A few years ago, we organized our first annual Peak Support Summit. At lunch one day, I sat with Ivy, one of our team leads, and asked her for feedback. “I want more training,” she said. “We get plenty of trainings related to the specific tasks our teams need to accomplish. But I want training on how to be a manager – a leader.”
Of course.It was a classic “duh” moment for me. No one is born a leader. We all learn from experience, and, yes, from formal training. We had a fantastic group of team leads. But we weren’t offering them any training to help them make the transition from team member to manager.
And so the Emerging Leaders Program was born. We think of it as a mini-MBA. Indeed, it covers a lot of the same topics as MBA programs, but in about 12 weeks instead of two years. We even took a lot of the readings from Harvard Business Review and other classic B-school resources.
We designed it in the spring of 2017 and launched it with Peak Support’s senior leadership team. Shortly after, we launched with a second test group, all team leads (including Ivy!). After making a few tweaks, we’re now rolling it out to the rest of our leads. Eventually we hope opened it up to our entire team and began using it to identify potential leaders who weren’t yet in management roles.
We’ve made the entire curriculum and training guide available, to anyone who wants to use it as a resource. We welcome suggestions and feedback – in fact, we’re constantly updating this document as new leaders go through the program. And if you’d like advice on how to roll this out in your company, please feel free to contact us.
