By: Brian Redmond, PhD
My colleague and I recently finished a six-month training course for a client of ours. This was a really great experience. I wanted to share a little about the experience here.
It was a custom course that we spent time with leaders in the organization in advance of the training program to really find out what their needs were. This was a manufacturing organization that, like many others in recent years has had a lot of turnover. They have a lot of not just new employees, but many people in leadership positions that may not have held similar positions before.
So, my colleague and I with the help of a great client sponsor created a course that focused on the newer leaders exploring some of their personal qualities (ex. personality, emotional intelligence, leadership competencies) as well as how they interact with the teams they lead (ex. conflict management, motivating others). This was all arrived at because the client helped us identify that they had many technically proficient people, who again have not necessarily led before, so they needed some exposure to soft skills.
We are really pleased to say that the group was a joy to work with and really gravitated to the lessons we were imparting and it was wonderful to see their growth throughout the course. The culminating experience was a real project proposal to senior leadership at the organization. All three teams did an excellent job and the senior leaders were excited to help support the projects that were proposed.
We will be working with this client again in the very near future with a modified version of the course based on current needs and feedback from the first class and we could not be more excited as watching leaders develop is something we are passionate about.