Emerging Leaders Series

For several years a top training topic for companies has been leadership development, but sometimes a company only has a few individuals for a course which can make the needed training cost prohibitive. Enter DMACC's Emerging Leaders initiative, a joint effort of DMACC Business Resources and DMACC Continuing Education. Course topics were identified by a focus group consisting of organizations of various sizes and industries.

Aimed at employees identified as high potential for leadership positions, this training will help grow and develop your organization's future leaders.

Purchase a seat for $1,250 and send the same employee to all nine sessions or divide the sessions among multiple employees.

To sign up contact DMACC Business Resources at dbr@dmacc.edu or 515-256-4913.

Next Session
January 2021--September 2021

Currently all courses in the Series are being offered LiveOnline using Zoom. They are intended to be interactive (not a webinar) and will take place on the date and time indicated in the course information. Participants are required to be on-camera the entire time and actively participate just like they would during an in-person class. The Zoom registration link and handouts will be emailed a few days before the course start date.

Introduction to Management

In order to be effective as a leader, it is crucial to have the right tools, resources and training. By attending this session, you can expect to learn the following:

The difference between managing & leading and why both are appropriate depending on the circumstances.
Ways to more effectively communicate with your team!
How to engage your team in order to get the highest return on your investment of time, energy & effort.

Date: Thursday, January 21, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Don McKee
Don McKee, Performance Consultant, has been in education and training for the past 20 years. This includes 5 years as Training Director for Iowa Select Farms, Iowa Falls’ Iowa and Training Consultant for Iowa Central Community College, Fort Dodge, Iowa. Don is currently a certified Zenger Miller Leadership trainer, Life Orientations Behavioral Trainer and LEAN 101 Facilitator.

Don has facilitated leadership training for over 100 manufacturers, hospitals, banks and municipalities throughout Iowa and Illinois including Winnebago Industries, Fort Dodge Animal Health, Pella Windows and Monsanto. Don’s approach to training is exemplified in his motto “Making Common Sense, Common Practice”. Don utilizes tools and strategies designed to pick up where traditional “theory” training drops off. Don currently resides in Webster City, Iowa with his wife and four daughters.

Time and Meeting Management

Once you know the strategies for prioritizing tasks to ensure you get the right things completed each day, you will have mastered the secrets of effective time management - which result in a more productive you! Time & Meeting Management provides participants with these strategies. This course helps participants identify their own "time management weaknesses" and develop solutions for strengthening these areas along with tips and strategies for making your meetings more effective, productive and efficient.

Date: Thursday, February 18, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Stacie Lightner
Stacie is a senior employee trainer with Talent Development at Farm Bureau Financial Services. She has been with the company since February 2006 and develops and facilitates business courses for Farm Bureau Financial Services employees. Stacie earned a bachelor’s degree in Education from Iowa State University. She has volunteered and worked for the Urbandale School District, been a PTO board member, church council member, director of Vacation Bible School, assisting minister, and was self-employed for more than 10 years. Stacie has coached mock trial at Urbandale for over 17 years taking several teams to the final four, state runner up, and state championship rounds.

Managing Generational Differences

It is a fact that the "next" generation is forcing us to re-think approaches to recruitment and onboarding. To be effective recruiting Millennials and Gen Z, it isn't about WHO you recruit, it is about HOW you recruit! Join us for an interactive discussion on new ideas, approaches and strategies to improve your efforts and results for recruiting this great pool of candidates! Session objectives include:

Learn about generational differences and values that have influenced and shaped our lives.
Understand the Next Generation mindset better when it comes to "career" and learn how to effectively start the workforce discussion.
Discuss new ways to build relationships with the Next Generation - and their support systems - to access top talent.
Identify improved strategies on how to be in the right place at the right time to recruit the Next Generation.

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Cassandra Halls
Cassandra Halls has been training and consulting since 2007, offering a wide variety of business consulting services to corporate, non-profit and local governmental entities primarily in the Midwest. Areas of specialty include: strategic planning, project management, research services, training facilitation, workforce recruitment and retention, generational perspectives, succession planning and operations process improvements. Halls spent 10 years of her career in public administration in Iowa, and then shifted to corporate employment, working in multiple strategic roles for a start-up technology company which grew from 20 employees to over 1,000 employees over the course of two short years! She has served in the Vice President role in both non-profit and corporate operations, utilizing her broad perspective to drive solutions to the challenges encountered in many work cultures and environments. Halls earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from William Penn University.

Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Many organizations have worked for years to build an inclusive workplace and help their leaders and employees understand the value of a diverse workforce. The ability to manage and motivate a diverse workforce are imperative to achieving business goals and beating the competition. Although many organizations have made inclusivity a core value, we are still facing some challenges. One of the primary challenges we face in leveraging workplace diversity is our own unconscious bias. Research suggests that we instinctively place people into categories based on their appearance, educational level, social status, job title, and so on. Right or wrong, this helps us order our world and saves us time and effort as we process information about others. These unconscious biases can affect who is hired, promoted, and developed in the workplace, which can ultimately derail your organization's culture and diversity efforts. Participants in this session will:

Explore the concept of unconscious bias and how it plays out in the workplace.
Discuss case studies to illustrate unconscious bias in the workplace.
Discuss strategies to mitigate unconscious biases.

Date: Thursday, April 15, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Claudia Schabel
Claudia Schabel combines over a decade of experience as a Diversity and Inclusion strategist with Fortune 100 and 500 companies with a multicultural background to offer coaching and consulting services in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion to businesses, educational and not-for-profit organizations.

Schabel volunteers and serves on multiple boards. Currently, she is a commissioner on the City of Des Moines Civil and Human Rights Commission, serves on the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) State Council as the Director of Diversity, serves as a trainer/facilitator for the Iowa Network Against Human Trafficking and Slavery and volunteers at Blank Children’s Hospital.

Schabel earned a BA degree in International Relations from Drake University. She is a native of Brazil and lives in Des Moines, IA.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. It is the key to both personal and professional success and has had a significant impact in the areas of leadership and employee development. Participants in this session will:

Understand the concept of Emotional Intelligence.
Learn what emotions are, why they are important, and where they come from.
Learn to recognize, understand and manage their emotions and influence the emotions of others.
See how necessary Emotional Intelligence is in their success.
Learn why it is important in a leadership role.
Complete a self-assessment of their Emotional Intelligence and look at strategies for improvement.

Date: Thursday, May 20, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Tony Wilson
Tony Wilson has 30 years experience as an educator. He held positions as teacher, assistant principal, educational coordinator, and coordinator of afterschool programs.

Tony served as Coordinator of the Reentry program at Des Moines Area Community College, and Coordinator of Outreach at Neighborhood Health Initiative through Iowa Health (now Unity Point). He has been a consultant to the Iowa Department of Corrections, Iowa Department of Human Services, Iowa Department of Education, and Iowa Workforce Development.

Tony consults with, and provides training for, many local for-for profit and non-profit organizations, as well for the Des Moines Public School system and for Des Moines Area Community College. For the last eight years, he has served as a consultant to and facilitator for Project IOWA, a workforce training initiative, providing soft skills/life skills training to unemployed and underpaid individuals.

Tony retired from the Iowa Air National Guard in 2009, after completing 30 years of service. He held the rank of Colonel and retired as the installation Inspector General.

Tony received his Bachelor’s degree from Central College in Pella, Iowa in Elementary Education, a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Drake University, and a Bachelors Degree in Holistic Health Sciences from the International Quantum University of Integrative Medicine.

Tony has served on the Board of numerous community organizations.

Communicating to Connect to the Situation

Personality styles and other situational factors often require leaders to understand the moment before reacting. Leadership is an art; not every approach works for every person, or for every situation. In this session, explore two major factors that can impact individual situations:

Whether the people involved are self-orientated or others-centered.
The personality styles at play.

Then, learn ways to read, adapt, and connect in those situations.

Take-aways include a quick way to read and match the styles of others, identifying self-orientated behaviors, and using the right language to bring team members around to a productive, others-centered approach in various situations. Visual aids, leave-behinds, and practical patience during the session can be expected.

Date: Thursday, June 3, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Alan Feier
Alan Feirer is a leadership trainer, Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner, Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ Authorized Partner, organizational development consultant, and author of The Group Dynamic Field Guide: 51 Ideas You Can Use Today. For the last 20 years, he has done business helping people embrace challenging work, and have less stress while getting more done. Alan works with managers, directors, leadership teams, staffs, and team members through leadership training, team-building, and communication training.

Mr. Feirer lives in Winterset, Iowa, with his wife, Julie, and daughter, Mara. He holds membership in many professional organizations, including Optimists, Madison County Area Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, and the Association for Talent Development (previous Central Iowa chapter President). Feirer's other interests include competitive Scrabble, exercise, travel, dining, and anything Disney.

Change Management

Change is the one aspect of business that is constant! It is imperative for leaders to create an environment that promotes and encourages positive change. By attending this session, you can expect the following to be covered:

Reasons people resist change and how to better overcome this resistance.
The importance of being sensitive to when & how you present change.
A simple approach that will help you and your team move forward faster & easier.

Date: Thursday, July 15, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Terri Jensen
Terri Jensen is an experienced business and technology executive and leader who focuses on developing and implementing technology solutions that bring business vision to life. She is a disciplined, results oriented leader whose strength is aligning people and processes with strategy. Terri has transformed IT departments from break/fix order-takers to high-performing teams that provide businesses with technology as a competitive advantage.

Terri is a builder of businesses, teams, and people. She founded and grew an innovative and disruptive technology training and consulting firm for 14 years, led client services in a software development startup affiliated with a large enterprise, and became CIO of that enterprise. As CIO she has led organization-wide change in the higher education, construction, and insurance industries. Throughout her career, Terri has put people and relationships first. She has built strong, customer-focused teams, and mentored many technology leaders and staff to increase retention by enhancing the human side of leadership; communication, empathy, career development, and succession planning.

A graduate of Drake University, Jensen earned her BA in Computer Science. She also holds a master’s in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University.

Difficult Conversations

What is your organization not discussing?

Are you consistently and fully being told what you need to hear? By your leader? By your direct reports? By your peers?
What are "Undiscussables" on your team - topics, problems, decisions and questions buried in silence?
What might your organization be doing poorly or overlooking - meetings, projects, decisions, feedback, results - that no one is talking about?
What are others waiting for you to figure out on your own? To see what you don't see? To learn what you don't know?
What would people in your organization say if they weren't afraid to speak up?

This session helps leaders create an environment where people speak up more candidly, fully, and purposefully to achieve their goals. The program provides simple, high-impact, sustainable practices to create safe and collaborative environments.

Leaders emerge from the workshop with skills and tools that enable other to bring up better ideas, challenge the status quo, raise critical questions, resolve problems early, break through organizational silence and talk about undiscussables. This session includes:

Tools to assess your team's current "State of Candor" and to measure progress.
Practices to create the environment where your organization speaks up and talk about what matters.
A safe process to learn and honor individual, team and organizational Undiscussables - and address them.
Fast-paced delivery with active participation.
Skills and resources to strengthen your organization's capability to continually, candidly and optimally talk about what matters.

Date: Thursday, August 19, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: Tom Greene
Tom Green is dedicated to helping leaders and teams talk more candidly, fully, and purposefully to resolve conflict and talk about difficult matters. Though his workshops, he provides assessments, tools, and easy-to-implement practices to help leaders and teams address conflict, reach agreements, hold others accountable, and strengthen relationships to achieve their goals.

Known for his thoughtful, research-based, and insightful approach, Tom Green is a coach and accomplished human resources professional with expertise in performance consulting, learning and development, performance management, and leadership development. Tom is trained in conflict resolution, mediation, and instructional design for curriculum, classroom, and web-based instruction. His workshops use key data, energizing and interactive exercises, case studies, and effective check-in practices to assure learning.

Coaching and Developing Your Employees

Coaching and developing employees requires strategic thinking with execution through empowerment. Using the key concepts below will allow leaders to see growth of loyalty and production in their employees. Learning how to create such impact through empowering the team will contribute to reaching and sustaining the organization’s goals. Leaders will also see their own quality of performance rise as time becomes more available.

In this course, we will explore creating a higher level of impact for the leader to focus on by developing those around them. Each area will include a clear framework and useful tactics to implement. Key learning concepts include:

Creating clarity around expectations for each person on the leader's team
Building a new level of ownership and commitment in team members to fuel their growth
Understanding how to share authority to spur development and advancement
Exploring the fundamentals of coaching and recognizing the difference between strategic coaching and tactical coaching
Establish a coaching practice to enable the growth and development of team members
Reframing development opportunities for team members to improve engagement

Date: Thursday, September 19, 2021
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Trainer: David Barwin
David Barwin is a Professor of Business at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Now in his 16th year, he leads the business program and teaches undergraduate courses specializing in Management, Marketing, Sales, Social Media, Entrepreneurship, and Business Ethics. Additionally, Barwin is a private business consultant operating Incognito Consulting for local small business owners. Most recently, he has become a faulty member of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. He also develops and delivers customized corporate training programs for Des Moines Area Community College. Barwin holds an MBA in Management with a minor in Marketing from Western International University. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania while obtaining a concentration in Management from Mercyhurst College.

September 2020 - May 2021 Registration

Complete this form if your employer has already let DMACC Business Resources know that you are attending this series.

January 2021 – September 2021 Registration

Complete this form if your employer has already notified DMACC Business Resources that you are attending this series.

Emerging Leaders Series

September 2020 - May 2021 Registration​

January 2021 – September 2021 Registration

September 2020 - May 2021 Registration