SNC to train emerging business leaders in northern Wisconsin, UP

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

February 24, 2023

NORTHERN WISCONSIN – What’s next?

St. Norbert College (SNC) Center for Exceptional Leadership (CEL) hopes to help leaders in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) and Northern Wisconsin answer that question.

“Our intent is to help support the continued development of leaders in the organizations that call Dickinson County home,” Dean Stewart, executive director of the CEL at SNC, said. 

Since launching six years ago, the CEL has seen tremendous success.

Now, SNC is taking its programming off-campus to a select group of people in Northern Wisconsin and the UP – a first for the college.

In partnership with the Dickinson Area Economic Development Alliance, SNC will soon be offering its Foundational Leadership program on the campus of Bay College in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

Stewart said Bay College will supply the classroom and SNC will supply the instructors.

“There is already a great program run through Bay College called ‘Leadership Academy,’” he said. “Our desire in bringing our programs to the region is to offer additional options for lifelong learning.”

Getting off the ground
Stewart said the partnership came about following a suggestion from Jon Harry – an executive with Systems Control in Iron Mountain – who had taken one of SNC’s leadership programs and felt like Iron Mountain needed a similar one.

“Jon talked with me about a need there for leadership development in both Iron Mountain and northern Wisconsin, and that they did not have access to great leadership development,” he said. “He said they wanted to tap into what we are doing at St. Norbert College.”

The conversation led to a visit to Iron Mountain for Stewart to meet with Harry and Lois Ellis, the executive director of the Dickinson Area Economic Development Alliance. 

“Our economic development initiative in the community started about five years ago,” Ellis said. “One of the things that kept coming up in conversations with a lot of our leading employers was that the development of leadership talent was always difficult internally for these companies.”

Ellis said it was challenging to have enough people who were interested in taking on those roles and to develop them with enough support and education to help them be successful.

“It was coming from the business community – they needed something like this,” she said. “At the same time, there were some businesses that were sending people to St. Norbert College in Green Bay to receive this type of training. In fact, one company has been sending people pretty routinely every year to Green Bay.”

Ellis said the Dickinson County area is lucky to have several large employers and a good manufacturing base.

“That was the segment of our economy that was fully engaged with having to find that next level of leadership talent,” she said.

Stewart said he, Ellis and Harry started brainstorming about what a program in Iron Mountain would look like and how they could recruit companies and make them aware of the program.

“We focused on our frontline leadership program – which is called our Foundational Leadership program,” Stewart said.

He said the program focus the trio decided upon is designed for new and emerging leaders within their organizations.

“They’re the ones who are moving from being good in their roles, to now being asked to lead people and teams, but they aren’t taught how to lead those people and teams,” he said. “That’s where we come in.”

The Alliance helped SNC create relationships with regional businesses and nonprofits it didn’t have in order to create awareness around the program – which led to a CEO breakfast in October 2022.

Stewart said things started taking off from there.

He said the new program’s capacity of 10 participants filled quickly.

The program begins meeting April 11 and will include classroom instruction one Wednesday each month through November. 

“The acceleration of this program is faster than what we do with our other programs, but the need is there,” he said. “And I feel like the reason it’s been so successful in filling up is that (besides the need being there), organizations are hungry for developing great leaders within their organizations, especially in smaller communities.”

Stewart said employers also want to keep employees in the area.

“They’re making this investment in young leaders to essentially be the futures of their organizations,” he said.

Ellis said her organization had worked with their local Bay College on some leadership initiatives previously, including developing a leadership program. 

“They’re still running that program – it’s called the Bay-West Leadership Academy,” she said. “We want Bay College to continue running that program because it’s a different focus and includes some aspects unique to our community.”

Ellis said she thinks the graduates of that academy might be great candidates for the St. Norbert program as well.

“It’s a great feeder program for this next level the CEL provides,” she said.

More about the program
The CEL offers leadership development programs for professionals at all levels of an organization.

Complete with real-world challenges, Stewart said the CEL helps empower leaders to create new levels of impact in their organizations, families and communities.

Stewart said the Foundational Leadership program equips participants new to leadership or identified as high performers, with the qualities, core behaviors and skills needed to become more contemplative, forward-looking drivers of an organization’s success.

Over the course of eight sessions, participants will build:
Greater self-awareness of their core strengths and areas for growth.Better understanding of what is required to move from a strong individual contributor to a leader of people and team success.Critical-thinking, problem-solving and empathetic listening skills.Ultimately, each participant will create a lasting strategy for developing themselves and others that is integrated with your organizational priorities and objectives.
“We want them to understand what’s required to move from being a strong contributor as an individual to someone who’s successful at leading people and teams,” Stewart said. “There’s a lot that goes into developing leaders.”

He said often it’s not what educators do that develops strong leaders, but rather the individual needing or wanting to be a lifelong learner and be invested in their development.

Lois Ellis

“They need to recognize they don’t know everything, and they want to be the best they can be,” he said. “They also need to embrace the things we’re talking about.” 

Stewart said everyone’s journey through the program is going to look different, as will what they get out of it.

“They may not be having the impact on people or things they’d like to be having,” he said. “They want to embrace those things that will help accentuate the things they’re doing well and welcoming the things that can help them grow in the areas where they’re not doing so well.”

Stewart said what the program is intended to teach is that to be successful in today’s business environment, you have to make good decisions and choices, as well as treat people well.

A first-go
Although this is the first time SNC is working with another college or university, Stewart said they are already planning future cohorts.

“It will depend on how things go and the success we have with this first cohort, but I’m optimistic because we’ve gotten good feedback on the programs we run locally,” he said. “I can’t imagine we’re going to run into anything different in Iron Mountain.”
Stewart said the program in Iron Mountain is the “next natural growth output for us.”

“It’s a further testament that what we do is important and organizations need what we have to offer,” he said. 

It is the hope of the greater Iron Mountain area, Ellis said, that the program helps support talent retention and attraction.

“Individuals who go through this type of leadership training will probably have advancement opportunities within their businesses here and that will help them stay here for a long time,” she said. “Maybe it can also be a talent attraction component where if we have these resources available to develop leaders in our community, others will see that as an opportunity, too.”

Ellis said it might also help retain companies.

“If they can find the talent they need, they can stay in this location,” she said. “So, there are two positive aspects to it.”