FAQs
- Provide a brief background of your company
- How long has your company been in business? How long have you been providing training programs, specifically management-level?
- Describe your core product and service lines
- How many employees have you trained for these clients and in what industries have you worked?
- Describe your training philosophy. What learning approach do you use to accomplish this?
- Describe the educational theory behind your approach
- What are your recommendations for delivering training to an organization's managers?
- Do you offer more than one approach to your training? Are they integrated? If so, describe the integration
- What specific programs or types of programs do you offer?
- Describe how your training is organized
- Describe the qualifications of your trainers.
- Describe what customization options, if any, are available.
- How often are your materials updated and/or reviewed?
- Describe how your course content is kept current
- Describe the teaching tools that are used in the presentation of your courses
- What additional support, if any, is available to the "student"?
- Do "students" have the opportunity to role-play or work on real-life situations?
- Describe the structure of a typical leadership course
- How are pre-assessments, if any, used in the training process?
- How are post-assessments, if any, used in the training process?
- Describe how a client would measure whether your training is successful or had an impact.
Academy Leadership was founded in August 2000 by graduates of West Point and the Naval Academy who are successful leaders in the business world as well as the military. Most people realize that the nation's Service Academies develop outstanding military leaders, but few know that since World War II these same Academies produced thousands of successful corporate CEOs, presidents, vice-presidents, and entrepreneurs. The company's principals developed a leadership training system that employs the respected strategies used by these academies. They combined the valuable lessons learned, the winning tactics, and time-tested business philosophies from the Academy, military, and corporate world experiences to create the Lead2Succeed™ training process.
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How long has your company been in business? How long have you been providing training programs, specifically management-level?
Academy Leadership has been in business since August 2000 and has been providing training programs focused at the management level since its inception. Although the company is fairly new, our facilitators have been delivering leadership training programs for decades. There are very few companies that can offer the extensive experience of our facilitators.
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Describe your core product and service lines.
Our core product is the Lead2Succeed™ process. The process is results-oriented, goal-focused, application-based, and interactive. We begin by working with your senior management team to understand and articulate your company's purpose, values, and vision. We then design with you a leadership development program that meets the needs of your leaders and translates your core values and vision into meaningful observable behaviors. The Lead2Succeed™ process then develops leaders at every level who understand your goals and take the initiative to achieve them. Participants achieve this by reading and listening to the material, applying the principles and techniques to actual challenges at work, and then meeting in weekly, facilitated Application and Action Conference to share lessons learned and generate action plans with their co-participants. The entire process is focused on the goals that each manager in the session is responsible for achieving.
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How many employees have you trained for these clients and in what industries have you worked?
What industry categories have you worked with? We have trained over 1,000 managers for our clients. We've worked in the financial services, bank credit card and insurance, communications, contracting, distribution, package delivery service and manufacturing industries, as well as the not-for-profit sector and the government.
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Describe your training philosophy. What learning approach do you use to accomplish this?
Our philosophy is training only for a purpose. We will not conduct training for training's sake. Our training is focused on helping companies achieve their business goals. Thus, our approach is to conduct purposeful training that is student centered, experience based, and performance-oriented. Purposeful training enables individuals to meet their specific learning needs and meet the needs of the organization.
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Describe the educational theory behind your approach.
The educational theory behind our approach is the Adult Learning Model described by Kolb and Fry (1975). We apply this theory by requiring participants' analysis of their experiences; encouraging them to become increasingly self-directed and responsible for their own learning; and providing skills through activities that serve participants' needs and interests based on their actual work requirements. We focus on first-hand and vicarious experiences, guided discussions among participants and the facilitator, as well as thoughtful analysis and interpretation by the participant. We also recognize that different people have different preferences for learning. Our approach accounts for this by using all four steps in the Adult Learning Model:
- Concrete experience
- Observation and reflection
- Form abstract concepts
- Develop and apply new courses of action to real situations.
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What are your recommendations for delivering training to an organization's managers?
We recommend that the Executive groups train first, followed by the Mid-Management groups, and finally by Front-Line Management. Change in organizations occurs best when it starts at the top. When Mid-Managers observe behavioral change from the Executives, their behavioral change will be facilitated. The same is true when seen from the perspective of the Front-Line level
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Do you offer more than one approach to your training? Are they integrated? If so, describe the integration.
Yes, but our basic approach is always the same - read and listen to the material, apply the material at work to real challenges, and then conference with other participants to share lessons learned and generate action plans. Additionally, all the training is focused on achieving goals. The core strategy, as explained earlier, requires groups to participate in weekly, face-to-face action conferences with our facilitators. We can conduct these action conferences via teleconferencing when necessitated by geographical constraints. Based on the needs of the client, we can also conduct workshops of various lengths focused on specific topics.
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What specific programs or types of programs do you offer?
We offer three types of leadership training programs - Corporate Leadership, Business Owner Leadership, and Individual Leadership. A Corporate Leadership program is designed to increase the productivity of your people by transforming your managers into leaders. The Business Owner program is targeted at small business owners who are seeking to develop the leadership skills of their management team. The Individual program targets people who are committed to attaining their long-term career goals and want to improve their leadership abilities. In addition to these core programs, we conduct Workshops on various topics. These Workshops can be as short as 2 hours and as long as 3 days. We also are available to deliver Keynote addresses on various leadership topics for a variety of venues. Finally, we conduct coaching for managers from front-line through the executive level.
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Describe how your training is organized.
Our programs are organized around modules that are content-specific and address the needs of the client. The program is designed with the client after company goals are articulated, leadership needs are identified and performance outcomes are specified. Each module has a Reading of 10-12 pages, a CD, which is a verbatim script of the Reading, and additionally as a minimum a Participant Self Evaluation, Application & Action discussion questions, and a Participant Feedback Sheet.
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Describe the qualifications of your trainers.
All of our trainers are graduates of West Point or the Naval Academy. Each has extensive leadership experience - they have studied it, written it, and practiced it, in the military and in the corporate world. Each one is a skilled facilitator and expert in helping people learn to help themselves and others.
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Describe what customization options, if any, are available.
One of our fundamental operating principles is flexibility. You play an active role in customizing your program. Our modules are not "off-the-shelf." We develop basic modules around specific leadership topics and modify them to fit your needs and your company's culture.
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How often are your materials updated and/or reviewed?
We review and update our basic modules no less frequently than semi-annually. We review and update specific modules based on the needs of each client.
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Describe how your course content is kept current.
Most of our modules are leadership topics that are the basic skills for effectively leading teams and organization. The specific skills are timeless, they are the basic "blocking and tackling" of effective leadership. We ensure that the techniques in each module are current by reading several professional journals, web articles, and through our partnerships with Villanova University and University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
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Describe the teaching tools that are used in the presentation of your courses. Our courses are self-contained. We provide all the tools, which include the readings, the audio tapes/CDs, and our course Workbooks that contain all the supporting materials.
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What additional support, if any, is available to the "student"?
We offer one-on-one coaching to each participant as required. Additionally, our facilitators are available to participants, around-the-clock, to provide any assistance they may require.
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Do "students" have the opportunity to role-play or work on real-life situations?
Absolutely, our whole pedagogy depends upon the participants bringing in their real-life experiences into the weekly action conferences. We do not lecture and we do not deal in theory. We are application-focused and results-oriented. There are many opportunities for spontaneous role-plays during the Action Conferences.
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Describe the structure of a typical leadership course.
The only thing that would be "typical" in our leadership courses is that they focus on accomplishing the client organization's goals. Additionally, we "typically" meet weekly in Action Conferences to discuss how each participant applied the module content and the results relative to the person's goals. The content of each program will depend upon the specific client organization, the level of leadership and the specific needs of the participants.
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How are pre-assessments, if any, used in the training process?
We use the Organizational Needs Inventory assessment to determine or validate leadership training needs. Additionally, this assessment provides valuable information about how members of an organization describe the organization and their "ideal organization." It also reveals how employees describe the leadership style used in the company and what an "ideal leadership style" would be. It shows how members describe the company's culture and what an "ideal organizational culture" would be. We also use the results to identify and understand areas of incompatibility among the organizational design, leadership style, and organizational culture and what changes in attitudes and leadership styles would be beneficial. We also administer a Pre-Training questionnaire to participants to measure their perceptions of ability for each leadership skill that is in the program. We compare these results with their Post-Training questionnaire.
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How are post-assessments, if any, used in the training process?
We recomend the administration of an organisational needs inventery assessment no earlier than 6 months after completion of the program to determine if any measurable reduction in the gap between "as is" and "ideal" has occurred as a result of the program. Additionally, we compare the results of the participants' Pre-Training and Post-Training questionnaires to determine if any perceptible improvement in leader skills has occurred.
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Describe how a client would measure whether your training is successful or had an impact.
We recommend and assist in 4-levels of measurement:
- Did participants enjoy the program?
- Did participants learn from the program?
- Did the training result in desired behavioral change?
- Did the training result in desired organizational outcomes?
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