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Develop Great Leaders in Your Organization: An Introduction to Zingerman’s Leadership Development Program
Several years ago, we realized that although we were teaching many important leadership topics to our staff, we also had a gap—managers didn’t have enough opportunity to practice these leadership skills, with an opportunity to mindfully reflect on what they were doing well and how to improve. As is common in many (most?) organizations, we recognize that Zingerman’s managers often spend so much of their time working in the business and on the business that they are left with little time to develop themselves. So we set out to develop a program to address that gap.
A couple of key HR specialists and a few managing partners started work on what has come to be called Zingerman’s Leadership Development Program (LDP). We wanted to bring together up-and-coming leaders from across the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses to review and expand on key topics such as visioning, self-management, and employee performance that were already being taught and—even more importantly—provide structured opportunities to put those leadership tools and techniques into practice back in their home businesses.
LDP includes eight sessions over about 4 months (January-April) and participation in each year’s cohort is through an application and selection process that begins in November of the previous year. This intimate network of 12 fellow leaders can regularly offer encouragement and support to one another as they navigate potential roadblocks and we’ve seen that support can (and does!) continue for the duration of their tenure at Zingerman’s, long after their particular session of LDP is over.
In this webinar, we’ll be talking all about Zingerman’s Leadership Development Program, namely:
– What it is and why we started it
– The benefits we’ve gained from it and why you might want to develop an LDP in YOUR organization
– How and why we’ve structured it the way we have and what we’ve learned
that can help you think about how to structure one of your own!
We’ll also share a sneak peak at ZingTrain’s about-to-be-announced Leadership Development Workshop Series (LDWS)—a series of 4-hour public workshops that we’ll be introducing in the first quarter of 2019 that are inspired by our internal LDP model. These public workshops will be available to anyone and everyone who want to become a better leader (maybe that’s you?!)
