Why Leadership and Workforce Development Programs?

Beginning in the spring of 2002, with partial funding provided by the Government of Canada’s Labour Market Partnerships Program, the IEC conducted a community-wide soft skills training needs analysis. The long-term goal of this project was to raise the level of people skills within Sarnia-Lambton. In the short-term, the project would identify “soft” or “people skills” training required by the local workforce, common training needs of the community, priority topics, and preferred delivery methods.

We invited 450 organizations to tell us what kind of non-technical and non-safety training & development their employees needed to maximize their individual performance and contribute to overall business performance.

In addition to a “Top Ten List” of soft skills training needs for the general workforce, we discovered a need for basic supervisory or front-line leadership training. So similar to our co-operative efforts to provide safety and health training, we are collaborating to provide high-calibre leadership and workforce development programs for our community.

This Leadership Development Guide is intended as a resource for all organizations & individuals in our community seeking to develop their leadership skills.

DDI + IEC: Partners in Excellence

Development Dimensions International (DDI) enjoys a world-wide reputation for being the premier leader in leadership development. For the past 33 years, DDI has been conducting research and creating programs that focus on effective leadership. DDI not only helps organizations build exceptional leaders, but also extends their expertise to giving people at all levels the skills they need to enhance their performance.

We selected DDI’s Interaction Management® Exceptional Leaders…Extraordinary Results System (IM: EX System) and courses from Techniques for a High Performance Workforce® for the IEC’s Maximum Leadership and High Performance Workforce Development Programs because:

• Many IEC members are using or have used DDI’s Interaction Management System to develop their leaders
• The new IM: EX System focuses on 7 key leadership imperatives (or “must-do’s”) that are critical to leaders delivering the business results needed to sustain a competitive advantage
• DDI has a long history of helping companies realize a return on leadership and workforce development initiatives – e.g. 3 million leaders have been trained in every industry in 30 countries over the past 30 years
• IM: EX focuses on the “SEE-Level” leader – leaders who are right where the action is seeing problems, opportunities, and challenges daily – they have the mission-critical job of engaging workers, keeping up morale, and retaining key players
• All the courses are competency-based meaning they are designed to equip people with the behaviours needed to be successful on the job

	Shelly Brown Shelley Brown is the Business and Program Development Team Leader at the Industrial Educational Co-operative overseeing the implementation of leadership and workforce development courses. With fifteen years' experience in training and development, Shelley has worked with organizations in all sectors. As a training consultant at Lambton College, she developed, delivered, and co-ordinated public training sessions, corporate in-house training, and programs sponsored by Human Resources Development Canada, non-government organizations, and various First Nations. She is a certified DDI facilitator, has a Diploma in Adult Education from St. Francis Xavier University, and is a candidate in the Bachelor of Education Program (Adult Ed) at Brock University.
	Bryan MacKenzie Bryan MacKenzie worked in the petroleum and petrochemical industry for 36 years. He managed the Technical Skills Development Department at Nova Chemicals for 18 years, as well as holding several supervisory positions in the Maintenance Department. Bryan is a DDI Certified Instructor for Interaction Management, Techniques for an Empowered Workforce, and Targeted Selection. He is a graduate of the Lambton College Industrial Management Program, has a Certificate in Adult Education, and is a Certified Training and Development Professional with the Ontario Society of Training and Development. Bryan has been teaching Leadership courses at Lambton College for the past 10 years and is currently an instructor in the Lambton College CPET Program.
	Nadine Brown Nadine is a People Skills Specialist at the Industrial Educational Co-operative overseeing the implementation of leadership and workforce development courses. Nadine worked in the petroleum and petrochemical industry for 17 years and automotive for 6 years where she designed, developed, delivered workshops in Communication Skills and Team Building/Critiques, Assertiveness, Conflict Management, Personality Dimensions, and Priority Manager.   She supervised the Organization Effectiveness and Training Department at Nova Chemicals Corunna for 7 years and managed the Organization and Training Development Department at Bayer Sarnia Site for 1.5 years.  As an independent consultant she worked with Human Resources Development Canada delivering workshops in career/job transitioning.  Nadine is a DDI Certified Instructor for Interaction Management, a Certified Personality Dimensions Instructor, and has a certification in Neuro-Linguistics Programming.