Growing Weeders Into Leaders by Jeff McManus

Author:Jeff McManus [Jeff Mcmanus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2017-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Results of Training

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

—Jack Welch, Former CEO, General Electric

Staff development in our area has made many of our staff friendlier, stronger, and much more efficient. A front-line groundskeeper, I’ll call him Stan, took the teachings he had heard in our Leader to Leader development class to heart. For many years, he has been a faithful and hardworking member of our team.

Dependable and agreeable, he decided he wanted to do more with his life. One day I received an email from someone on campus saying what a great job Stan had done over the weekend at the entrepreneur competition conference on campus. Stan had not only entered the contest, but he also had placed in the top 10 out of 50.

Six months before the conference, Stan had signed up and enrolled in weeklong school in St. Louis to become an auctioneer. Challenged to find consistent, paying auctioneer gigs, he decided he would pitch a business idea to see if he could get prospective investors to help him start a local car auction, something he could do each week. The courage to follow his dream was something I was proud to see.

Later, Stan was sidelined by a brain tumor. It slowed him down but didn’t stop him. He soon recovered and was back at work, happier than ever. Stan hasn’t yet had that chance to start the local auction, but he is in the game to follow his dream. He said the Leader to Leader classes opened his eyes to his potential and showed him he could “do more than just take up space in life.”

Another employee took a job in another department on campus, which paid more than his job in our department. When he saw the job opening, this employee, I will call him Jerome, let me know he was considering applying for it. He knew I would not retaliate against him or sabotage his efforts by giving him a bad reference.

Jerome came to me several times as he struggled with whether or not to apply for the job. We talked about the pros and cons of taking the new job. Some people argue that if you train people, they just leave for better jobs. Why waste the time training only to see them leave? But I don’t think training employees is a waste of time.

Jerome told me during his exit interview that it was our Leader to Leader classes that gave him the confidence to apply for the new job. I hated to lose him, but it was time for him to apply what he learned to other areas.

He said the Leader to Leader classes also helped him at home, making him think through some things and get organized and focused. He even said the classes helped improve his marriage.

“What’s worse than training your people and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.”

—John C. Maxwell, “The 360 Degree

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