Strengthening Business Relationships: Creating Strategic Alliances and Building Trust, Online Course

For senior leaders, high impact business relationships are required. Leaders who build trust, earn credibility, and inspire followership accelerate decisions, unlock opportunity, and drive lasting results. While technical expertise matters, impact in modern organizations increasingly depends on the ability to influence, align, and move people toward shared goals. Today’s workplace — shaped by hybrid environments, rapid change, and rising expectations — requires professionals to strengthen how they connect, engage, and build durable trusted allies across functions and levels.

This program is designed for experienced professionals and senior leaders who manage critical relationships across executive teams, cross-functional partners, clients, and key stakeholders. We will explore strategies to build trust, foster loyalty, and amplify your influence with the people who matter most to you now.

This program is unique for three reasons. First, it reframes how you allocate your attention, who you focus your time on, why you focus on them, and how you work with them. Second, you will discover how to operate in harmony with how our brains work to increase the probability of developing allies and fervent supporters. Third, the methods discussed are grounded in neuroscience and proven real-world application.

You will refine your approaches to inspire collaboration, strengthen your work partnerships, and accelerate results. You will leave with a clear, personalized roadmap to strengthen your most critical relationships and create even more value for your organization and for yourself.

Benefits of the Strengthening Business Relationships Training Program

Strengthening business relationships is essential to amplifying your impact and accelerating your success. By cultivating a trusted network of colleagues and partners, you can expand your influence in your current role and advance your long-term career growth.

In this interactive program, you will learn how to:

• Build trust with intention, deepening your understanding of how trust works and adopting behaviors that strengthen credibility and connection.
• Use neuroscience-based insights to better read cues, interpret interpersonal dynamics, and navigate conversations and decisions with greater confidence.
• Elevate your presence and charisma by refining your communication and behavioral signals that shape how others perceive you and your ideas.
• Create alignment across stakeholders by understanding their priorities, decision pathways, and the dynamics of effective collaboration.
• Develop a strategic relationship plan to focus on high-impact connections, increase your visibility, and sustain long-term career momentum.

Participants will also earn a Certificate of Completion from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, underscoring their commitment to leadership excellence.

Who Should Register for the Strengthening Business Relationships Training Program?

This program is designed for experienced professionals and senior leaders who want to build and sustain high-impact relationships within and outside their organizations.

Professionals who will also find this program valuable include:

• Seasoned business leaders, executives, and senior managers who oversee cross-functional or external relationships and want to enhance their ability to foster trust, loyalty, and influence at all levels.
• Functional heads or directors across disciplines such as marketing, operations, finance, HR, and beyond looking to align business relationships with broader organizational objectives.
• Experienced professionals responsible for navigating complex stakeholder dynamics or growing client-facing partnerships to advance organizational and personal success.

Curriculum

This interactive program combines pre-work, short lectures, guided breakout activities, and group discussions on topics such as:

• Clarifying which colleagues and stakeholders you want to work more effectively with—and identifying targeted strategies to strengthen those relationships.
• Examining how your beliefs, values, and behaviors influence your most important professional relationships.
• Breaking down the critical elements of trust and using practical strategies to intentionally build and sustain it.
• Understanding how our hardwired brains and body chemistry affect mood and trust, and using those insights to improve collaboration.
• Designing a focused career and relationship plan that increases your impact, supports your advancement, and delivers greater value to your organization.