Two years ago this week, From Bud to Boss was released. It was a proud moment for my co-author Guy Harris and me. It was a proud moment for our team. It hopefully was an important moment for many of the thousands who have been touched by this movement.
Is movement too strong a word? Well, of course I am biased, and there are certainly movements with more awareness and momentum, but yes, I would use that word.
Earlier this week, a participant in a workshop asked me why we wrote the book.
We wrote the book to help people deal with (and succeed in) the transition from being a part of the team, and likely friends with their co-workers, to being in charge of those same folks. One week you are having coffee, the next week you are doing their performance review. It is a big change.
And the change goes beyond the relationship changes – now the new leader needs to learn leadership skills – and far too often those skills aren’t clearly described, and support for learning them isn’t given soon enough. Let’s face it, leadership is challenging work, and it is organizationally important work. Good leaders create greater productivity, less stress, less turnover, higher quality and safer work (and lots more). These are real business values.
But we also wrote the book for a third reason. When you learn a new skill, your initial habits become engrained and harder to change. If we can help leaders build more of the right behaviors earlier, they, their organizations, and those they lead will benefit for the rest of their careers.
So, yes, we hoped to create a movement – to help more new leaders become more confident and competent sooner – and to give organizations tools to do that within their organizations.
I’m proud to say that after two years, the book is selling as well as ever. I’m prouder to say that there is more than a book.
The Parts of the Movement
To support the From Bud to Boss book, we created the Bud to Boss Community, which has free resources, whether you own a book or not (though the book unlocks many more resources to you). This community is about to get re-invigorated with more tools and resources to help leaders everywhere.
Actually, before the book was published, we were already delivering public workshops to support new leaders. The latest version of this workshop now includes group coaching, email follow up and a copy of the book itself. You can learn more and sign up for one of these sessions here. These public workshops are also taken inside of organizations – as is, or customized. In fact just last week, there was a public workshop in Atlanta, a customized version delivered in Indiana, and a complete in-house workshop delivered in Idaho. (If you would like to talk to us about in-house or custom solutions for your organization, fill out the form here).
Beyond face to face training we have created a number of shorter teleseminars on pieces of the content that can be delivered for you, or in some cases, purchased on CD or for inclusion in your company’s LMS. (If you want to learn more about these options, contact Adrienne Knox).
What’s Next
It is hopefully easy to see why we are proud of the ways we are reaching out to and helping leaders build the skills they need, when they need them most. Our commitment to these people and these goals hasn’t changed.
We are currently piloting a Learning Guide/Journal companion to the book, that will allow an individual leader (or a team learning together) to apply the lessons from the book, with additional specific action plans and tools. This resource, while not yet published, is going to be a tremendous resource for leaders and organizations.
And because we want to make our training as widely available as possible, we are currently building our plans to license our training to organizations so that they can deliver themselves (or through a Certified Trainer). This option will be unveiled in its entirety soon. If you have initial questions or want to inquire about how your organization could take advantage of this option, let us know on this form).
Two years is a time to celebrate and reflect. Two years is also a time to recommit to the work we have started. Hopefully this post shows that we are doing both.
If you have a need, personally or organizationally, to improve the skills, habits, and abilities of new leaders and supervisors, we hope you will think of us first. We are here to help.
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