earn 15 CPE hours per semester credit hour and 10 CPE hours per quarter credit hour (semester = 15 weeks of class; quarter = 10 weeks of class).

Watch How Suleiman Renewed His CISA Certification

Suleiman Adams is a CISA-certified Professional. Suleiman enrolled in the CISA CPE Course from SFBS and renewed his CISA. Watch now his CISA renewal journey.

2nd Way to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Events

Attending events has benefits like expanding your professional network and learning the changing trends in your domain. However, there are some pitfalls to these events.

• Typically organized in big cities. If you are living in a relatively smaller city, you might not see any events to earn CISA CPE credits.
• Requires in-person attendance. Many of the events take a few days, and you have to take days off from your work to attend these events.
• Expensive. Typically, these events are charged $1,000/day. So, for a two-day event, you need to pay around $2,000. Travel and accommodation, if needed, are not included in these fees.
• Does not earn CPE credits at once. Although it requires a significant amount of time and money, you cannot earn all the required CPE credits you need through one event.

Considering you are a full-time working professional and looking to earn ISACA CPE credits in one step, we do not recommend this way for earning CISA CPEs.

San Francisco Business School offers a self-paced Free CISA CPE Course Online Program as well. If you attend this program, you can earn 3 Free ISACA CPE credits and submit them in the education category.

3rd Way to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Presentation

Vendor sales and marketing presentations can count for CPE credits as well. These activities include vendor product or system-specific sales presentations related to the assessment of information systems. There is a maximum CPE earning limit of 10 CPEs for this way.

4th Way to Earn CPEs – Teaching

These activities include the development and delivery of professional educational presentations and the development of self-study or distance education courses related to the assessment of information systems. For presentations and courses (all types), CISA CPE hours are earned at five times the presentation time or time estimated to take the course for the first delivery.

For instance, a two-hour presentation earns ten CISA CPE hours and the actual presentation time for the second delivery.

5th Way to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Authoring

Publication of articles, monographs, and books count for CPE credits. These activities include the publication or review of material directly related to the information systems audit and control profession. Submissions must appear in a formal publication, website, or business blog and a copy of the article or the website address must be available if requested. For books and monographs, the table of contents and title page must be available. CISA CPE hours are earned for the actual number of hours taken to complete or review the material.

6th Way to Earn CPEs – Exam Development

Exam question development and review for ISACA counts as CPE as well. This activity pertains to the development or review of items for the CISA exam or review materials. Two CISA CPE hours are earned for each question accepted by an ISACA CISA item review committee.

7th Way to Earn ISACA CPE Credits – Passing a Related Certification

Passing related professional examinations counts for CPEs. This activity pertains to the pursuit of other related professional examinations. Two CPE hours are earned for each examination hour when a passing score is achieved.

8th Way to Earn CISA CPEs – Working on ISACA Boards/Committees

Working on ISACA Boards or Committees counts for CPE hours as well. There is a maximum 20-hour annual limitation per ISACA certification for this way. These activities include active participation on an ISACA Board, committee, sub-committee, task force, or active participation as an officer of an ISACA chapter. One CPE hour is earned for each hour of active participation. Active participation includes, but is not limited to, the development, implementation, and/or maintenance of a chapter website.

9th Way to Earn CPEs – Contribution to the Profession

Contributions to the IS audit and control profession are another way to earn CISA CPE credits. There is a 20-hour annual limitation in total for all related activities for this type of activity. These activities include work performed for ISACA and other bodies that contribute to the IS audit and control profession (i.e. research development, certification review manual development, Knowledge Centre Contributor, performing peer reviews). CPE hours are earned for the actual number of hours contributed.

10th Way to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Mentoring

You can earn CISA CPE hours through mentoring. There is a limitation of 10 maximum CPE limits per year. Activities include mentoring efforts directly related to coaching, reviewing, or assisting with CISA exam preparation or providing career guidance through the credentialing process either at the organizational, chapter, or individual level. The mentoring activity must be an activity supporting a specific person in preparation for their ISACA exam or certification career decisions. One CPE hour is earned for each hour of assistance.

How to Calculate CISA CPE Hours

One actual hour of activity counts for one CPE credit. When calculating CPE hours, you must count the actual hours spent for the activity. Let’s go through an example.

Dave is a CISA-certified Information Security Analyst and attends a conference, IS360. IS360 is a one-day conference with several talks and discussions ongoing in different rooms. The schedule of the conference is as follows:

Although the event is scheduled from 09:00 until 16:30, breaks do not count as CPEs. The actual hours spent for the activity is 5.25, and Dave can submit 5.25 CISA CPE hours toward renewing his CISA certification.

Summary

CISA-certified professionals need to earn 120 CPEs every three years. At least 20 CISA CPE hours must be submitted annually. Professionals earning the required CPEs and paying the ISACA annual management fees can renew their CISA certification.

There are 10 different ways to earn CISA CPE hours. The most popular way chosen by professionals is earning CPEs through CPE online courses. Professionals opt for online CPE courses because there is no limit to earning CPEs, affordable and easy to earn CPEs. Besides, CPE courses are less prone to audits as those activities are already known by ISACA.

When submitting CPEs, be careful to submit the “actual hours” you spent on the activity. For instance, breaks do not count in a full-day activity.

The post 10 Ways to Earn CISA CPE Credits – Free CISA CPEs Included appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

As you land on this page, you should have a PMP certification and look for PMP renewal PDU options. You are on the right track! There are 11 legitimate ways to earn PMP renewal PDUs and we’ve explored all of them in this article. Let’s go over each of them one by one.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE PMP Renewal PDU resources throughout the article.

PMP Renewal PDU Requirements

Before exploring how to earn PDUs, first, remember the PMP PDU requirements as they are crucial in the PMP renewal process. PMI requires PMP certification holders to earn 60 PMP PDU hours every three years. And, there are further requirements for this requirement. The following three are the fundamental PMP renewal PDU requirements:

• A minimum of 35 PDUs must be earned through the Education category. (There is no maximum limit, all 60 PDUs can be earned through Education PDUs)
• A maximum of 25 PDUs can be earned through the Giving Back category. You cannot claim more than 25 PDUs
• A maximum of 8 PDUs can be earned as working as a practitioner.

You can learn more details in our PMP PDU Requirements article.

As long as you satisfy these PDU requirements, PMI will approve your PDU claims, and you will proceed to renew your PMP certification.

💡Julia Boyer renewed her PMP certification. Read Julia’s PMP renewal story!

PMI PDU Categories

There are two main categories to earn PDUs. Education and Giving Back. Education PDUs can be earned at professional seminars, webinars, classes, or even self-directed learning. Giving Back to the Profession PDUs can be earned through volunteering, mentoring, working with professional groups, and more. Each of these are the ways to earn PMP renewal PDU hours.

The following table summarizes the 11 ways to earn PMP Renewal PDUs.

You can watch our 11 PMI Approved Ways to Earn PMP PDU videos on YouTube.

Let’s go through each way and explore the details.

1st Way – PMP Renewal PDU Courses

As we’ve highlighted in the table, PMP renewal PDU course programs are the most popular way to earn PDUs among PMP-certified professionals.

While there are several benefits of renewing PMP through PMP renewal PDU courses, here are the top five reasons:

1. No Caps: There is no maximum limit for the education category, so, you can earn all 60 PMP PDUs in one program, and renew your PMP. You do not need to go elsewhere to find additional PDUs.
2. Self-Paced: You do not need to attend an event, conference, or seminar. You can follow the courses at your place, at your pace.
3. Affordable: Depending on the program content, you can enroll in a self-paced PMP Renewal PDU course bundle for ~$200-300. However, seminars or conferences start from $1,000, not only that, you cannot earn all PDU needs in one event.
4. Requires less effort: When you enroll in PMP Renewal PDU Courses, all you have to do is follow the curriculum, earn PDUs, and renew your PMP. However, other PDU earning ways require significant effort from the PMP-certification holder such as creating content, sharing a presentation, volunteering, etc.
5. Less prone to PMI audit: Since the PDU training programs are used by many PMP-certified professionals, PMI already has a track and record of the activities. However, for other categories, PDU submissions are more unique and may be more likely to hit a PMI audit.

We’ve explored this alternative in detail in the PMP PDU Courses article.

Course or Training Programs Accepted by PMI as Source of PDU

PMI accepts instructor-led formal education courses or classes held in-person or online. Here is a list of courses accepted by PMI as a source of PDUs.

• Virtual and in-person instructor-led courses from PMI Training
• Online courses are available on demand
• Academic education through programs accredited by the PMI Global Accreditation Center (GAC)
• Training courses offered by PMI Authorized Training Partners
• Disciplined Agile or PMP® certification training courses offered by a PMI Authorized Training Partner
• Courses from other third-party providers (SFBS 60 PMP PDU Course Online program belongs to this category).

San Francisco Business School offers a comprehensive 60 PMP PDU Online Course program. The program offers three self-paced business training programs: Executive Leadership, Strategy Creation & Execution, and Marketing Strategy. For each course in the program, SFBS awards a certificate of graduation. While earning PDUs, you will earn reputable business merits to highlight in your resume and LinkedIn.

Watch how Julia Earned 60 PDUs and Renewed Her PMP

Julia Boyer is a PMP-certified Professional from Dallas, Texas. Julia enrolled in the 60 PMP PDU Program from SFBS and renewed her PMP. Watch now her PMP renewal journey.

2nd Way – Attending Global Events

Several project management conferences, events, and activities are organized throughout the year. You can attend these events and earn PMP Renewal PDU credits. Typically, a one-day activity earns 6 PDUs. So, if you attended a two-day event, you will earn around 12 PDUs.

Attending global events has benefits like expanding your professional network and learning the changing trends in your domain. However, there are some pitfalls to these events.

• Typically organized in big cities. If you are living in a relatively smaller city, you might not see any events to earn PDUs.
• Requires in-person attendance. Many of the events take a few days, and you have to take days off from your work to attend these events.
• Expensive. Typically, these events are charged $1,000/day. So, for a two-day event, you need to pay around $2,000. Travel and accommodation, if needed, are not included in these fees.
• Does not earn 60 PDUs at once. Although it requires a significant amount of time and money, you cannot earn all 60 PDUs through one event.

Considering you are a full-time working professional and looking to earn 60 PMP Renewal PDU hours in one step, we do not recommend this way for earning PDUs.

3rd Way – Local Meetings

PMI has an extensive network in many countries and cities. In many major cities, there are PMI chapters and they organize 1-2 hour events every month. Typically, one presenter talks about a topic for 1-2 hours and the attendees follow the activity. These activities typically earn 1-2 PDUs.

4th Way – PMP Renewal PDU Online or Digital Media

PMI accepts self-paced learning activities as a source of PDUs. You can find several PMP renewal PDU programs online while many of them offer limited PDUs. San Francisco Business School offers a self-paced Free PMP PDU Course Online Program as well. If you attend this program, you can earn 3 Free PDUs and submit them in the Online or Digital Media sub-category under the Education category.

5th Way – Reading

Self-directed reading relevant to the certification you hold can be claimed for PDUs. For instance, reading a project management-related blog, a business education blog, or a book can count PDUs toward renewing your PMP certification. 1 hour of reading counts as 1 PDU, however, everyone’s reading pace is different. So, earning PMP renewal PDUs through reading resources is not a crystal clear way to go.

6th Way – Informal Learning

You can earn PDUs by engaging in structured professional discussions with others, for example, mentoring or “lunch and learn” sessions. For instance, if you are giving a presentation to your colleagues about project management, you can submit this as PDUs.

Important Note: The 7th through 11th Way of Earning PMP Renewal PDUs below are under the Giving Back category. As we’ve outlined in the beginning of the article, you can claim a maximum of 25 PDUs through Giving Back PDUs.

7th Way – PMP Renewal PDU Working as a Practitioner

By working in your certified role, you can earn PDUs by applying your knowledge and skills in a practical setting. If you are working in a project management-related role, you can earn up to 8 PDUs as working as a practitioner. However, it has a limitation. PMI accepts a maximum of 8 PDUs in a three-year cycle for the work as a practitioner category.

After earning 8 PDUs under the Working as a Practitioner category, you will need additional PDUs to complete your 60 PMP PDU cycle. SFBS offers 45, 30, and 15 PDU programs as well.

• 45 PMP PDU Program
• 30 PMP PDU Program
• 15 PMP PDU Program

If you need fewer than 60 PDUs, you can opt for one of these programs.

8th Way – Create Content

Do you write articles or blogs? Give webinars? Make videos? Today’s digital world is full of new content and anything you create counts towards your re-certification. Typically, you can submit PDUs for the hours you worked on project management content creation. For instance, if you wrote a blog post for an hour, you can claim 1 PDU in your PMI profile.

Creating content is cumbersome. There are several aspects of curating quality content. If your profession involves creating content, it is fine, you can earn PMP renewal PDU hours while you are working. However, just to earn PDUs, creating content is a tough path.

9th Way – Give a Presentation

If you speak at your organization, at a PMI chapter event, or at a conference, you can claim PDUs for it. For instance, if you gave a speech in a project management activity for an hour, you can submit 1 hour PDU for this activity in your PMI profile.

While there are nearly one million PMP-certified professionals, only a few thousand professionals could have earned PMP PDUs through this way. Because giving a speech to top-notch professionals requires exclusive skills. Besides, you should be invited to these events as a speaker, so you can earn PDUs.

10th Way – Share Knowledge

Others can benefit from your experience and knowledge. Keep track of the time you spend mentoring and teaching and claim it towards re-certification. An example of this can be sharing your knowledge in a discussion group at work. If you have a group of professionals sharing knowledge, if you attend those activities, you can claim PDUs.

For instance, if you’ve explored the ways of using AI in project management and want to share this knowledge with your colleagues, you can earn PDUs through this activity. You can gather in a meeting room and share your knowledge with your colleagues.

11th Way – Volunteer

PMI is just one of many organizations that relies on volunteers. Why not become one and earn credit toward re-certification in the process? You can search for volunteering options at the PMI website. Note that, these activities may not be available in your location if you are living in a small city.

Summary of PMP Renewal PDU Ways

PMI requires PMP-certified professionals to earn 60 PMP renewal PDU hours every three years. There are 11 ways to earn PMP PDUs. The first six are under the Education category and the last five are under the Giving Back category. You can earn all 60 PDUs in the Education category. However, there is a maximum 25 PDUs earning limit for the Giving Back category.

PMP Renewal PDU course programs are the most popular way to earn PDUs. Professionals choose to earn PDUs through courses because they are self-paced, affordable, and require less effort. Since there is no cap for the education category, professionals can earn all 60 PDUs at once through PMP PDU course programs. One of the other benefits of PDU courses is they are less prone to PMI audits.

The post PMP Renewal PDU – 11 PMI Approved Ways to Earn PMP PDUs appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Participative leadership style is also known as democratic leadership. In the participative leadership approach, the leader fosters group participation in decision-making processes, although the final words might be told by the leader. We have gone through the 7 traits of participative leadership style, pros, and cons, when to use this leadership style, and when to avoid it.

Bill Gates and Jim Lentz are known as famous participative leaders. We will show some examples from their leadership as well.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

What is Participative Leadership?

The inception of the participative leadership style dates back to the 1930s. Kurt Lewin, a German-born American social psychologist known for his field theory of behavior, developed a framework based on a leader’s behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leaders:

• Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. You can read more in the Authoritarian Leadership article.
• Laissez-faire leaders do not step in; they create the environment for maximum participation, and let the people make many of the decisions. You can read more in the Laissez Faire Leadership article.
• Democratic leaders foster team participation before making a decision.

The level of participation in participative leadership depends on the leader. Democratic leadership style is considered when a consensus is important to get team buy-in. Note that, if there are several differing ideas in the team, it might be difficult to manage and reach a conclusion.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace article.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

7 Traits of Participative Leadership Style

There are several traits of participative leadership. We will go through the most common 7 traits in this article.

1- Participative Leadership Requires Active Listening

The backbone of participative leadership is about encouraging group decision-making. To do this, participative leaders must be an active listener. Active listening is about following what people say without interruption, providing feedback about their ideas, and also welcoming feedback about what you say.

To evaluate every perspective emerging from the group, participative leaders must be active listeners.

2- Approachable

Participative leadership requires being approachable. Do you know leaders who go straight to their rooms, attend meeting after meeting until the evening, and do not contact their teams? This is an old-school type of management.

Participative leadership style requires the leaders to be approachable. Team members should be able to talk with their leaders without barriers. This will encourage better communication and relationship which will lead the team members to express their ideas freely.

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3- Participative Leaders are Open-minded

Open-minded is defined as “willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced” in the dictionary. No matter what the team members bring in, participative leaders should give appropriate time to consider new ideas within the group. Personal feelings or beliefs on a particular perspective should not hinder the leader from evaluating this together with the group.

4- Communication

Participative leadership requires efficient and effective communication. Several ideas might be discussed within the group and while evaluating each idea, especially if there are opposing ideas, leaders should be careful to manage the discussion.

Efficient and effective communication ensures that the morale and motivation of the team are not hampered while evaluating different ideas.

5- Participative Leadership Fosters Accountability

Group members can bring in new ideas to discuss with the group. This fosters accountability in the group. Because, individuals are expected to bring in their ideas, and all groups will consider those perspectives in a group meeting.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

6- Participative Leadership Motivates People

Participative leadership motivates people. Because, when making a decision, a participative leader looks for the team’s buy-in. The ideal scenario is consensus.

Since people actively participate in group discussions and decision-making, they feel that their ideas are important and affect the results. This motivates people.

7- Team-Building

As the team makes the decision as a group, participative leadership improves team-building. During the discussions, team members get to know each other better, this improves the relationship among the team and increases the team performance.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

When to Use Participative Leadership Style

With participative leadership, you focus on mutual participation. You consult with your group, and you consider their ideas and expertise before making a decision. This approach works best when your team members are experienced, when the task is complex and challenging, and when your team members want to give you their input. 

Even if the participative leader has the final say on decisions, team members are involved in the decision-making process. This builds trust and good working relationships, and team members feel empowered and engaged with their work. You depend on your group to develop ideas, not just offer opinions on an idea. The participative style is more about group problem-solving and brainstorming. So, make sure each person’s voice is heard equally.

Participative leadership works best when there are no tight deadlines, high-pressure, and when creativity is expected. Because, participative leadership is about hearing everyone’s voice on the team, evaluating the options, and making the best decision. This requires time.

Some example industries or places where participative leadership works best are:

• Universities
• Technology companies because they need innovation,
• Creative agencies for the generation of out-of-the-box ideas

When to Avoid Participative Leadership Style

The downside of participative leadership is that it can slow the decision-making process, which can lead to missed opportunities. This can be particularly damaging in emergencies or crises. Emergencies, time-critical tasks, and having an inexperienced team are the cases when you should avoid a participative leadership style.

• Emergency cases: quick decisions and fast reactions are needed in case of emergencies. This requires minimum time to decide on a solution. Autocratic leadership will work in emergencies.
• Time-critical tasks: When there is time pressure, there might not be time to evaluate different perspectives and opinions from the team.
• Inexperienced teams: If your team members are junior and need maximum guidance to perform, it is less likely to receive creative ideas from them. So, group participation may not be needed if you have an inexperienced team.
• Operational works: If the team is working on operational tasks such as customer support requests, answering phone calls, or working on field cases, you might avoid participative leadership as the key performance indicators will be timely responses and the procedure is already defined in most of the cases.

3 Benefits of Participative Leadership Style

There are several benefits of the participative leadership style. We will go through the top 3 benefits here.

1- Employee Retention

People may think their existence is not important to the organization if their ideas are not asked or if they do not contribute in the decision-making process. This can cause absenteeism. Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation without good reason.

Participative leadership values the individuals’ ideas and perspectives. Therefore, they feel they are important to the organization. This cuts down on turnover and absenteeism.

2- Higher Morale

Having words in group discussions, contributing to the decision-making, and taking a more active part in the organization make employees feel like more than just a number, they’re more likely to engage in company policy and enjoy their work.

No doubt, higher morale will lead to higher productivity.

3- Creative and Innovative Thinking

Every individual has a different experience, insight, and perspective. Therefore, having words from each member can lead to creative and innovative ideas.

Sometimes, management can get stuck in a loop that leads them to make stagnant or outdated decisions. By opening up the floor to employee input, creative thinking ensues—and that opens the door for cost-saving innovations, unique approaches to productivity and efficiency, and more.

3 Flaws of Participative Leadership Style

Nothing is perfect, participative leadership has some flaws as well. While there may be many flaws, we’ve listed the top three here.

1- Slower Decision-Making Process

Group participation, hearing every voice in the team may require a significant amount of time especially if the team is big. If you are trying to reach a consensus, it might be impractical as well. This causes slower decision-making. If there are tight deadlines or high pressure such as an emergency, participative leadership may not be possible.

2- May Not Work in Inexperienced Teams

Group participation and welcoming new rationale ideas and perspectives are possible only if the team members are experienced. Inexperienced team members will have limited knowledge and insights, so, applying a participative leadership style with an inexperienced team may not work.

3- May Question the Leadership Existence

As the group is making decisions, in some cases, the existence of the participative leader may be questioned. Because, the team evaluates the different ideas on their own, makes a decision, and comes to a conclusion. Team members might question the existence of the leader in this case even though the final words rely on the leader.

Famous Participative Leaders

Although there are several participative leaders, the most famous two most famous participative leaders are Bill Gates and Jim Lentz.

Bill Gates as a Participative Leader

I think everyone knows who Bill Gates is. Co-founder of Microsoft, billionaire, computer tycoon, and a predictor of future technology. Gates managed Microsoft’s product strategy from 1975 until 2006.

Bill Gates was using both transactional leadership and participative leadership. He asked for the ideas of his team members and valued the group participation. However, in some cases, he was the quick decision maker and excellent delegator of the tasks even if the majority of the team was thinking differently than him.

Bill Gates is one of the great leaders affected our lives in the last 25 years. Do you want to see all 12 Great Leaders Who Affected Our Lives?

Jim Lentz as a Participative Leader

James E. Lentz is an American business executive and former chief executive officer for Toyota North America. Lentz began his career at Toyota in 1982 as a Merchandising Manager climbed up the ladder to the top and ended his Toyota career by 2019.

Through his years at the company, he has realized that being a “tyrant boss” isn’t going to get you very far. The following quotes from an interview show his participative leadership style:

“You’re not going to motivate people that way. Even back in the day, if you were very dictatorial in your management style, you got exactly what someone asked you to do. Not less, but not more. Today if people really understand why they’re doing something, I think they give more.”

Summary

The participative leadership style allows group discussion in decision-making processes, evaluating different ideas and perspectives, and looking for a consensus and team buy-in. This increases morale, motivation, and performance as the team members feel their ideas are important. Also, creative and innovative ideas emerge under participative leadership.

Participative leadership can be applied when there is no high pressure when deadlines are not critical, and if the team is experienced. Some examples are universities, technology companies, and creative agencies. If there are tight deadlines, if there is an emergency, or if the tasks are operational, a participative leadership style is not appropriate.

Benefits of the participative leadership are employee retention, higher morale, and creativity. Flaws are a slower decision-making process, inapplicable in inexperienced teams, and leadership existence may be questioned.

Bill Gates and Jim Lentz are famous participative leaders to name a few from several famous leaders believing in participative leadership.

The post Participative Leadership: 7 Traits, Pros, Cons & When to Use appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Scrum Alliance requires CSPO renewal every two years. How to renew CSPO certification is the next question asked by Agile Product Owners once they get their CSPO certification.

We’ve explored the 3 steps for CSPO certification renewal in this article. Let’s go through each step one by one.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE CSPO Renewal resources throughout the article.

Crucial Impact of CSPO Renewal to Your Career

When it comes to renewing CSPO certification, you might wonder if it is worth renewing CSPO certification. Definitely worths! Let me explain why.

While we were preparing this post, we searched for the CSPO certification holders in California, US. Guess the number. There are over 6,000 CSPO-certified professionals in California and counting. Note that this is the number of professionals who allowed their credentials to be shown on the Scrum Alliance website. The real number should be slightly above these numbers.

We are living in a world of harsh competition. If you are working in agile roles, having a certification is a must more than an asset. Assume that you are looking for a Product Manager or Product Owner role. Without having an active CSPO certification, you will decrease your chances of securing a new agile job. Therefore, while you have earned CSPO certification, earn SEUs, and renew your CSPO certification.

Step 1 – Earn SEUs to Renew CSPO Certification

Before diving into how to earn SEU for renewing your CSPO, you must know how many SEUs you need to renew your CSPO. Scrum Alliance requires different numbers of Scrum Alliance SEU credits for different levels of certifications. CSPO certification is a foundational level certification and requires 20 SEUs to be earned every two years.

An SEU is based on a 1:1 ratio of contact hours to points. For example, if you attended a Scrum SEU Course and the duration of the course is 20 hours, you will earn a maximum of 20 SEUs.

No limits or caps exist for earning SEU credits from a certain category. So, you can attend an online self-paced Scrum SEU Course, and earn all required SEUs for your CSPO certification renewal. Your SEUs must have been earned within the CSPO renewal period, which is two years prior to your certification’s current active-through date. SEUs must have been earned within thirty (30) months for all certification renewal cycles.

You can read other requirements in our Scrum Alliance SEU article.

How to Renew CSPO Certification

There are four main SEU categories that Scrum Alliance accepts for renewing CSPO certification.

1. Learning (*Most Popular)
2. Events
3. Volunteering
4. Other

You can read more in our Scrum SEU article.

Watch 4 Ways for CSPO Renewal

We’ve explained the 4 Scrum Alliance-approved ways to Earn SEUs in our following YouTube video. Watch now.

Let’s go through each SEU category one by one now.

1st Way – Renew CSPO through Learning

As we’ve highlighted in the previous section, earning Scrum SEUs through the learning category is the most popular way for professionals.

While there are several benefits of renewing CSPO certification through SEU courses, here are the top five reasons:

1. No Caps: There is no maximum limit for the learning category, so, you can earn all Scrum SEU needs in one program, and renew your CSPO certification. You do not need to go elsewhere and search for how to earn SEU for CSPO certification renewal.
2. Self-Paced: You do not need to attend an event, conference, or seminar. You can follow the courses at your place, at your pace.
3. Affordable: Depending on the program content, you can enroll in a self-paced Scrum Alliance SEU course bundle for ~$200-300. However, seminars or conferences start from $1,000, not only that, you may not earn all SEU needs in one event.
4. Requires less effort: When you enroll in SEU Courses, all you have to do is follow the curriculum, earn SEUs, and renew your CSPO certification. However, other SEU earning ways require significant effort from the certification holder such as creating content, sharing a presentation, authoring, etc.
5. Less prone to Scrum Alliance® audit: Since the SEU training programs are used by many certified professionals, Scrum Alliance already has a track and record of the activities. However, for other categories, SEU submissions are more unique and may be more likely to hit an audit.

How to Earn 20 SEUs to Renew Your CSPO Easily

San Francisco Business School offers a 20 SEU Course program. The program offers a self-paced business training program: Executive Leadership. SFBS awards a certificate of graduation. While earning SEUs, you will earn reputable business merits to highlight in your resume and LinkedIn.

Watch how Natalia Earned 20 SEUs for CSM Renewal

Natalia Olson is a CSM-certified Professional. Natalia enrolled in the 20 SEU Program from SFBS and renewed her CSM. Since the CSPO renewal requirements and steps are the same, you can be inspired by Natalia’s journey!

Watch now her CSM renewal journey.

2nd Way – CSPO Renewal through Events

You can earn  SEUs for participating in events like Scrum Alliance Global Gatherings, Scrum Alliance Regional Gatherings, and Non-Scrum Alliance-Sponsored Events, as well as in User Groups events and activities. Presenting, coaching, and attending sessions all count as SEU-eligible activities.

Typically, the duration of the activity determines the number of SEUs you will earn. For instance, if you attended a one-day Scrum Alliance SEU event, if the schedule of the event was 9 to 12 in the morning, and 1 to 5 pm in the afternoon, the total hours for the event would be 7 hours. So, you can earn 7 SEUs with this event toward renewing your CSPO certification.

Attending events has benefits like expanding your professional network and learning the changing trends in your domain. However, there are some pitfalls to these events.

• Typically organized in big cities. If you are living in a relatively smaller city, you might not see any events to earn SEUs.
• Requires in-person attendance. Many of the events take a few days, and you have to take days off from your work to attend these events.
• Expensive. On average, these events are charged $1,000/day. So, for a two-day event, you need to pay around $2,000. Travel and accommodation, if needed, are not included in these fees.
• May not earn required SEUs at once. Although it requires a significant amount of time and money, you may not earn all SEUs through one event. Considering you are a full-time professional looking to earn the CSPO SEU hours you need in one step, you may opt for other alternatives to earn SEUs.

3rd Way – CSPO Renewal through Volunteering

Scrum Alliance encourages professionals to give back to the community. Therefore, SEUs may be earned by providing non-compensated professional Scrum services.

For instance, if you are volunteering in an activity for teaching the basics of agile to high school students, this activity can earn you SEUs for CSPO renewal. The critical point here is, that you should not be compensated if you are in a volunteering activity. You can submit SEUs for the duration of the activity. For instance, if you attended a one-hour event, you can submit 1 SEU toward renewing your certification.

Note that, these activities may not be available in your location if you are living in a small city.

4th Way – Certified Product Owner Certification Renewal through Other sources

SEUs may be earned through a variety of other learning activities as Scrum Alliance acknowledges that not all learning fits neatly into the categories above. For instance, if you are reading a book, blog, or article about agile, you can earn SEUs in the Others category.

Renew CSPO Certification SEU Example

In this section, we will go through Scrum Alliance SEU examples by scenarios.

Note that, the following scenario is fictional to provide a better understanding of SEU reporting.

Scenario  – How Jane Earned SEU to Renew CSPO Certification

Jane works as a Product Owner in a Fintech company. She earned her CSPO certification 1 year ago, and her certification due date is approaching.

Jane attends the San Francisco Business School’s Free Scrum SEU Course Online Program. The program contains three self-paced courses, and each course is one hour in length. After completing the self-paced program, Jane can submit 3 SEUs to renew her CSPO certification.

Step 2 – Submit Earned SEUs to Scrum Alliance

Once you earned the required SEUs in the CSPO renewal progress, the next step is submitting them to Scrum Alliance. Since you are a CSPO-certified professional, you should already have an account on the Scrum Alliance website.

Step 3 – Pay the CSPO Renewal Fee & Renew Your CSPO

Once you complete the required SEUs to renew your CSPO certification, the next step is paying the CSPO renewal fee and completing your process. To renew your certification(s) after submitting the required SEUs, please do the following:

1. Log in to your Scrum Alliance Dashboard
2. Select the Renew Now button in the upper left
3. Select the certifications you wish to renew
4. Confirm your renewal and proceed with the payment

Scrum Alliance requires a certification renewal fee at the end of the renewal process. For the CSPO certification, the renewal fee is $100. Note that, this is paid when you renew your CSPO certification. So, the CSPO renewal fee is $100 for every two years.

However, the CSPO renewal cost will be higher than this amount. To earn SEUs, you will attend courses, events, or other activities. If you need to pay for those activities, the cost of renewing your certification will be beyond the CSPO renewal fee paid to Scrum Alliance.

How to Renew an Expired CSPO Certification

Scrum Alliance certifications are renewed on a two-year basis. If your certification has expired, you are still able to renew it successfully after the expiration date. If you renew past the expiration date, your certification will be extended for a full two years from the date you pay to renew (vs. from the original expiration date.)

There are several benefits of having CSPO certification. Almost all agile roles require a reputable certification and CSPO is for sure the most reputable one. Therefore, we recommend keeping your CSPO certification active and renewing your CSPO certification before the expiration date.

Summary

You need to get 20 SEUs every two years to renew your CSPO certification. You can earn SEUs in four different categories: Learning, Events, Volunteering, and Others. Earning SEUs through Scrum SEU courses is the most popular among CSPO-certified professionals.

CSPO professionals choose to earn SEUs through courses because they are self-paced, affordable, and require less effort. Since there is no cap for the learning category, professionals can earn all required SEUs at once through CSPO SEU course programs. One of the other benefits of SEU courses is they are less prone to Scrum Alliance audits.

The post CSPO Renewal in 3 Steps – Renew CSPO Certification appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Adaptive leadership is using a set of strategies and practices you can use to overcome obstacles, accomplish meaningful change, and adapt to challenging and complex environments. We are living in a harsh competition age and the fast pace of business dynamics is like never before. This makes adaptive leadership a crucial strategy for many businesses to be successful. We have described adaptive leadership and the five principles of being an adaptive leader in this article.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Inception of the adaptive leadership dates back to 1994. Ron Heifetz, a Harvard professor, described adaptive leadership as a set of strategies and practices you can use to overcome obstacles, accomplish meaningful change, and adapt to challenging and complex environments.

Heifetz’s theory was based on natural selection theory in biology. This theory supports that animals and plants which can adapt to changing conditions can survive for a longer time. Based on the theory, animals and plants keep the crucial parts of their body for their survival, and get rid of unnecessary parts as the species evolve over time.

Similarly, adaptive leaders take the most useful competence, skills, and lessons from past events and experiences to use them in the future. According to Heifetz, the adaptive leadership process has three stages as shown in the following figure.

3 Stages of Adaptive Leadership

Let’s go over the three stages of adaptive leadership now.

1- Observing Events and Patterns

During business transformation, there is a critical question you should ask: What’s worth keeping and what is not? Which processes and practices are useful to the organization and which are not? Which processes slow down business? How can you achieve faster decision-making?

Adaptive leadership requires observing the business, determining the patterns, keeping the useful practices, and eliminating the unnecessary ones. For example, bidding farewell to a vendor relationship the company has had for decades or nixing a process that used to boost efficiency but now hinders it. In short, for an organization to grow, this parting with the past has to happen because letting go has the power to prompt new economic opportunities, thoughts, and value systems.

2- Interpreting and Developing Hypotheses

At this stage, an adaptive leader directs and encourages creativity and innovation. New hypotheses are developed and tested at this stage of the adaptive leadership cycle. Be prepared for failures at this stage as the company is testing new things that have not been tested before. Adaptive leaders understand this and are prepared for these challenges because they know that within these challenges lies the potential to propel the company to new heights.

For instance, hypotheses, the company decides to remove managerial approvals up to $1,000 monthly expenses from employees. This will save time for managers and employees will not have to wait for their expenses to be approved to do their work. This can be tested in a few departments at first to see how it goes, and the process can be improved accordingly before making it company-wide applicable.

3- Designing Interventions

In the third phase of adaptive leadership, the trial phase for developing new approaches to operating the organization is over. The practices and hypotheses that worked well are applied and the ones that did not work out are eliminated. At this stage, adaptive leaders carefully monitor the impact of new systems and processes, report their findings, and work with teams to make any necessary adjustments for improvement.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

These steps are iterative, so once you’ve completed them all, you repeat the process and refine your observations, interpretations, and interventions until you’re satisfied with the solution.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your HR leadership skills.

Adaptive Leadership Example – Best Buy Case Study

It is best to go over a real-life case example for adaptive leadership. In 2003, competition in the U.S. consumer electronics market was particularly fierce, with Wal-Mart®, Target®, and Costco® threatening to take market share from perennial leaders, Best Buy® and Circuit City®.

Julie Gilbert, Best Buy VP, noticed that her organization skipped an opportunity to win more market share by focusing on young and male customers and ignoring women. Julie decided to change this strategy and worked on how to target female customers.

Following Gilbert’s adaptive leadership, Best Buy updated its stores to make them more appealing to female customers. Some of the practices were widening the aisles for baby strollers, softening the lightning, and reducing the volume of background music in the stores. The output was fruitful. Best Buy increased the revenue from female customers by $4.4 billion in four years. This counted an 11% rise in overall revenue mainly because of Gilbert’s adaptive leadership strategy.

Like Best Buy, all businesses must adapt to different environments, whether these come from changes in technology, customer expectations, laws and regulations, or employees’ expectations. Leaders must find ways to adapt and take advantage of the opportunities that these changes bring.

5 Principles of Adaptive Leadership – How to Become an Adaptive Leader

There are five common principles of adaptive leadership. You can apply these in your role to become an adaptive leader and adapt your business to changing conditions.

1- Navigate the Business Environment

Adaptive leaders must embrace uncertainty and adopt new approaches to perform well in changeable environments. To succeed in this dimension, you should apply some tactics as follows.

• Get the buy-in of all members of the organization. Less experienced professionals are more likely to be critical of processes and they can ask tough questions compared to more experienced professionals. If you involve as many people as possible, you can identify more improvement areas.
• Share the leadership role. Every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. In some cases and roles, some people can be more successful than others while in another case, the same person can be less successful while another one can be more successful. You can use situational leadership strategies to allocate leadership responsibility to those who are most suited to making particular decisions to achieve the best result for your organization. Also, consider applying a laissez-faire leadership style.
• Keep questioning. Analyze the risks and make tests by creating new hypotheses. As part of adaptive leadership, you can create “what if” scenarios to find new improvement areas. For instance, “What happens if we apply agile project management rather than a waterfall?”, “what happens if we limit the meeting durations to a maximum of 30 minutes?”.
• Stay objective. Sometimes, it is hard to be objective, and humans are emotional and subjective in many cases. Heifetz used the concept of “getting on the balcony” as opposed to “being on the dance floor” to refer to the perspective you need. This means spotting trends and patterns rather than focusing on the minutiae of day-to-day activity.

2. Lead With Empathy

Great leaders are empathetic. Adaptive leaders create a shared sense of purpose and manage through influence rather than command and control. You can read more about this in the charismatic leadership article. To succeed in this dimension, you should apply the following tactics.

• See the world from others’ perspectives. Do not focus on your or your team’s self-interests. Adaptive leadership requires focusing on the big picture and focusing on the optimum solutions that fit everyone or at least for the benefit of the majority.
• Develop rapport with your team. Before you can influence others, you need to make a personal connection with them. To do so, you’ll need to understand their beliefs, values, and concerns. You can strengthen your bond with your team members by improving your emotional intelligence. You can apply authentic leadership to improve your rapport with your team.
• Create a Common Goal. What is the mission and vision of the organization? What is the big picture? Encourage your followers by showing a clear vision and mission of the organization. Note that, these should align with the team members’ values and interests.
• Reward accomplishment. Do not hesitate and delay rewarding accomplishments. Rewards can be monetary or non-monetary. For instance, a bonus payment for overperformance is a monetary reward. However, giving additional leading responsibility is a non-monetary reward if the team member is willing to take on new roles. By rewarding them, you build their loyalty and commitment to the organization and to your goals. HR leadership is also crucial when defining an organization’s rewards and punishment policies.

Watch Adaptive Leadership – Principles of Being an Adaptive Leader YouTube Video

We have a 12-minute video describing adaptive leadership and its principles. Watch now!

3. Learn Through Self-Correction

Adaptive leadership requires encouragement and persistence in experimentation. There will be failures and successes through these experiments. The important point is to try and find the correct practices. To succeed in this dimension, you can apply the following tactics.

• Build trust and integrity. Adaptive leadership should ensure to creation of an environment where the team members can propose their ideas. New ideas should be encouraged as new practices can emerge from these ideas.
• Encourage creativity and innovation. Ideas generate solutions and innovations. The more ideas your people generate, the more likely it is that you’ll arrive at an effective solution. Encourage people to discuss ideas, brainstorm, and evaluate different perspectives. Foster group discussions that will emerge new ideas.
• Foster a learning environment. New ideas and innovations come out of competent people. Ensure an environment where people are not afraid of making mistakes. Improve skills and competence of the people. Pay attention to growing emerging leaders. New leaders with improved team leadership skills can lead the company to success.
• Experiment and test ideas. Business tests allow you to assess your ideas before applying them to a large scale. For instance, if you are trying a new process, try it in a few departments or locations at first. You can see the weaknesses and strengths of the process. And then, you can apply it to all departments of the company.
• Manage uncertainty. Many people are resistant to change by nature. You should guide people through the change and support them during new adaptions.

4. Create Win-Win Solutions

Adaptive leaders focus on achieving success for both the organization and its external network of stakeholders. To succeed in this dimension, you can apply the following tactics.

• Build acceptance. The faster your people adjust to change, the less disruption there will be. Test your skills to pinpoint any areas that you need to develop further.
• Extend engagement outside your four walls. Your organization’s success likely depends on the contribution and engagement of its external suppliers, vendors, and customers. Allow them to participate in decision-making and ask for their opinions regularly. Adaptive leadership welcomes new ideas inside and outside.
• Strengthen the company’s reputation through social responsibility initiatives. Leaders must focus on more than the bottom line to succeed in the marketplace. By connecting with its community, an organization can help others while improving customer loyalty and its reputation as an employer of choice.

5. Become Persistent Until You Find the Best Practices

Adaptive leaders will never stop improvement. There is no end to process, practice, and tool improvement. Because, technology changes, industry changes, and market changes, as a result, your organization must be adaptive to ever-changing conditions. While finding and applying the best practices, you can follow the following tactics.

• Do not be afraid to fail. If you are afraid to fail, you cannot try new ideas. This will hinder creativity and innovation.
• Continue to ask “What’s Next?”. Once you iterate your results, focus on the next one. Improvement should be inevitable under adaptive leadership.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

Benefits of Adaptive Leadership

Organizations that adjust to changing circumstances do better financially than ones that don’t. It claims that agile, flexible businesses continually demonstrate strong, sustainable performances and outperform their peers during volatile periods.

Similarly, leaders who adopt an adaptive leadership approach alongside a transformational leadership style are often the best equipped to steer organizations through turbulent periods of change. They raise morale by generating solutions to issues with other team members, and then continually refine those ideas until they arrive at the best one. This iterative approach means that the final decision is typically the most effective one.

The process of coming up with multiple solutions builds a culture where people can have healthy debates with one another. It also empowers them to generate their own ideas and to think independently.

Flaws of Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership does have its drawbacks. The process of exploring new possibilities can bring a degree of uncertainty, and this can create friction among team members. Leaders may resent their ideas being challenged, and block others’ suggestions.

It’s also not a leadership style that’s suitable in all situations. For example, it’s better applied to more unpredictable environments than stable ones. When an industry is mature, leaders may need to adopt a style that’s more disruptive to innovate and push the business ahead.

Furthermore, adaptive leadership may not be appropriate when senior managers need to make important decisions quickly, whereas authoritative leadership will be more suitable. It takes time to develop different processes and for people to adapt to new situations. Therefore, a more autocratic leadership approach may be suitable in this environment.

Famous Adaptive Leaders

There are several famous adaptive leaders. We will be focusing on two of them here.

1- Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln accepted diversity, appointed rivals for his cabinet, and was always open to debate and criticism. Lincoln was a believer of adaptive leadership and he also had an open-door policy, inviting citizens to discuss their challenges with him. His attentive ear and natural empathy helped him earn respect.

2- General George Patton

George Smith Patton Jr. was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The adaptive leadership style worked well for Patton. He gained respect as a military leader in large part by soliciting input from his team. Always one to anticipate trouble, he believed in having a backup plan in case a situation went south.

Summary

Adaptive leadership is using strategies and practices to overcome ever-changing business conditions and trying to achieve the best. Market changes, customer changes, unexpected things happen, and business changes. Adaptive leadership requires adapting the business to ever-changing conditions and managing the organization to success.

There are three stages of adaptive leadership. These are, observing events and patterns, interpreting and developing hypotheses, and designing interventions. There are five principles of adaptive leadership. These are navigating the business environment, leading with empathy, learning through self-correction, creating win-win solutions, and persistence until finding the best practices.

Organizations applying adaptive leadership are financially more successful. People are more committed as their ideas are valued and performance is typically better. However, there are flaws in the adaptive leadership style as well. Evaluating all ideas may require significant time and is not feasible when quick decisions need to be made. Abraham Lincoln and General George Patton are two famous adaptive leaders.

The post Adaptive Leadership: 5 Principles to Be an Adaptive Leader appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

You’ve worked hard to earn your PMP certification. Now, it is time to renew your PMP certification. And you are looking for PMP PDU Courses to renew your PMP certification. Don’t worry, you’ve landed on the correct page! We’ve explored the PMP PDU courses that can earn you 60 PDUs and complete your PMP renewal process.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE PMP PDU resources throughout the article.

💡Julia Boyer earned 60 PMP PDU hours and renewed her PMP certification. Read Julia’s PMP renewal story!

PMP PDU Courses

PMI requires PMP certification holders to earn 60 PDUs every three years. There are certain PMP PDU requirements, and the most popular way to earn PDUs is by attending PMP PDU courses. You can see the PDU categories in the following infographic.

While there are several ways to earn PDUs, the most popular way followed by PMP-certified professionals is attending  PMP PDU courses or training.

Here is why PMP certification holders choose PMP PDU Courses to renew their PMP:

1. No Caps: There is no maximum limit for the education category, so, you can earn all 60 PMP PDUs in one program, and renew your PMP.
2. Self-Paced: You do not need to attend an event, conference, or seminar. You can follow the courses at your place, at your pace.
3. Affordable: Depending on the program content, you can enroll in a self-paced PMP PDU course bundle for ~$200-300. However, seminars or conferences start from $1,000, not only that, you cannot earn all PDU needs in one event.
4. Requires less effort: When you enroll in PMP PDU Courses, all you have to do is follow the curriculum, earn PDUs, and renew your PMP. However, other PDU earning ways require significant effort from the PMP-certification holder such as creating content, sharing a presentation, volunteering, etc.
5. Less prone to PMI audit: Since the PDU training programs are used by many PMP-certified professionals, PMI already has a track and record of the activities. However, for other categories, PDU submissions are more unique and may be more likely to hit a PMI audit.

Watch how Julia Earned 60 PDUs and Renewed Her PMP

Julia Boyer is a PMP-certified Professional from Dallas, Texas. Julia enrolled in the 60 PMP PDU Program from SFBS and renewed her PMP. Watch now her PMP renewal journey.

What are the Best PMP PDU Online Courses?

If you’ve googled about the PMP PDU online courses, you will see several resources. Some of them offer technical courses, that will not benefit your career. Some of them offer just PDF papers to read, and that does not bring any skills.

The best PDU online courses should offer you business courses, earn new business skills, and contribute to your career growth.

For instance, San Francisco Business School offers a comprehensive 60 PMP PDU Online Course program. The program offers three self-paced business training programs: Executive Leadership, Strategy Creation & Execution, and Marketing Strategy. For each course in the program, SFBS awards a certificate of graduation. While earning PDUs, you will earn reputable business merits to highlight in your resume and LinkedIn.

Program #1- Executive Leadership Program

Improve your decision-making, and cross-functional competence, expand your understanding of the global marketplace, and build your way to servant leadership. Learn how to tackle business challenges. Earns 20 PMP PDUs.

Program #2- Strategy Creation & Execution Program

Develop the global perspective, quantitative background, and creative problem-solving skills to take your strategy from formulation to execution. Harness the power of disruptive innovation to craft winning strategies and turn them into play. Earns 30 PMP PDUs.

Program #3- Marketing Strategy Program

Boost revenue and profit by targeting the right segments, designing effective go-to-market strategies, and building high-value brands. Align your marketing and promotion efforts with business strategy to maximize Return on Investment. Earns 10 PMP PDUs.

When choosing a PMP PDU online course program, do not just look at the price. You will spend 60 hours with the program you will attend, and make sure you will earn some skills at the end of the program.

You can learn 11 Ways to Earn PMP Renewal PDU in our article.

What should be covered in a PMP PDU Program?

PMI accepts project management-related or business courses as a source of PDUs. For example, if you are a software developer, and attended a coding course, this course will not count as a source of PDU to renew your PMP certification. Because, the coding course is technical, and does not teach project management or other business areas.

Typical PMP PDU course programs cover:

• Business courses: Any business courses such as leadership, strategy, marketing, etc. can be considered as a PDU course.
• Project Management courses: Project management courses such as Agile, kanban, etc. can be considered as a PDU course.
• Soft Skill courses: Communication skills, negotiation, decision-making, etc. can be considered as a PDU course.

Note that, we tried to list the popular domains covered in PDU programs. There may be other courses that cover other topics and count as PDUs for PMP.

Free PMP PDU Online Courses

There are YouTube videos, free courses, and webinars available on the web. You can enroll in these free activities and earn PDUs towards renewing your PMP certification. Typically, these events earn 1-2 PDUs. Earning all 60 PDUs through Free PDU events is not feasible. Even if you can attend free events, your schedule may not allow you to attend assuming you are a full-time working professional. You may need to spend your evenings and weekends or even you may need to take a day off from your work to attend these free events.

SFBS offers a 3-hour Free PMP PDU Course program as well. You can earn 3 PDUs by attending this program.

Learn more about Free PDU for PMP Renewal.

Summary

PMI requires PMP certification holders to earn 60 PDUs and renew their PMP every three years. There are education and giving back PDU categories to earn PDUs. While there are several ways to earn PDUs, enrolling in PMP PDU Online course programs is the most affordable and convenient way to earn 60 PDUs to renew PMP certification. It is important to choose a PMP PDU program that will earn you new business skills not just PDUs.

The post PMP PDU Courses – Earn 60 PDUs to Renew PMP appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

There are several leadership skills that must be present in leaders. You should have seen the “top leadership skills” types of posts before. This article differs from them. We’ve surveyed 6,992 professionals and asked them a single question: “What are the top three important leadership skills you would like to see in your leadership at your workplace?”. The results are inspiring.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

Let’s go over the 21 effective leadership skills professionals expect to see at their workplaces.

💡 Transformational Leadership is the most demanded leadership style. Have you seen the 5 Steps to Transformational Leadership article? 

Leadership Skills Survey

We’ve surveyed 6,992 professionals enrolled in professional business training programs at San Francisco Business School. You can see the demographics, titles, functions, industry details of the respondents, and methodology of the survey at the bottom of this article (*).

We’ve shown the 21 different types of leadership skills and asked respondents to pick the top three leadership skills they would like to see in their leadership or management at their workplace. Below are the results.

Watch 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace YouTube Video

If you like watching videos rather than reading, you can watch our Top 21 Leadership Skills YouTube video.

Top 21 Leadership Skills

We will go through each of these 21 leadership skills one by one.

Top Leadership Skills #1 – Communication – Relationship

Communication, relationship, and interpersonal skills are crucial for leaders. Based on research, executives and managers spend 90% of their time on communication. The survey results justify this as well.

Professionals seek for confident and easy communication with their leaders. They expect to see emotional intelligence and leaders who can see the issues from different perspectives. Have you seen leaders go to their room in the morning, go to meeting after meeting until the evening, and not set aside any time for their team? That’s an example of bad communication.

Leaders should wander around and be visible to the people in their team. So, people should feel comfortable when communicating with their leaders and the leaders should be easily accessible. That is why professionals pick communication as the top leadership skill.

Top Leadership Skills #2 – Integrity – Trust – Authenticity

Transformational leaders follow the rules, ethical standards, and moral principles. They are fair and at equal distance to all members of the group. Their actions are taken as a role model by others. Therefore, leaders must be trustworthy.

You should have seen examples where leaders or managers go along better, and have more personal relationships with some individuals compared to others. Humans are social, and this can be. However, your personal relationships must not affect your work and attitude toward the people in your team.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

Top Leadership Skills #3 – Encouragement – Motivating Others

Leaders inspire people, motivate their team, and encourage them to produce the best results. Professionals seek encouragement as a leadership skill in their leadership team.

There are several ways to encourage people. The most common ways are setting clear goals, giving incentives, appreciation verbally, and celebrating success.

If you see any mistake or misbehavior of your team members, avoid talking about this in the group. Try to set up a one-on-one meeting. Refrain from phone or online meetings.

4- Charisma – Persuasion & Influence

Charisma is described as a personal quality of presence or charm that others find compelling. Charisma is one of the intangible but sensible traits of leaders. You cannot avoid charisma when defining leadership.

Scholars in sociology, political science, psychology, and management reserve the term for a type of leadership seen as extraordinary. In these fields, the term “charisma” is used to describe a particular type of leader who uses “values-based, symbolic, and emotion-laden leader signaling”.

Charismatic leaders combine charm, interpersonal connection, and persuasiveness to motivate others. Professionals seek charisma, persuasion, and influence leadership skills in their executives. These skills will help their business unit to overcome obstacles, communicate with other departments in the organization easily, and a better performance in the end.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

5- Setting Goals for Everyone

Organizations have missions and visions. To reach those missions and visions, goals are set on an organizational level, and these goals are broken down to the department or business unit level. Then, goals are set on an individual level.

Professionals expect their leaders to set goals for everyone. This does not mean that everyone has similar goals. Depending on the experience, level, and skills of each individual, leaders must seek a fair goal distribution for everyone.

6- Strategic Thinking – Decision-Making

We are living in a fast-paced environment. This is similar to making business decisions as well. In some cases, leaders have to make a decision with limited data or under tough conditions.

Professionals expect their leaders to have strategic thinking and decision-making leadership skills. Strategic thinking refers to evaluating the several aspects of a move or decision. Strategic thinking is like playing chess, being able to see several steps ahead and decide based on the current situation.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

7- Positivity

Leaders should be realistic and positive. Sometimes, there is a misconception between positivity and seeing things through rose spectacles.

The dictionary meaning of positivity is the practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude. Leaders should be calm, positive, and optimistic. Otherwise, the negative energy can affect their team and it can hamper the business productivity in the organization.

8- Perseverance – Commitment

Perseverance and commitment is another important leadership skill. Once the goals are set, leaders should be perseverant throughout the journey to reach the goals.

It can be a long journey, and there can be disasters, roadblocks, impediments, and issues affecting the team to reach its goals. Professionals seek perseverance and commitment leadership skills in their management to go over the issues with patience.

9- Conflict Management – Negotiation

Conflicts are unavoidable wherever there is a human interaction. You should not be afraid of the conflicts. However, leaders must have conflict management and negotiation leadership skills.

There are five types of conflict management techniques:

1. Avoiding: This is simply delaying to make a decision about the issue.
2. Competing: Addressing the conflict directly and trying to solve the conflict as quickly as possible.
3. Accommodating: This is resolving the issue by giving in to the opposing party.
4. Compromising: This is referred to as “lose-lose” as well. Each side is pushed to make some sacrifices to reach a resolution.
5. Collaborating: This method looks for “win-win” resolution. Parties look for a solution that will make everyone happy.

Leaders should use their leadership skills to overcome conflicts in the best way. Win-win may not be the ultimate outcome in some circumstances.

10- Agility and Adaptability – Flexibility

We are living in a fast-paced environment. Business conditions may change rapidly. So, leaders must be agile, and flexible and be able to adapt to changing conditions.

Professionals expect their leaders or managers to have agility, adaptability, and flexibility leadership skills. Agility refers to the ability to think and understand quickly. Adaptability refers to the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions and flexibility refers to adapting to changing circumstances and expectations of the workplace.

11- Innovation and Creativity

Innovation refers to finding new ways or ideas to overcome a situation. Typically, innovations are linked with new services or products. However, leaders are expected to be innovative when they hit a roadblock. Common ways or traditional techniques may not help the team to overcome the issue. Therefore, professionals expect their leaders to be innovative and creative.

12- Team Building

Team building is growing strong teams that have strong professional bonds and perform efficiently to provide better outputs. Tuckman identifies team building in five stages:

• Forming: The team is gathering at this stage. The team is structured, and no one knows each other enough.
• Storming: The team starts to perform and interpersonal conflicts start to arise.
• Norming: In this stage, team members are creating new ways of doing and being together. Team members start to trust each other.
• Performing: The most productive stage of the team. Everyone knows each other, and support is at the highest degree.
• Adjourning: The work is finished, and the team adjourns.

The critical moments in teams are when a new one joins the team, or if the whole team is formed recently. Leadership’s team-building skills will play a significant role in minimizing conflicts and reaching the maximum performance level.

13- Problem-Solving

In some cases, problem-solving is confused with conflict management. Typically, conflicts arise between people. However, problems can be related to anything including people.

For instance, if one of your team members is coming late every day, this is a problem. Similarly, if there has been a fire in your region and if your premises were damaged, this is also a problem.

Leaders must be calm and patient against problems. Problem-solving is an important leadership skill to overcome the issues.

14- Coaching

Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a coachee. Occasionally, coaching may mean an informal relationship between two people, of whom one has more experience and expertise than the other and offers advice and guidance as the latter learns; but coaching differs from mentoring by focusing on specific tasks or objectives, as opposed to more general goals or overall development.

15- Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgment by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluations. In some cases, it might not be possible to avoid emotions when coming to a conclusion. However, leaders must refrain from emotional effects when they are making a decision. Therefore, critical thinking is one of the leadership skills.

16- Taking Responsibility

Leaders or managers are responsible for their teams. So, when there is a success, it accounts for the entire team. However, if there is a failure, people may start to look for a scapegoat. Leaders play a vital role here. They should prevent their team, and absorb the pressure coming from higher management. Leaders should take responsibility for their team.

17- Effective Planning

Businesses perform time-sensitive projects, tasks, or activities. In order to complete a project on time and on budget, effective planning skills are crucial. Therefore, professionals seek effective planning skills in their leaders.

18- Delegating

Professionals like delegating leaders. They want to be accountable for their activities. So, they want their leadership to set the goals and expectations, and give them the way to perform their activities. However, some leaders or managers are not confident after assigning tasks to their team.

Micromanagement is a pattern of manager behavior marked by excessive supervision and control of employees’ work and processes, as well as a limited delegation of tasks or decisions to staff. Typically, micromanagement is a flaw of new leaders or managers and professionals hate it.

19- Decisiveness

20- Feedback (giving and receiving)

In many cases, leaders or managers come together with their team members annually or every six months to make a performance review. This is a very long period. Leaders should be visible and approachable. The feedback mechanism should be two-way. Leaders should give feedback to the team members, well, this is normal. However, leaders should be mature enough to receive any type of feedback from team members as well.

Actually, feedback is one of the best ways to see how others see you. Therefore, make sure you establish a productive feedback mechanism in your organization.

21- Punctuality – Time Management

Typically, leaders and managers are very busy. Their calendar may shift during the day. However, they must find a way to plan important meetings on time. Even if they need to reschedule, they should be informed in advance instead of a no-show. So, professionals expect their management to have punctuality and time management leadership skills.

22- Other Leadership Skills

There are many other leadership skills you can name. However, we’ve listed the top 21 leadership skills and asked them to vote for our audience. A minority, 0.51%, of the respondents chose that there are other leadership skills than we listed above.

How to Develop Leadership Skills – 5 Common Ways

We’ve listed the top 21 leadership skills, but how can you develop your leadership skills? There are five common ways in which leaders develop and enhance their leadership skills.

1- Leadership Skills Courses/Programs

There are leadership programs or courses that you can attend and enhance your leadership skills. While courses focus on particular leadership skills, programs aim to develop your overall leadership presence and skills. For instance, San Francisco Business School offers an Executive Leadership Program.

Executive Leadership Training Program Covers:

• Generic & Adaptive Leadership – Change is inevitable and leaders must be prepared for the changing dynamics of the business environment. Learn how to adapt your leadership in changing circumstances.
• Grasping Power – Only powerful leaders sustain in a brutal business environment. You’ll learn how to grasp power.
• Servant Leadership – Leaders must be adaptive, servant, and transformational in today’s business world. Walk the path to be a servant leader that empowers people and organizations.
• Emotional Intelligence – Emotional effects are unavoidable wherever there is a human factor. Develop your competence to be an agile, optimistic, and humble leader. Learn how to show people why they matter.
• Tomorrow’s Leaders – You cannot lead the millennials the same way as you do for boomers. Increase your awareness for future leadership and transformational leadership.
• Leadership in Hard Times – While being an optimist leader, you have to be ready for the unanticipated cases. Improve your contingency planning skills, dealing with conflict of interest, and how to overcome a crisis.

You can check further on the program page.

2- Coaching

We’ve explained the coaching above. In coaching, the coach guides the coachee through real-life scenarios. In some cases, the coach can help the trainee with the real cases the trainee faces at work. There are several coaching programs available on the web. However, make sure to choose the right coach for you. It is important to choose a coach from a similar or even the same industry, who has gone through your career path before and who can guide you transparently.

3- Practicing

As in any profession, the best method to sharpen your leadership skills is practicing. Whenever you see a chance to practice your skills, do not hesitate. For instance, if you see a conflict between your colleagues, you can seek a resolution. Or, help a team member to make a decision.

4- Reading

You can consider reading leadership books, articles, or business blogs. There are phenomenal leadership books. You can make a reading list, and read those books to sharpen your leadership skills. You might be interested in our John C. Maxwell – Top 5 Leadership Books article.

5- Events

There are conferences, seminars, and webinars about leadership. You can follow these activities and attend them if they fit your schedule.

Note that, there are other ways to develop leadership skills such as volunteering, giving back, or on-the-job training. We’ve listed the most popular 5 ways to improve leadership skills.

Watch 5 Ways to Develop Leadership Skills YouTube Video

Summary – Effective Leadership Skills

Leadership requires several skills. Luckily, these can be earned later through education, programs, coaching, books, etc. There are 21 effective leadership skills that professionals seek to see in their management at the workplace. We’ve listed these skills in this article.

Professionals improve their leadership skills by attending courses or programs, coaching, practicing, reading, or events. There are other ways to improve leadership skills as well.

(*) Leadership Skills Survey Demographics & Methodology

You can see the demographics, titles, functions, industry details of the respondents, and methodology of the survey below.

The majority of the respondents are from the US. Approximately half of the respondents are performing functional roles such as engineer, analyst, specialist, etc. and the other half are managerial or leadership roles.

Respondents of the survey reflect the GDP distribution by industry in the US. Also, there are respondents coming from different functions or departments in an organization.

We’ve shown the 21 different types of leadership skills and asked respondents to pick the top three leadership skills they would like to see in their leadership at their workplace. When we are calculating the results, we have given different weights to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd skills.

• 1st skill’s weight is 55%
• 2nd skill’s weight is 30%
• 3rd skill’s weight is 15%

The following table shows the number of respondents who picked each skill in their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd top leadership skills.

The weighted average is calculated as follows:

Weighted Average Score = (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 1st Place) * 0.55 + (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 2nd Place) * 0.30 + (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 3rd Place) * 0.15

The post 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See in the Workplace appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Do you hold a PMP® Certification? You need 60 PMP PDU hours every three years to retain your PMP certification. PMP-certified professionals have lots of questions about the PMP PDU details. We’ve explored all topics about PMP PDU in this post.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE PMP PDU resources throughout the article.

💡Julia Boyer renewed her PMP certification. Read Julia’s PMP renewal story!

Why do I need PMP PDU Hours?

PMI requires PMP certification holders to earn 60 PMP PDU hours every three years to retain their certification. That is why you need PMP PDU hours if you hold a PMP certification.

PMP® Certification is the most renowned project management certification around the globe. There are more than one million PMP-certified professionals around the world. For sure, the US is the most dominant country for PMP certification with nearly 400,000 PMP certification holders. (Numbers taken from PMI website).

While you earned it, do not lose it just because of missing PMP PDU hours in your renewal cycle. Because many organizations looking for project management roles are requiring PMP certification. You can see a sample LinkedIn job posting from California, and PMP certification is required for the position.

What are the PMP PDU Requirements?

There are certain requirements to earn PMP PDU hours. Let’s dive into PMP PDU requirements.

There are two main PMP PDU categories:

1. Education: Education PDUs can be earned at professional seminars, webinars, classes, or even self-directed learning.
2. Giving Back to the Profession: Giving Back PDUs are for time spent volunteering, mentoring, working with professional groups, and more.

For each PMI certification track, there are further requirements, such as minimum and maximum PDUs that can be earned from each category.

PMP PDU requirement for certification holders is to collect 60 PDUs through a maximum of 25 Giving Back PDUs and a minimum of 35 Education PDUs. However, there is no cap for education PDUs. You can earn all 60 PDUs in the education category. You can see the PMP PDU requirements breakdown in the following figure.

The 35 Education PDUs also have other requirements:

• reporting at least 8 Ways of Working project management PDUs
• reporting at least 8 Business Acumen PDUs
• reporting at least 8 Power Skills PDUs.

There is a maximum PDU reporting cap for the Working as a Professional subcategory of the Giving Back PDU category. If you are working in a project management related job, you can report up to 8 PDUs under working as a professional PDU category.

What are the PMP PDU Courses?

As we’ve outlined in the PDU categories section, there are two main ways to earn PDU: Education and Giving Back. PDU courses are a way to earn PDU credits in Education Category.

There are six different sub-categories under the Education category to earn PDU hours. Let’s explore these:

1- Course or Training

Instructor-led formal education courses or classes held in-person or online belong to this category.

• Virtual and in-person instructor-led courses from PMI Training
• Online courses are available on demand
• Academic education through programs accredited by the PMI Global Accreditation Center (GAC)
• Training courses offered by PMI Authorized Training Partners
• Disciplined Agile or PMP® certification training courses offered by a PMI Authorized Training Partner
• Courses from other third-party providers (SFBS 60 PMP PDU Course Online program belongs to this category).

You can read more on our PMP PDU Courses article.

Watch how Julia Earned 60 PDUs and Renewed Her PMP

Julia Boyer is a PMP-certified Professional from Dallas, Texas. Julia enrolled in the 60 PMP PDU Program from SFBS and renewed her PMP. Watch now her PMP renewal journey.

2- Global Events

Meetings and events that bring together the global community are another way to earn PDUs. These events include educational sessions, keynote, and featured speakers. Typically you can earn 7 to 50 PDUs by attending these events.

3- Local Meetings

Local activities and events that are related to the project management profession count for PDUs. Often held at PMI chapters, these are also a great opportunity to network. These meetings earn typically 1 to 2 PDUs.

4- Online or Digital Media

Self-paced learning is conducted online or through varied forms of digital media. (SFBS Free PMP PDU Course Online Program belongs to this category).

5- Reading

Self-directed reading relevant to the certification you hold can be claimed for PDUs. For instance, reading a project management-related blog, a business education blog, or a book can count PDUs toward renewing your PMP certification.

6- Informal Learning

You can earn PDUs by engaging in structured professional discussions with others, for example, mentoring or “lunch and learn” sessions. For instance, if you are giving a presentation to your colleagues about project management, you can submit this as PDU.

Explore 11 Ways of Earning PMP Renewal PDU.

Can I earn Free PMP PDUs?

There are several free courses, webinars, and events that you can attend and earn PDUs toward renewing your PMP certification. However, earning all required 60 PDUs from free resources will not be practical. 60 PDU hours require around 60 hours of activity. Most of the PMP-certified professionals are full-time working busy professionals, we assume you are busy too. Therefore, it is not easy to find free events. Even if there are PDU events in your neighborhood, that may not fit your schedule.

SFBS offers a 3-hour Free PMP PDU Course program as well. You can earn 3 PDUs by attending this program.

Free PMP PDU Webinars

Some platforms schedule online free webinars. If a webinar is about project management, you can submit PDUs for the duration of the webinar. For instance, if you attended a 1-hour webinar on negotiation skills, you can submit 1 PDU in your PMI profile.

Finding free PDU resources and fitting them into your schedule can be cumbersome. Most of the PMP-certified professionals attend a self-paced PMP PDU course program, they follow the courses at their pace and earn PDUs easily.

Learn more about the 11 Free PDU Earning Ways.

How many PMP PDU Hours can I claim for Working as a Practitioner?

PMI accepts your day-to-day activities as PDUs. However, there is a maximum limit for this category. You can submit a maximum of 8 PDU hours for working as a practitioner category.

What are the best PMP PDU Online Courses?

If you’ve googled about the PMP PDU online courses, you will see several resources. Some of them offer technical courses, that will not benefit to your career. Some of them offer just PDF papers to read, and that does not bring any skills.

The best PDU online courses should offer you business courses, earn new business skills, and contribute to your career growth.

For instance, San Francisco Business School offers a comprehensive 60 PMP PDU Online Course program. The program offers three self-paced business training programs: Executive Leadership, Strategy Creation & Execution, and Marketing Strategy. For each course in the program, SFBS awards a certificate of graduation. While earning PDUs, you will earn reputable business merits to highlight in your resume and LinkedIn.

Program #1- Executive Leadership Program

Improve your decision-making, and cross-functional competence, expand your understanding of the global marketplace, and build your way to servant leadership. Learn how to tackle business challenges. Earns 20 PMP PDUs.

Program #2- Strategy Creation & Execution Program

Develop the global perspective, quantitative background, and creative problem-solving skills to take your strategy from formulation to execution. Harness the power of disruptive innovation to craft winning strategies and turn them into play. Earns 30 PMP PDUs.

Program #3- Marketing Strategy Program

Boost revenue and profit by targeting the right segments, designing effective go-to-market strategies, and building high-value brands. Align your marketing and promotion efforts with business strategy to maximize Return on Investment. Earns 10 PMP PDUs.

Summary

PMP certification holders need to earn 60 PMP PDU hours every three years to maintain their certification. There are two main categories of PMP PDUs: Education and Giving Back. Education PDUs can be earned through courses, webinars, events, reading, and informal learning. Giving Back PDUs can be earned through volunteering, mentoring, and working with professional groups.

There are certain requirements for earning PMP PDU hours. For the Education category, at least 35 PDUs must be earned, with a minimum of 8 PDUs in each of the Ways of Working, Business Acumen, and Power Skills subcategories. For the Giving Back category, a maximum of 25 PDUs can be earned, with a maximum of 8 PDUs for working as a professional. There is no maximum limit for earning PDUs in the education category. You can earn all 60 PDUs in the Education category.

While there are some free PDU offerings, completing 60 PDUs through free activities is not practical. Choose a PMP PDU course that will enhance your business skills and earn new certificates that will shine in your resume.

The post PMP PDU Guide [Updated] – Incl. Free PMP PDU Courses appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Your SAT Score is a fundamental piece of your college application. Every year, nearly 2 million students sit for the SAT exam. To secure your seat in the college you dream of, you must understand the details of SAT scoring, how to improve your SAT scores, what is a good and bad SAT score, what is the average SAT score, and acceptance scores and rates for colleges. We’ve dived into every aspect of SAT scoring in this post.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE SAT Prep resources throughout the article.

Ethan is one of our thousands of successful SAT students. He perfectly scored 1600 on the SAT, the highest SAT score a student can get! We were with thousands of students, like Ethan, in their Digital SAT Prep journey and that is why created this post to help many others!

💡You might be interested in reading the Digital SAT Math Ultimate Guide post.

How Does the SAT Scoring Work?

Before we dive into the details of SAT scoring, it is better to understand how the SAT scoring works first. There are two sections in the SAT exam, Reading & Writing and Math. Each section has two modules, module 1 and module 2. Reading and Writing modules consist of 27 questions each, and Math modules consist of 22 questions each. We’ve summarized the SAT exam structure in the table below.

👉 Take our full-length FREE SAT Practice Test, see where you stand!

The most critical aspect of the new Digital SAT is being adaptive. In SAT Module I for each section, you will be asked a broad mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. Then, the difficulty of the SAT Module II will depend on your score in the SAT Module I. This means that the test “adapts” to present questions that are more appropriate to a student’s performance level. The following figure depicts the Digital SAT adaptive testing model.

Free Digital SAT Prep Course

SFBS offers a Free Digital SAT Prep Online Course. The course goes through particular skills and knowledge testing points and improves your problem-solving skills and test-taking strategies.

SAT Score Range

Each SAT section is scored on a 200-800 scale. The minimum score a student can get from a section is 200, and the maximum score is 800. The Total SAT Score of a student is the sum of the Reading & Writing and Math sections scores. We’ve summarized the SAT score range in the following table.

What is the Highest SAT Score?

If a student scores 800 on each section; Reading & Writing and Math, he will get the highest SAT score. The maximum SAT score a student can get is 1600. Only less than 1% of all SAT exam test takers achieve this score.

💡We’ve prepared a 7-Step Digital SAT Math Study Guide helping students to prepare their unique SAT Math Study Guide.

What is the Lowest SAT Score?

If a student scores 200 on each section; Reading & Writing and Math, he will get the lowest SAT score. The minimum SAT score a student can get is 400. Note that, even if a student answers a few questions correctly in each section, his score may be still 200. We will explain this further below.

What is the Average SAT Score?

The College Board announced that the average SAT score is 1050. Therefore, if you score over 1050, you will be better than an average SAT exam taker. A score of 1350 would put you in the top 10% of test takers and help make your application competitive at more selective schools. However, for competitive colleges, or Ivy League Colleges, you must get a very high SAT score. We will explain this further below.

📚 San Francisco Business School offers a vast amount of FREE Digital SAT Prep Online materials. See it on the Free Digital SAT Prep Online Library.

SAT Scoring is Not Linear!

You might think that every question has a fixed point in the SAT exam and for each correct answer, you will earn that fixed point. However, SAT exam scoring works adaptive. First of all, even if you answer a few questions in each section, you might not get over 200. This is clearly visible in the SAT Score Chart below. Even if there are up to 6 questions correct in the Reading & Writing and Math sections, the score range is still 200.

Second, each question has a different weight in the SAT exam. College Board categorizes the Digital SAT exam questions into three difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. Typically, the Digital SAT exam starts with medium-difficulty questions, and depending on the correct or wrong answers of the test-taker, the rest of the questions appear. Therefore, the points you will earn from easy questions will be lower while you will earn more points if you answer harder questions correctly.

Third and the last, the SAT exam is adaptive. If you had a good score in Module I, you will be asked harder questions in Module II. Therefore, the points you will earn from each question will depend on your performance respectively.

Digital SAT Prep Online Course Program

San Francisco Business School offers a comprehensive Digital SAT Prep Online Course taught by 99th-percentile SAT Instructors and exam experts. The program cracks down each content domain, skills, and knowledge testing point through 1,000+ realistic Digital SAT Exam questions. You will see all the different types of questions that may appear in Digital SAT.

SAT Score Chart

The SAT Score Chart is an old way of calculating your SAT scores from SAT practice tests. However, we’ve developed a Digital SAT Score Calculator. You can use it to calculate your SAT scores from full-length SAT practice tests and from a practice SAT test to real test scale scores.

In any case, if you would like to use the SAT score chart, we are providing it below.

Note that, this Score Chart is valid when there are 66 Reading & Writing questions and 54 Math questions in the SAT practice test. If your practice test has a different number of questions, you can use our Digital SAT Score Calculator to calculate your scores.

How to Score a Digital SAT Practice Test

During your SAT exam prep, you will go through several practice tests, exercises, and quizzes. You may want to see your results from a practice SAT test to real test scale scores. Our Digital SAT Score Calculator does this adaptive calculation.

You can see an example of SAT Score Calculation for an 11-question practice test to real test scale scores below. If a student answers 9 out of 11 questions correctly, the adaptive SAT score will be 680 on a 200-800 scale.

What is the SAT Score Predictor?

Predictor means “a person or thing that predicts that something will happen in the future or will be a consequence of something.” SAT Score Predictor makes predictions about the SAT score for a practice test or quiz results. Actually, its function is as exactly as the SAT Score Calculator. However, some students search for SAT score predictors instead of score calculators.

What is a Good SAT Score?

Several students and parents ask us “What is a Good SAT Score?”, “What is the Best SAT Score I Should Get?”, and “Is My Score Good Enough?”. Well, the answer all depends on your expectations!

We’ve explained this in detail in our SAT Study Guide, Step #2. Before you start your SAT exam preparation, take a SAT practice test to see your results. The administrator of the SAT, The College Board, offers several full-length SAT Practice Tests. These tests are calibrated correctly and the distribution and difficulty of the questions are consistent as you will experience in your actual SAT exam.

👉 Take our full-length FREE SAT Practice Test, see where you stand!

Then, take a look at the colleges’ SAT score percentiles you are planning to apply for. We’ve given some of the colleges’s SAT score percentiles below. You can look for other Colleges’ SAT Score Percentiles and Acceptance rates in our post.

For instance, if you are planning to apply to Boston College, you should be scoring around 1330 and 1500. Note that, that is the average of all college applications. If you are planning to apply for a popular department of a college, you need to score more than these averages. For instance,  Economics, Finance, and Computer Science are popular departments at Boston College. Therefore, the score percentiles of the accepted students in these departments are expected to be above the 1330 – 1500 range.

So, if your SAT score is around 1350, it is a good SAT Score if you are planning to apply for Pen State or the University of Miami. However, it is not enough for Stanford, Yale, MIT or Princeton.

Depending on your initial result, if there is a huge gap from the target score, you should be studying harder. You can use our Digital SAT Score Calculator to calculate your scores in practice tests and quizzes.

💡You might be interested in seeing our Digital SAT Math Practice Test. It covers the hardest questions you may see on the SAT Math exam for each skill and knowledge testing point!

What is a Bad SAT Score?

As we’ve explained above, there are no good or bad SAT scores. It all depends on your expectations, the college you are planning to apply and the SAT score average. If you are applying for a popular college, you must score high. In any case, you should not score below the average, 1050, to secure a college application. So, we can consider below 1050 a bad SAT score as almost none of the colleges accept students below this score.

What is the SAT Passing Score?

SAT is not a fail-or-pass type of test. You sit for the exam, get an SAT score, and apply to colleges. The higher scores guarantee better colleges respectively.

Free Digital SAT Prep Course

SFBS offers a Free Digital SAT Prep Online Course. The course goes through particular skills and knowledge testing points and improves your problem-solving skills and test-taking strategies.

Average SAT Scores for Ivy League Colleges

Ivy League schools are some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 20 of the U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking. We’ve listed the Average SAT Scores, percentiles, and % of applicants accepted for each Ivy League College in the table below.

Note that, although the Ivy League colleges are appointed as the best colleges, there are several other top-ranked colleges such as Stanford and MIT, which are not in the Ivy League.

What Are The Benefits of a 1600 SAT Score?

There are several benefits of getting a high score on the SAT exam. There are three major benefits of scoring well on the SAT exam.

1. The first one is the most obvious one that a high SAT exam score will increase your chances to be accepted to the college you are dreaming of.
2. The second benefit of a good SAT score is getting financial aid from institutions. Several colleges, foundations, or institutions offer financial aid for students. Many of them consider the academic success of the student as a merit. If you score high on the SAT exam, in case you will apply for financial aid, better SAT scores will help you to get the financial aid you need to pursue your college education.
3. Most of the scholarship programs consider SAT exam scores. If you have a high score on the SAT exam, you can have higher chances of getting scholarships respectively.

Therefore, do your best, get ready for the SAT exam, and score as high as possible on the SAT exam for a better future.

What is the SAT Score Percentile?

According to The College Board, the “Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” compares your performance to those of “all U.S. students in a particular grade, including those who don’t typically take the test.”

“Your SAT User Percentile – National” compares your performance against those of every college-bound SAT-taker in the 11th or 12th grades. “The Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” will be higher, because your “SAT User Percentile” doesn’t take into account students who don’t take the SAT or intend to go to college. Therefore, consider your “SAT User Percentile” when assessing your results from practice tests.

Your percentile tells you how you did on the SAT compared with everyone else who took the test. For example, if you got a composite percentile of 92, this means you scored higher than 92% of students on the whole test. If you got a percentile of 87 on the Math section, you did better than 87% of students on SAT Math.

SAT Score Percentile Range

SAT score percentile range is from 0 to 99. However, this is not a point. For instance, if your score percentile is 92%, it does not mean that your point is 92 or you scored 92% of the questions correctly. It means, your score is better than 92% of all SAT exam takers.

We’ve listed the SAT score ranges and their percentiles below. Since it is a 100-row list, you can expand it by clicking the link below.

How to Improve SAT Scores

We’ve identified the 7 steps to get a high score on the SAT in our SAT Math Prep post. You can read it in detail in that post, we’ve just provided a summary of those steps below.

1. Prepare A Solid SAT Study Guide

The first and most important point to SAT Math success is having a solid study plan.

2. Determine Your Weak Areas

To determine your weak areas, make a full-length SAT Prep Practice Test. Note down your scores in each content domain, skill, and knowledge testing point. The lowest score percentages are your weakest areas.

💡You can use our SAT Math Exercises which has 50 exercises on all SAT Math domains. You can identify your weak areas with the help of SAT Math Exercises.

3. Go Through Your Weak Areas

The majority of the students feel comfortable practicing the topics they already know well. However, getting better in your weak areas will make a difference in your SAT score. List your weak content domains and skill and knowledge testing points. Do as much practice as possible to improve your results in your weak areas. Improvement in your weaker areas will bring you the highest score improvements.

4. Attend a Digital SAT Prep Online Course

After teaching thousands of SAT students for the exam, we can tell that most of them liked the self-paced delivery so they could study when they wanted to, not when they were forced to sit for a class. This is very important. Students must study when they feel the best time to do so. Otherwise, they will lose their concentration easily during their study.

Watch SAT Math Prep Online Course – Sample Lecture on YouTube

We have a sample 8-minute video lecture from our SAT Math Prep Online Course on YouTube. You can watch below.

5. Note Down and Revisit Your Wrong Answers

Going through your wrong answers will improve your skills in your weak areas the most. Because, you will remember the mistakes you make, and in case you see a similar question next time, you will decrease your chances of making the same mistake again. When you are practicing SAT Math Prep questions, mark your wrong answers. Once you finish the book, quiz, or practice test go back and review your wrong answers one more time. Take notes on why you make those mistakes and go through the notes frequently.

6. Take Notes During Your SAT Math Prep

There are several SAT Math Prep cheat sheets, formulas, or guides. However, none of them will be as good as you will prepare for yourself.

When studying for the SAT Math, take notes for important points. Go through your notes every week or at least a month. Going through your notes will keep your memory fresh around those topics.

🗎 Download the 15-page Digital SAT Math Formula Sheet.

7. Go and Crack the SAT Exam

Try not to study hard on your exam week. You can go through your notes, practice a few questions, or maybe go over your wrong answers. Make sure you will have a good sleep before the exam day and relax. If you practice enough, the questions will be similar to the ones you practiced several times before.

We recommend using your own laptop which you use regularly for the SAT Exam. While the College Board allows school-owned devices or they can provide a device for the exam day, using a new device may cost you additional time as you will need time to get used to a new keyboard, screen, etc. Therefore, we recommend using your own laptop for the exam. Make sure you bring your device fully charged on the exam as there may not be enough power outlets in your testing room.

Colleges That Do Not Require SAT or ACT Score

Some colleges do not require SAT or ACT scores from applicants. Some schools only exempt applicants who meet minimum grade or class rank criteria; others use ACT/SAT scores solely for course placement. We’ve listed the Test Free and Test Optional Colleges below.

Test Free Colleges

These colleges do not require an SAT or ACT score during application. Since there are 87 colleges on the list, we’ve shared it on a different page. You can see the Test Free Colleges.

Test Optional Colleges

While an SAT or ACT score is not mandatory for applying to test-optional colleges, in case you provide SAT or ACT scores, the admission committee will consider your exam scores. Therefore, a good score on the SAT exam may help to outpace other applicants for test-optional colleges. Since there are more than 2,000 colleges on the list, we’ve shared it on a different page. You can see the Test Optional Colleges.

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