The Leadership Gym Evolves to Meet Your Needs Now

Covid changed a lot of things.  I used to be on a plane every week, flying somewhere to work with amazing groups of leaders who wanted to have more impact, have more influence, and change the future for their business, their teams and themselves.

That’s a pretty rewarding career and I loved it.  But this year has been rewarding as well, and I’ve discovered a few things that continue to amaze me, and that I might have never expected. Leaders have been learning and growing using sets of remote resources that help them become better leaders on a consistent basis, rather than heading to workshops, lectures, conferences, or company meetings.  Leaders have taken ownership of their future as a leader and found tools and information that help them improve consistently along the way.

Not all leaders of course, but some of them. The ones who didn’t wait for the pandemic to end so they could resume their journey to a higher level of leadership; the ones who knew that leadership was about consistently practicing, developing and improving their ability to lead others; the ones who knew that standing still was not what their business, their team, or their future required of them, especially when this much change in the world required more leadership, not less.

It’s inspiring to watch people find a way where there doesn’t seem to be one or see a path in what just looks like a jungle to the rest of us and ignore obstacles, while others of us just stand there wishing we didn’t have to stop because of them.

We watched those leaders push forward and we knew, because of them, that we had to try to help.  We had to pivot and find a way to put real, meaningful, thought provoking support out there for leaders who still wanted to learn.  We had to find a way to take what we had been doing to support developing leaders in person and make it available remotely.   We had to, like everyone else who chose not to stand still, reinvent.

I knew that leadership was best learned over time, in small chunks, with coaching as a support tool.  I also knew that learning with resources that could be accessed in the moment when a need arose and as people were encountering challenges would also be optimal.  But people were still consuming leadership development primarily in big meetings, full-day or multi-day sessions and packed conferences, and that may still be the case if we return to something that resembles the past.  Interaction is still important.  But I also learned that it can be delivered in those little chunks too and that if it’s supported with coaching, available in those moments when you need it and also available as part of a bigger learning process, leadership development can happen an hour a week or a moment at a time, like most effective learning does.

So that meant we had to support leaders in a new, and maybe even better, way.  And so, we started building leadership development content that could help any leader, anytime of day or night, and could also be used to address immediate issues or challenges that leaders face constantly on the job.  We built, and are continuing to build, change and improve the Leadership Gym.   People can join the gym and learn whenever they want and however they want, but always have fresh leadership content available to them.

And because we know that people still want to consume leadership development in little chunks when they need it, we created leadership micro courses to help them as well. We’ve introduced our micro courses at  leadershipgym.com/learn so that even if you are not a member of the Leadership Gym, you have access to some of the same tools and resources.

If you want to develop better work/life harmony, set more effective goals, hire more effectively, or even be more resilient as a leader, it’s in there. And you can choose what topics are most important to you and start right there, right now.

I get to work with some incredible leaders every single day as an executive coach. And one thing that they have taught me over and over is that those who pursue leadership as a set of skills, habits, and capabilities that they want to master, will find a way to become better and will change the future because they did. We simply want to help.  Leadership matters maybe now more than ever.  Our job is to do everything we can to support those who agree with us.