NGC Experience: Mike Renoe
How did you first hear about NextGen Center and the Foundation for Effective Leadership program?
One of my former colleagues was given his first leadership role by Takeout Central. The company was working with a key advisor who recommended Brian and the program, which my colleague enrolled in.
I was the VP of engineering, and I had one employee who was a driver for us and then became our engineer. Then I was asked to hire another person. And at that point, I asked to get the same kind of training my former colleague had.
Up until that point, I had mostly been acting as an individual contributor. And with the new hire, there was going to be a lot of mentoring and coaching to get him from a boot camp to fully adapted into our team. I knew I had some of the natural skills to do that (e.g. teaching people), but I didn't have a structure or framework to do so. We were just kind of winging it up to that point.
The fact that my employer paid for me to take the Foundation program certainly tells me that they're willing to invest in young leaders with potential. They truly care about the happiness of employees and how well they're doing and having the type of leaders that Brian develops. Those are the people that develop happy employees.
Part of the program includes working 1:1 with a coach. How was that experience for you?
Working with Brian as my 1:1 coach was excellent. When I first came in, I had a lot of ideas about what specifically I wanted to address. I was starting from scratch, and I didn't have a training plan or hiring plan. We went through that step by step, and it was done in a coaching way.
What's great about the coaching method is that it unlocks what’s inside of you, through almost a Socratic method. You probably already know the answer. For the things I didn't know, Brian was very willing to answer the questions I had.
Somewhere between the Values and Vision training sessions, it occurred to me that much of the training and the coaching is seeking within yourself to find what you can do best. And what I really lacked going into this program was the confidence to lead and the confidence to trust my own judgment. And at some point, I realized that the team I wanted to build was the team that I wanted to be a part of. And that wasn't a bad thing. I can trust my own values to guide me.
How would you describe the Foundation for Effective Leadership program to someone who could benefit?
The Foundation for Effective Leadership is an intensive training with real leaders who are in the same place you're in. It’s a framework to help you lead your team in a trustworthy and empathetic fashion.
You walk away with a better respect for leadership as a skill and as an idea. Where management is telling a team of people what to do next and how to get to the next step, leadership is trusting your team and explaining the why, then getting to the next step together.