Are you teaching your managers how to lead?
Do they know how to live the values of your company to help their team members be successful in their jobs?
If you're like a lot of leaders, teaching key leadership lessons is always on the bottom of your to do list and gets pushed off. However, eventually you realize you have to do something about it for one of many reasons:
- New Leaders: You promote a batch of new managers and realize they'll struggle without coaching and support.
- Requests for help: Some of your most diligent managers keep asking for help and training.
- Spiraling Problems: You notice problems starting to emerge or even have a wave of people quit citing their manager as the reason (or things the manager failed to do).
Or maybe you realize you want to brush up on your skills yourself to make sure you're setting a good example and teaching the right leadership lessons to them.
Regardless of the reason, manager training is something that more people wish they did more often.
That's why we created Lighthouse Leadership Lessons: Bite-size, weekly lessons to help managers quickly level up in a way that is highly actionable, and makes a big impact on their team.
Read on to learn how we can help you and your fellow managers at your company.
Leadership training that levels you up
There are many options out there when you think about helping your managers. You'll often see companies try one or all of these:
- Bringing in a trainer to do a program on site for an afternoon or a whole day
- Sending some staff to training at a location near your offices.
- Buying an LMS system hoping managers will log in and go through modules.
- Meeting as a group every week to every month to discuss leadership and management challenges together.
Unfortunately, these all come with drawbacks:
- Trainers are expensive, and cramming everything into one day can be overwhelming. It's also not possible with COVID, unless you try to replicate teh classroom on Zoom.
- LMS systems have their place, but often are more informative than actionable.
- Group meetings can be powerful, but someone has to moderate the meeting and prepare a high quality agenda despite being super busy.
To help with these common challenges, we created Lighthouse Leadership Lessons: Group Edition, which not only gives each of your managers easy-to-consume, highly actionable leadership lessons, but also helps you have amazing discussions together in a group setting thanks to our discussion agendas we provide.
Today, we have a case study with Lisa Eckel, Learning & Development Manager at Jornaya, to share how we helped their managers learn key management skills, boost their self-awareness, and level up their leadership skills while building camaraderie among their managers.
How Lighthouse Leadership Lessons helped Jornaya Effectively Level up their Managers
Last year, Lisa Eckel came to us interested in our next edition of our Lighthouse Leadership Lessons program, the Coach's Clinic.
She had done a previous program and thought it was a good fit for their managers to do together:
"We were looking for a program that was different from a traditional seminar or online course where you are presented with a lot of content in a short period of time that is quickly forgotten when you finish the class.
... We've had team members participate in one-day offsite classes and online training in the past and have found that while they might take notes and get some valuable advice, it was difficult to use as a practical application and we had no way to evaluate the value of the training sessions.”
Eckel is talking about the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve:
It turns out, we quickly forget information if too much is presented at once, and you aren't given a chance to apply it.
That's why our Lighthouse Leadership Lessons programs are 10-12 weeks long and send you 1 focused lesson a week; it makes it easy for even the busiest manager to participate, and gives them a whole week to think about how to apply the lesson with their team.
This education style was really important for Eckel and Jornaya:
"We wanted to have access to focused, individual topics and be able to apply learnings quickly."
Importantly, they also wanted to have their managers do a program together:
"We had this idea of creating a community for our mid-level managers that meets periodically. The goal was to get them talking to each other about key issues and the challenges they face as managers.”
Fortunately, our programs could meet both of their key goals.
Why Lighthouse Leadership Lessons?
The structure of Lighthouse Lessons was just what Eckel and the managers at Jornaya were looking for:
"I took the The Great Manager's Mindset course through Lighthouse already and loved the content and the format of the program.
Every module was a combination of reading, some video examples, and hands on activities that I could start immediately and see results.”When Lighthouse introduced the facilitator/moderator discussion questions, it was a no brainer for us to try it with the team because we could use these discussion topics in our manager community group meetings."
Knowing the quality of our programs and seeing how easy it would be for Eckel to run the manager group discussions with our help, we were set to help them succeed.
Getting buy-in
Choosing the right program is an important step in helping your managers learn the right leadership lessons. However, every good leader knows that you need the buy in, interest, and support of those you wish to teach as well.
That's why Eckel and Jornaya involved their managers in the decision, too:
"We signed everyone up and then communicated what we were doing and how it aligned with our new 1:1 program and their professional development.
We followed up with a kickoff of the program to get everyone in the room to talk through the goals of the course and what they could expect from our manager community discussion sessions.”
In fact, when I asked Eckel what the most important advice would be for others interested in the program, she reiterated the importance of this early buy-in effort:
"Have a conversation with your managers about the program beforehand and discuss why it's important for their development as managers and for the team as a whole.
If you can align participation to your company objectives or professional development strategy, that's even better.
Keep the conversation going throughout the program and beyond. Get regular feedback from the team and encourage them to share information about the good and the bad.”
By helping their leaders understand why they chose the program and listening to their feedback throughout, they ensured they had real buy in and support.
For example, they chose to meet every 2 weeks based on manager input on how often they wanted to meet:
"During the kickoff meeting that I held with the managers, I asked them what cadence and timing would work for them.
I let them decide what worked best and that went a long way.”
They also made the meetings optional so managers could decide for themselves if they had time to meet each time.
Because of Eckel's efforts to listen and get their buy in, attendance was strong throughout with everyone joining as much as they could, and some making every single one.
Big Impacts for Every Manager
Every manager in your company starts at a different level; they've spent varied amounts of time as leaders, overcome different challenges, and learned different leadership lessons.
Fortunately, with all the videos, example actions, and further reading, Lighthouse Leadership Lessons give you something for every level and type of manager. And this is exactly what Jornaya experienced:
"The impact for each person was different but what was consistent across the board was that everyone became more self-reflective about their management style and identified areas that they needed to work on.
Even managers who weren't as consistently engaged with the lessons came to the table at the end of the program and acknowledged that they need to be much more thoughtful about coaching and providing regular feedback.”
In addition to the topical learning of the lessons they all received, the group discussions proved powerful:
"Everyone had a voice at the table and an opportunity to share their experiences. We encouraged everyone to talk openly about what they believe they are doing well and what they aren't.
Some managers used these meetings to ask for advice on how to solve a problem, or shared examples of what they added to their team meetings and 1:1s that were learnings from the program.”
This is the magic of bringing junior and senior leaders together in a private meeting; these managers were able to share their challenges and get specific advice *from leaders in their own company*.
This ensures both healthy discussion and consistent values are instilled in and applied by your managers. As Eckel summed up her experience:
"The Lighthouse Leadership Lessons program is great for new and experienced managers because the lessons can positively change the behavior of managers at any level.
Having various experience levels in our group was a help to newer managers as they were able to get thoughtful and practical guidance on real-world scenarios from their peers.”
The beginning of much more...
Finally, Lighthouse Leadership Lessons also helped Jornaya with their larger goal of improving the support and feeling of community for the leaders at their company:
"Our goal was to create a stronger sense of community with our management team and the group discussions helped to break the ice.
While every manager in the group described different types of challenges, it didn't prevent powerful and constructive discussion from happening.
This was a first step for us in helping to give our managers some guidance and a forum through which they could share experiences and ask for help. The education doesn't stop here and we plan to continue to offer programs like this one.”
Now, it's your turn.
Jornaya has joined us for 3 different programs, and we're excited to work with them again in the future.
You can learn and grow your leaders just like them with training that sticks, discussions that build bonds, all with zero prep work required of you.
Here's how:
- For groups of 10 or more managers, choose your program and sign up at https://GroupLessons.GetLighthouse.com
- For individuals and smaller groups, you can join our latest open cohorts at https://Lessons.GetLighthouse.com
