Photos by Hillary Ehlen
For 100 Years, Dale Carnegie has been a global leader in corporate training. Dale Carnegie of ND and NW MN is supporting businesses with anywhere from five to 2,000+ employees right here in our own backyard. We had a chance to connect with some of the team to learn more about what makes their solutions unique. Spotlight, the parent company for Fargo INC!, also had one of our own employees take their Leadership Training for Managers course to see what she could learn. Here is what happened.
Dale Carnegie offers a lot of different courses. What are the most applicable ones for small businesses?
We’ve helped companies of all sizes generate revenue, increase productivity and reduce costs by revealing their bright and resourceful workforce. To capture the kind of lasting, profitable results that will drive long-term growth for any company, it is vital for employees to be competent, passionate and committed.
We offer a variety of courses under each of these six core topics, designed to set teams in motion and help organizations reach new heights:
- Leadership
- Powerful Presentations
- Communication and People Skills
- Sales
- Customer Service
- Organizational Development
In addition to our programs being open to the public, we offer tailored solutions for clients, including in-house training and workshops, assessments and executive coaching.
-Bethany Berkeley
You will actually go in and work with entire businesses. Tell us more about that. I can see this being really attractive for small business owners.
Our approach is consultative and relationship-driven. We know every company has a unique competitive edge in the market, history and culture. The solutions we recommend are based on the given industry, organizational structure, size and capacity. It starts with a conversation – we truly listen and learn. We review successes, challenges and overall organizational health. Our goal is to drive performance outcomes by leveraging innovative and sustainable methods with a proven track record of success. We work to ensure the process is as seamless and fun as possible.
– Bethany Berkeley
You don’t just have programs in Fargo. You’re also across the entire state, right?
One of the AMAZING things about Dale Carnegie, we can offer the same phenomenal services no matter where you live in the state. We have talented certified trainers located throughout the region ready to deliver Dale Carnegie programs and solutions.
We work with clients from all areas of business and located all over ND/ Eastern MN.
–Naomi Schempp
How Dale Carnegie Can Help Solve Your Problems
Problem 1
So many entrepreneurs don’t come from a background of business or management. They’re usually just an expert in their industry and have a passion for their product. However, in order to grow and sustain their business, they need to either learn how to manage or find people to manage their team.
What are some of the most common growth areas you’ve seen from working with managers and owners of small businesses? What advice do you have for them?
Communication and engagement. Often times, communicating the vision and the values to be consistent and clear is not happening at the level it should. The more people practice their clear communication and relationship development skills, the more engaged their team will be. The next aspect, I would say, is staying organized and managing our time to be effective.
– Jay Peltier
Problem 2
Most of our problems, whether professional or personal, come from poor communication. In a nutshell, can you provide us some points on how to improve our communication skills?
“There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say and how we say it” – Dale Carnegie
There are numerous best practices and tools to help ensure consistency in the four ways we have contact with the world to build trust, credibility and respect with those around us through our verbal and nonverbal communication. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ answer to this question because how we communicate – and perceive communication — is based on our life experiences and personalities. Improved communication requires self-awareness and the ability to be aware of the communication styles and preferences of others. Improved communication takes time and practice.
Our tip? The Dale Carnegie Course is built on the foundation of communication and relationships – the program is designed to stimulate awareness and push people out of their comfort zones to become confident, adaptable and memorable communicators with a strong presence.
-Bethany Berkeley
Recovered Reactive Professional
By Jenny Johnson, Client Relations Manager at Spotlight Media
I have always had a drive for self-improvement. When I saw a post online about a Dale Carnegie course for managers, I felt an overwhelming desire to be a part of it. In my role at Spotlight Media, I have spent the last few years developing our Client Relations department. Recently, we have taken on new team members and I had the opportunity to become a manager for the first time. I wanted to become a better leader for my organization.
The first day of class, I was filled with anxious excitement. I didn’t know what to expect or whom I was going to meet. After the first session, I was filled with enthusiasm and motivation and I couldn’t wait to get back to the office and share what I had learned with my team. One of the biggest takeaways I learned on the first day was the difference between leadership and management.
• Leadership creates environments that influence others to achieve group goals and support a world they help create
• Management executes creation, implementation and monitors the process
Early in the course, I became aware of opportunities for growth. Being in a tight deadline-driven business, it is difficult to be proactive at times. Our facilitator tasked us to come up with a vision headline. She said if we were to walk into a party at the end of this course and we saw a big banner with our goal hanging up, what would it say? Thinking about my desire to be more proactive and less reactive, I set my vision headline as “Recovered Reactive Professional.” We were to write this statement down and put it somewhere we would see if every day. In addition to that, we had to select three “show up” words that we wanted to live by. My words included focus, doer and finish. I put these three defining words by my computer, they served as a reminder to keep me on task.
As the weeks went on, our class grew very close. We had individuals from a variety of businesses and industries. Even though the industries are somewhat different, we had the same goal and that was to become the best leaders we could.
We learned that there are five drivers to help you become successful in leadership:
- Self-direction
- People skills
- Process skills
- Communication
- Accountability
These skills are the foundation for both your professional and personal life.
As a requirement for our graduation, we were to develop an innovation project that would successfully help our organization. We outlined how we were going to gain buy-in as well as a plan for how we were going to execute and present our results at our commencement ceremony. Personally, I thrive on being in front of a crowd, however, I realize that doesn’t come as easy for everyone. I was so proud to watch my classmates grow over the 9-week course to become more confident and to see how much it shined through while doing their presentations. It was amazing to see how far everyone came both in their professional and personal journeys.
In addition to taking this course to become a better leader for my company, I was also looking for an outlet to find my inner self. I gave birth to my Son Landon last summer and coming back to work was a difficult transition. By the end of this class, I felt I had found myself and gained back my inner motivation and drive that I had been missing. I can honestly say that this course has changed my life. I am more of a coach and have used my new skills in a number of ways.
My takeaway: This experience was gaining skills to be a leader, rather than just a manager and how coaching other’s builds your legacy. In addition to that, always celebrate the wins no matter how small and a high-five can go a long way.
