Building Better Leaders LogoNote from Art: I’m taking time out from my usual blogging activities today to share with you a bit about the background and approach of my new program and website: Building Better Leaders.  Back tomorrow with regularly scheduled content!

My Personal Journey Towards Building Better Leaders:

To understand the genesis of today’s launch of my new Building Better Leaders service and website today, you have to understand just a little bit about my personal-professional journey to this point.

I had a stellar corporate career and was fortunate to work for great organizations and great people every step of the way.  I earned my first promotion to a supervisory role 18 months out of college and other than a short stint as a corporate staff member in an industrial conglomerate and the past few years on my own, I’ve always been responsible for teams and people and results.  Yeah, I learned how to lead with the pain of a million mistakes!  However, with my best humble voice, the teams and businesses that I was fortunate enough to be a part of consistently won in the market by all reasonable financial and customer measures.  Hey, people truly are the difference makers!

After we sold the last company (from turnaround to market leader) and I came home to be with my family through my mother’s illness, I decided to reinvent my career and focus in the one area that provided consistent joy and challenge, developing early and mid-career and front-line and mid-level professionals.

Step one was writing the book, Practical Lessons in Leadership with Rich Petro (thanks for joining Rich!) and then step two involved honing my skills as an educator and content creator.  Again, long story short and several thousand people through dozens of classes and training programs and keynotes later, the following issues and needs started jumping out from comments and feedback and inquiries:

  • Motivated professionals are hungry to learn and develop and often frustrated with the lack of time, money, access or even availability to the type of developmental support that will make a difference now and in the future.
  • Traditional models for training don’t offer a sustaining component, including workplace assignments, feedback and mentoring.
  • Coaching is often out of reach for those earlier in their careers.
  • Time and cost are issues for everyone.

Enter Building Better Leaders:

After conducting more discussions than I can count with professionals in product management, project management, marketing, new first-time leaders, those interested in leading, technical professionals thrust into leadership, I decided to create something that would solve the problems of: practical content, cost, access, sustainability and guidance.

And then I spent a year trying to figure out the technology pieces to the puzzle…as well as creating the initial programs (twice) to learn.  Note…a key component of the puzzle was the distance learning delivery platform.  I discovered the great folks and offering from Digital Chalk and they are truly enabling me and other professionals to serve up great programs on demand.

And that brings me to today.  Paraphrasing liberally from Guy Kawasaki, build it, get it to market, take feedback and keep improving, and that’s what I’m doing.

Here’s the Commercial:

Building Better Leaders consists of:

  • Executive and senior practitioner developed, practical content for specific audiences. This is the type of practical, battle-proven material backed by years of hard won experience that is hard to find in traditional education or training settings.
  • A series of lessons delivered over 45 to 60 days as structured, on-demand multimedia programs highlighting core issues, examples and approaches.
  • Action Guides for every lesson reinforcing core objectives and detailing practical workplace assignments.
  • Executive mentoring (from me or other program developers)…typically 2-3 hours per program of personal distance mentoring.
  • Unlimited e-mail access on course concepts and applications with the program creator/mentor.
  • A price point that doesn’t break anyone’s budget.

The right content plus mentoring plus developmental activities plus access, plus affordability.  In many regards, this is a new approach to filling critical skills gaps and allowing people to take charge of their own career development.

The first two programs are core leadership programs: Considering the Move to Leadership-What to Expect and How to Prepare and Succeeding as a First Time Leader.

We will move quickly into audience specific programs with Leadership for Technical Professionals and High Performance Event Management for Marketing Professionals in January.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that I created a new Building Better Leaders blog.  I’ll be focusing on blocking and tackling and professional development related content…and will strive to keep it different than the material here at Management Excellence.  I hope that you’ll join me in this new blog.

And the Dirty Little Secret of Building Better Leaders:

Supporting the development and advancement of great professionals is the focal point of Building Better Leaders.  However, I also expect that this will serve as a powerful collaboration platform for me to work with other great professional trainers, coaches and executives interested in serving their audiences using this format. Whether I’m involved helping others create programs or simply enabling them to move their programs into this format, I look forward to some outstanding new collaborative adventures!

The Bottom Line for Now:

The grandest cathedrals start with vision and a single stone.  Great careers start with that first step and first hard-won lesson.  The vision is there, the first stone is set in place and there are careers and leaders and great professionals to be created.  Let the work begin.