What classes are made available to Officers in your institution for Leadership and career advancement? Not interested in Compliance or HR stuff please.

Dawnie, Ken, Paragon.....any ideas?

Check with your local and state level colleges and universities to see if they have any recommendations for Leadership and Career training.

Where are you located, and is cost a concern? I used to work for the central bank, and they had excellent training (by far better than anything I've seen here in the real world) for all levels of management. One of the best leadership courses was offered by a gentleman named Harvey Coleman. His course was 5 days, 8 hours per day. He was the first black VP at IBM, ever. I believe he is out of Atlanta. We also had a number of motivational speakers. One of the best was General Norman Schwartzkopf (sp?). He gave a 2 hour speech, and I was ready to enlist on the spot.

We also had a mentor program, where management interns were paired up with experienced managers for corporate training (do's and don't's, both official and unofficial). These mentors were rotated every 3 months, and you had to meet at least once a week. Often times, your mentor was someone yu didn't care for, but this taught you how to work with anyone. Also, your mentor was never in your chain of command and everything said to them was done in confidence. They were not to speak of your conversations. A couple did, one was fired and one was transferred.

What about AIB classes?

AIB is really entry level. Training wizrd, send me a PM with your email and I can give you a more extensive list if you'd like.

We have had our officers attend a local leadership class through the Chamber of Commerce. The officers have also attended the Dale Carnegie leadership program. This class met one night for 3 hours for 12 weeks. Excellent program for those wanting to enhance or improve their leadership and speaking skills.

There is nothing going on here, but after spending years in this business, I feel that some sort of mentoring program works the best – especially in a big bank environment. I was lucky enough to have several mentors when I was in that environment with each of them pointing me in a specific direction, whether it be formal education, on the job experiences (different departments/special projects) etc. Simply understanding the political structure requires input from someone that is part of that structure. Although you need to bring abilities to the table, it’s all about relationships so doing anything that hones your relationship skills is a good use of training time.

I’m not aware of what is out there right now, but aside from specific skill training, relationship ‘awareness training’ is really needed as one is initially going through the career cycle. The ability to actually listen, possibly repeating what you just heard (or thought you heard) is a basic skill that most bankers don’t have.

It's doubtful that you have anyone within your organization that can train officers or potential officers to listen (to customers, other employees, the boss). Those that are lucky enough to develop that skill, somehow, are the one's that will end up in key positions.

The most diverse, senior level curriculum that I know of is offered by the American Management Association. Their topics include finance, leadership, business writing, etc. The program that I attended was on negotiation. It was excellent and included information that becomes central to the way you think and approach others. They offer public programs, but will bring a program on site if you have enough people to make it worthwhile.

You will find consultants who claim to be able to do the same thing in a lot of larger cities . Claim is the operative word, get references and ask to sit in on part of one their sessions. Asking for a freebie is not realistic.