As a leader, is it hard to invest in and drive a consistent cultural experience throughout your organization? As a company grows, the direct impact you can have as a CEO or Owner can be constrained. You still want to invest in your leaders, right? We all do.

At Acumen, we saw this challenge with our partners and wanted to drive a ripple of impact to help keep companies solid and healthy at the top and throughout the organization. This spurred our Emerging Leaders Program launch in October of this year, led by Growth Catalyst Kurt Bragg. Our six-month program focuses on investing in their skills and providing an experience that will challenge, sharpen, and inspire who they are as leaders.I had the joy of signing up for the program and getting a first-hand experience of what Acumen's ripple of impact can do for employees at any level in an organization. The caliber of expertise in the room consists of people such as Vice Presidents, Senior Managers, and individuals newer to their roles in leadership. With diverse experts and skill sets, we can broaden our learning through collaborative and focused peer-to-peer insight.

Are you helping your employees gain the knowledge they need today to transition into the leadership transitions of tomorrow?

The program covers various learning topics to help leaders grow. Our conversation on "Understanding How to Maintain and Build Employee Trust" kicked off the series and created collaboration for all of us in the room. The first session included a half-day of learning and getting to know other peer leaders in the Kansas City community. Followed by “Effective Coaching," we are taking these proven leadership excellence topics and adding more knowledge to our toolbelts.

In each session, we challenge one another to think about our W.O.W.s -(Within One Week) goals, objectives, and focuses. These can be things we hope to continue, want to start, or are inspired to learn more about. These can be business related, personal, relational, or whatever is most important to each person. We encourage and stay in contact with each other throughout the week outside of the face-to-face sessions.  

Coaching is such a critical element of leading your team - learning to listen to what is most important to them and understanding how best to trigger sharpening in them. How are you doing in this area as a leader? Are there engagement elements like a W.O.W. rhythm that you could do with your team to support them? 

It's important to not only focus on the growth of your company but invest in the growth of your team. Challenging you, today, to find one new thing to invest in your people.

P.S. Are you planning for the leadership transitions of tomorrow? Acumen is excited to ripple real growth in our partners' organizations with an inspiring, catalytic experience. Retention of key talent is critical. If you'd like to nominate some team members for our next Emerging Leader cohort connect with us, and see how you can get involved today!