GROWING LEADERS—THE STORY BEHIND LEADERSHIP’S CALLING^®

As a lifelong student of leadership, I recognized the integral role that leadership plays in ensuring an organization’s enduring success and vitality. No simple formulas, prescriptions or instruction manuals exist for how to become a true leader; that’s why you can’t teach leadership. However, you can teach leadership’s timeless principles, and you can offer insights, share experiences and provide tools so others can learn through a process of active engagement and self-discovery. It was these tenets, among others, that influenced and guided my decision to create and launch my unique, high-impact leadership learning programs.

My programs are all based on the same design, content and format. They expose participants to leadership foundational principles and concepts, essential competencies and practices, real-world applications, and practical tools based on a leadership framework I developed. The unique instructional design relies heavily on active facilitation, lecturettes, in-session exercises, two invited speakers, homework assignments, case studies, and the reading and discussion of core books in order to provoke, stimulate, provide context, and illuminate ideas. The programs intentionally create an environment for reflection, self-discovery and growth via dialogue, sharing, doing, deliberation, debate and problem solving. The overarching goal is to build leadership capacity among participants so they can consciously and intentionally make positive, lasting impacts on people’s lives and on the performance and long-term success of the organizations they serve.

Beginning in 2011 with the Smithbucklin Leadership Learning Forum for top-performing employees at various levels within the company and followed two years later with the Smithbucklin Leadership Institute for board members of client associations, the programming has evolved to include two offerings under the brand Leadership’s Calling® (leadershipscalling.com). The Diverse Cohort Program is for CEOs and other C-suite executives, vice presidents, directors and managers at all levels, business owners, entrepreneurs, individual practitioners and high-potentials from all types and sizes of organizations, including corporations, partnerships, health systems, small businesses, associations, educational institutions, charities and government bodies representing varied industries and professions. The second offering is an exclusive program for a CEO (or head of an organization) and members of his/her senior management team, participating together.

The more than 320 students who have completed my leadership learning programs have noted the powerful impact the experience has had on their professional and personal lives. The programs have also consistently generated substantive, meaningful growth for students as observed and measured by their team members, peers, boards, bosses, clients, industry and professional colleagues, and families. And students within each class have forged enduring bonds with and among each other.

Below is the background story of the Smithbucklin Leadership Learning Forum, the Smithbucklin Leadership Institute and Leadership’s Calling®.

Smithbucklin Leadership Learning Forum

An essential part of my job as a CEO was to enable the achievement of desired annual results. At Smithbucklin that includes client satisfaction and retention, employee engagement and retention, new client acquisition and company performance, among others. But as a CEO who also aspired to be a true leader, my overarching goal was to build a great, enduring company. A core requirement in the journey toward greatness is to build leadership capacity and performance throughout the company – in other words, grow leaders from within.

For several years I thought about how best to grow leaders at many levels within Smithbucklin in a way that would be purposeful, organized, disciplined, impactful and sustainable. In early 2010, my ideas and thoughts around content, desired outcomes, student selection and other key aspects were sufficiently developed to seriously begin planning. My plan was to build the program’s curriculum and content based on the leadership framework that I had developed over the years. I sought and received valuable assistance with the program’s unique instructional design from independent consultant Dick Dooley, someone I’d known for more than 25 years. In February 2011, the Leadership Learning Forum held the first session for its inaugural class.

For each class, the company’s senior management team would identify 18 employees with varying job functions and seniority to apply for the program. To be considered, individuals must consistently perform their jobs at an exceptionally high level, demonstrate great potential for increased responsibility and impact, show considerable capacity to grow and succeed at Smithbucklin, have a strong desire for a career in executive management – either at the Smithbucklin corporate level or in service to client organizations – and embody Smithbucklin’s values. To be accepted into the program, candidates also must assert and demonstrate a deep commitment for personal learning and growth.

Smithbucklin Leadership Institute

Knowing that leadership capacity and performance within an association volunteer board of directors is essential to ensuring the organization remains vital, value-creating and sustainable, I created the Smithbucklin Leadership Institute. With the overwhelming success of the Leadership Learning Forum, I knew that the boards of SmithBucklin’s client associations would welcome a similar program. Offering such a program would also help Smithbucklin further demonstrate its client stewardship pledge. In March 2013, the Leadership Institute officially welcomed its first class.

Every fall, Smithbucklin would conduct open enrollment for up to 18 volunteer board members with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. They include business executives, physicians, small business owners, farmers, medical researchers, nurses, technology specialists and managers, researchers, legal marketers, genetic counselors, and other various titles and professional roles. This diversity adds a powerful learning element to the student experience.

Leadership’s Calling^®

I retired as Smithbucklin President & CEO at the end of 2015. In 2017, I launched Leadership’s Calling® based on the same design, content and format as the Smithbucklin programs but available to audiences outside of Smithbucklin that include CEOs and other C-suite executives, vice presidents, directors and managers at all levels, business owners, entrepreneurs, individual practitioners and high-potentials from all types and sizes of organizations representing varied industries and professions. The program comprises five 2-day in-person sessions based in Chicago scheduled over 28 weeks. Each class has 15 to 18 students.

During the fall of 2020 and into 2021, I had the opportunity to facilitate a special version of Leadership’s Calling® for the CEO of a large manufacturing company of heavy-duty transit buses and his eight-person senior management team. The program’s success and its meaningful impact on the CEO, on team members (individually and collectively), and as result, on the company, were evident and well-articulated. Today this specialized program is offered to a CEO (or head of organization) and members of his/her senior management team. It involves six to eight 4.5-hour Zoom sessions plus at least one in-person session at the company’s home city.

Henry S. Givray