Have you ever thought about what makes you who you are? There are specific fundamental building blocks every person is born with, but how do people become so different? One of the things that makes you unique is your personality. Personality is the way you express yourself to the world. It's every component and quality in you that combines to form your character. Your character comprises the moral principles that guide you. Your conscience, your sense of right and wrong: all of these things come from your core. They all make you unique.
No two personalities are the same. That's because no two people contain the same composition of character traits. Have you heard of personality tests? These purport to help you figure out the way you function best. For instance, if you're an introvert, you perform best in a quieter environment away from noise and large crowds of people. This doesn’t mean you can't be around those things, but you feel mentally and emotionally drained if you don't have the opportunity to retreat and revive. On the other hand, extroverts thrive in intense and engaging situations: the more stimulating, the better. If an extrovert is alone too long, he or she can feel drained and depressed. An extrovert personality requires social interaction on a higher level than the introvert.
Your personality affects every facet of your life. It dictates the way you handle certain adversarial situations as well, such as being confronted with a stressful personal situation or getting fired from a job. What if you could present yourself differently? Would that help or hurt your career? There are online courses available that will help teach you about personality development. These classes aim to set you on a path to recognizing the way you appear to your peers or the world at large. They are intended to help you learn to react in a more beneficial way than you currently do to certain stressful situations. Think of it as an etiquette class to revamp your professional mannerisms.
If you have any desire to give one of these courses a try but don't know where to start, we've taken care of some of the research for you. We've compiled a list of options for you to help take the guesswork out of finding the right class for your needs.
How We Chose Our Ranking
We took the time to sift through a multitude of online options for personality development classes. We make it a priority to be thorough and give you the most up-to-date and relevant information out there. When it comes to the list below, we chose to focus on the reputation of the company providing the class, the course overview, the price you pay and user feedback. We then took all of that information and gave each course a rating out of five stars. The highest results are at the top of the list. The list below is a comprehensive compilation of the best courses to help learn about and refine your personality.
The 3 Best Online Courses for Personality Development
Reputation of the company: EduCBA was founded to provide technical training to a vast array of people across the world. Its offerings are designed to teach real-world skills in an online environment. The entire library of courses is centered around building upon job-related skills to improve performance. Their classes promise to teach skills you can implement in every facet of your life. The company is well regarded and carries a high reputation in the industry.
Course overview: This personality development course is the most comprehensive one we found. The class builds off the definition of personality as the sum of innate biological dispositions, aptitude, instincts, impulses and tendencies. It is also affected by learned behavior and almost a seeping of external forces. Personality development training focuses on the traits that are learned from the environment. The qualities we are born with are much harder to change (although some absolutely can be).
The course outline indicates the focus will be on helping people in the following areas: self-confidence, conversational skills and techniques, voice and diction training, proper email and telephone etiquette, dress code and so on. As you can see from this limited list, the course provides intense concentration on personality features that can be changed or modified.
Price: There are two plans to choose from: $199 per year or $29.99 monthly. This price gives you access to the entire library on EduCBA. At this writing, that means well over 5,500 courses at your disposal for the price.
User reviews and feedback: The feedback for this course and EduCBA, in general, was all positive. Individuals who had completed the personality course claim it gave them the tools they needed to improve confidence, self-awareness and business etiquette. One user indicated he finally had the confidence to apply for his dream job, and the skills he learned helped him during the lengthy interview process. When we assessed the reviews for EduCBA as a company, we found that businesses and individuals had nothing but praise for the instructors, methods and results.
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Reputation of the company: Universal Class, Inc. was founded on the belief that people need an opportunity to continue gaining knowledge and growing, regardless of age, income or professional circumstances. It fosters a sense of investment in yourself by making it possible to acquire skills that help you to grow personally and professionally. Universal Class has received high ratings for its course structure, instructional integrity and caliber of instructors. It offers course completion certificates with every class under specific membership plans. These are recognized certificates that can be added to a resume or curriculum vitae to demonstrate your continuing education.
Course overview: This course, much like the others on this list, focuses on making real changes in your life to better your professional and personal situations. Your personality, again, is a combination of your genetic inheritance and the environment around you. Having a perspective on why you behave the way you do can help you correct course when and where needed, and also plan for the best path. If you find that you aren't a people person, it's probably not a good idea to get a job in human resources. This class purports to help you succeed in discovering who you are inside and out.
This class goes one step further than the others. What makes this course unique is that it also teaches you about other personality types and how to deal with them in and out of the workplace. It gives you examples of those characteristics that are either in direct competition with or complementary to yours. This helps you identify people with whom you may develop a deep relationship, professionally and personally, as well as those with whom you may clash. This isn't intended to encourage you to make generalizations and use them as excuses to explain why you can't get along with someone. It is merely intended to make you aware of triggering personality types and then give you the tools to deal with them effectively.
The course comprises 15 lessons and 21 exams and assignments, and should take you, on average, about seven hours to complete.
Price: The price of the course is $50. If you want to get a certificate of completion, the cost is $75. If you take a look at other classes offered by Universal Class and believe there is something else in its 500-plus course catalog that interests you, consider becoming a platinum member. The price is $189 a year and allows you unlimited access to all the courses offered on the site. The only limitation is that you can't take more than five courses concurrently. The price also includes all Certificates of Completion for every class you take.
User reviews and feedback: We could not find feedback on this particular course; however, we were able to find reviews on the company as a whole. In general, people who have utilized the services offered by Universal Class, Inc. have nothing but positive things to say. Many business professionals who provided commentary claim that the courses offered by Universal Class have helped them further their careers. One commenter indicated he was able to get a promotion based on the skills gained in several courses.
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Reputation of the company: Universal Class, Inc. was founded on the belief that people need an opportunity to continue gaining knowledge and growing, regardless of age, income or professional circumstances. It fosters a sense of investment in yourself by making it possible to acquire skills that help you to grow personally and professionally. Universal Class has received high ratings for its course structure, instructional integrity and caliber of instructors. It offers course completion certificates with every class under specific membership plans. These are recognized certificates that can be added to a resume or curriculum vitae to demonstrate your continuing education.
Course overview: This course, much like the others on this list, focuses on making real changes in your life to better your professional and personal situations. Your personality, again, is a combination of your genetic inheritance and the environment around you. Having a perspective on why you behave the way you do can help you correct course when and where needed, and also plan for the best path. If you find that you aren't a people person, it's probably not a good idea to get a job in human resources. This class purports to help you succeed in discovering who you are inside and out.
This class goes one step further than the others. What makes this course unique is that it also teaches you about other personality types and how to deal with them in and out of the workplace. It gives you examples of those characteristics that are either in direct competition with or complementary to yours. This helps you identify people with whom you may develop a deep relationship, professionally and personally, as well as those with whom you may clash. This isn't intended to encourage you to make generalizations and use them as excuses to explain why you can't get along with someone. It is merely intended to make you aware of triggering personality types and then give you the tools to deal with them effectively.
The course comprises 15 lessons and 21 exams and assignments, and should take you, on average, about seven hours to complete.
Price: The price of the course is $50. If you want to get a certificate of completion, the cost is $75. If you take a look at other classes offered by Universal Class and believe there is something else in its 500-plus course catalog that interests you, consider becoming a platinum member. The price is $189 a year and allows you unlimited access to all the courses offered on the site. The only limitation is that you can't take more than five courses concurrently. The price also includes all Certificates of Completion for every class you take.
User reviews and feedback: We could not find feedback on this particular course; however, we were able to find reviews on the company as a whole. In general, people who have utilized the services offered by Universal Class, Inc. have nothing but positive things to say. Many business professionals who provided commentary claim that the courses offered by Universal Class have helped them further their careers. One commenter indicated he was able to get a promotion based on the skills gained in several courses.
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A Note on Personal Development Classes
One of the most significant issues we ran into when compiling this list was that the term "personality development" was not always used when describing courses. Many online programs offered classes in personal development. Most of these classes were very similar to the ones described above; however, many were part of a series and included elements about preparing to either re-enter the workplace after an absence or about honing your skills to enhance leadership ability in your current career. We did not include these classes because they did not necessarily speak to the issue of personality specifically. We do want to include a short listing of these in case you are more interested in pursuing this avenue of development:
Coursera: Personal Development
- Effective Communication in the Workplace
- Career Success
- Achieving Personal and Professional Success
- Coaching Skills for Managers
- Dynamic Public Speaking
These classes are just a few examples of what Coursera includes in its personal development unit. Coursera is known for being a highly reputable company that provides some of the best online courses.
Alison: Personal Development
- Achieving Personal Success
- How To Plan Your Career Path
- Introduction to Time Management
- Study Skills
Alison is another reputable online learning company. The classes listed above are included in their personal development chapter.
Buyer's Guide
While the list we provided is relatively short, it includes only those programs we felt comfortable promoting. There were not many options we found at the time of writing under the personality development umbrella. We assume that many places market the class under the personal development moniker instead. While we did not want to mislead you by mixing the two, we did want to provide the second shorter list to include those schools with personal development options in their course selection catalog. Only you can know for sure what lessons will benefit you the most, both professionally and personally. We hope that what we've provided can get you started on your quest to improve your skill set appropriately.
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