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University System of Maryland

Persuasion and Presence for Program and Project Managers

University System of Maryland and University of Maryland, College Park via edX

Overview

Persuasion is the central to leading leaders. As a program manager or project manager, you may lead a team with many senior contributors. Often they will have more experience, more skin in the game, and more reputation at stake. As a program manager, this task is even greater because your time is limited and your span of control across projects even greater. Being a compelling communicator takes more than what you learned for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) exam or Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. It takes program or project management experience and this certificate program.

Program managers must persuade quickly, and with great lasting impact. Program and project managers must persuade and manage their leadership presence for program or project success. Even if you are a traditional program or project manager or manage agile programs or projects, persuasive communication is vital to your success. Communicating more persuasively will lead to more effective risk management.

There are complete blindsports in the Project Management Institute, Inc's (PMI)"A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK Guide). Applying those processes and skills are just the basics of efficient communication.

That’s why certified project managers will earn 10 professional development units (PDU) in this program. You will learn the balance needed to communicate effectively.

Aristotle first wrote about balancing logic, emotion, and presence over 2,000 years ago. Creating a balance between ethos, pathos, and logos, the persuader creates a message that grabs the attention of the audience and engages them as people. A person doesn’t understand when they are not paying attention, is not engaged with the speaker, and doesn’t remember what was said. Ethos, pathos, and logos aid the speaker and the listener, by helping to select information to present and how to fashion its delivery for the best effect.

In this program management and project management training course, you will go beyond the communication skills you learned for the PMP exam to gain your project management certification. You will learn about the rhetorical triangle and how to use it to craft persuasive communications. Social media and online collaboration tools require new ways of establishing your presence and generating trust between you and your audience. You will also learn how to create an emotional impact even through text messages and emails.

Syllabus

Week One - The Logic, Emotion, and Presence Triad

Module One - Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triad

Module Two - Logos - The Logic of Your Communication

Module Three - Pathos - The Emotions of Your Communication

Module Four - Ethos - Your Communication Presence

Module Five - Perfect Pitch Tool

Week Two - Building an Effective Presence

Module One - What is Stage Presence?

Module Two - Establishing Trust through Your Words

Module Three - Building Trust at a Distance

Module Four - Nonverbal Trust Building

Module Five - How To Up Your Presence Game

Week Three - Using Emotions in Good Communication

Module One - How Emotions Work in Communicating

Module Two - Crafting an Emotionally Compelling Message

Module Three - Communicating Bad News

Module Four - Blending Logos and Pathos

Week Four - Psychological Safety and Persuasion

Project Oxygen

Module One - Defining Psychological Safety

Module Two - Building Psychological Safety on the Program or Project Team

Module Three - Psychological Safety with Logos and Pathos

Module Four - Troubleshooting Psychological Safety Issues

Taught by

Bill Brantley

Reviews

4.7 rating, based on 85 Class Central reviews

4.6 rating at edX based on 9 ratings

Start your review of Persuasion and Presence for Program and Project Managers

  • Anonymous
    It is a very comprehensive course with loads of concepts to digest. I strongly believe it is worth its value as compared to the rest of the programs in the course. I think Ill implement most of what I learned in my work
  • Anonymous
    Course is interesting but would have been more comprehendible if instructor was clear. The explanation was not similar to other instructors in the course. The concepts were made difficult to understand and was all over the place.
  • Anonymous
    I really enjoyed this course and felt like i learned a lot and can use it in my new career. Quizzes had all the info on them & test was self-explanatory as long as you payed attention to the material.
  • Anonymous
    Interesting topic and valuable tools.
    I particularly liked the Psychological Safety model, as well as the constant Knowledge Checks.
    I would recommend this course to anyone looking for an introduction into project management. I am doing this course as part of a 5-course certification on Program Management and the Art of Communication.
  • HAYA M. S. FERWANA
    Thank you very much for this informative and needed course. It gave me an an inclusive understanding of persuasion and stage presence and how can I develop that.
  • Anonymous
    I enjoyed it. Thank you. I learned a lot about persuasion and stage presence. I like pathos, ethos, and logo and their importance in advertisements and speeches.
  • Anonymous
    Great content has been provided by University System of Maryland via edX for the Course Data Science and Agile Systems Engineering . Lot of learning from the course and great videos.
  • Anonymous
    An excellent course with great information for project management and team management. Course videos are really clear and easy to follow, and have allowed me to almost effortlessly understand and learn the material. Unlike most online courses I feel like I have retained a lot of information and understand clearly where they apply to my day-to-day.
  • Casey Earl
    Interesting topic and a valuable tool.
    I particularly liked the Psychological Safety model and the constant Knowledge Checks.
    I would recommend this course to anyone looking for an introduction to project management. I am doing this course as part of a 5-course certification on Program Management and the Art of Communication.
  • Anonymous
    The only reason I give this a 4 out of 5 is due to the videos. They were so full of scribblings and drawings that they seriously stressed me out! :D It was definitely information overload. I ended up bypassing them and simply reading the summary points.
  • Anonymous
    There is a meaningful forest of information in this course, but it is often obscured by the trees of vague and at times contradictory acronyms and buzzwords. The ideas discussed can be far better organized.
  • Anonymous
    I thoroughly enjoyed the course. The content was easy to follow and the examples helped me understand the material and the importance of communication.
  • Profile image for Deauna Gibbs
    Deauna Gibbs
    Has a lot of good information for project managers just starting out or shifting to managerial/lead positions.
  • Anonymous
    It was ok -- lots of information, but it could have used more case studies. The knowledge checks were pretty shallow.
  • Alessandra Crifasi
    really insightful i did have the chance to learn and teat my learnings during the course path. recommended
  • Anonymous
    I enjoyed the course - Content, Delivery and Relevance. To Dr. Bill Brantley, the course was well delivered. The videos & the write-up brought out the content well. The examples shared and ideas borrowed from other leadership books was great. The journey through this course, although short, will have a major impact in my communication skills especially in building my presence & persuading the audience. Extremely relevant for project managers.
  • Anonymous
    Excellent course with great immersive content. Plenty of real world examples from someone who has actually done the job. Be prepared to put in the work though, 4 weeks of work and each week has approx 1hr 30min of content broken into ~20min videos. Each 20min video is very content dense, there were times I noticed I spaced out and had to go back and watch again.
  • Ravinder Sharma
    I really liked this course and would strongly recommed to aspiring product managers. The course content is quite relevant and structured for someone like me who is new to product management role. I would like to thank the UMD for creating such a great cotent.
  • Anonymous
    This is a great course but it does cover a whole lot that takes a lot of commitment. The lecturer is very knowledgeable and has a lot of industry experience. It is an excellent course for even seasoned PMs. Highly recommended
  • Anonymous
    Good content and great introduction to the product management curriculum, especially with product and project worlds in the digital era that requires adaptive methods to deliver the results for strategic positioning.

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