Local seminar to span three days

A three-day seminar in Kalispell this week aims to help leaders learn more about how to grow themselves both personally and professionally.

Only then will they be able to help their colleagues and organizations grow, said Kalispell resident Morrie Shechtman, who will run the seminar with his wife, Arleah.

“A leader can grow an organization only as far as they have gone with their own growth,” said Shechtman, an author, speaker and chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership, a human capital consulting firm.

Shechtman has worked with executives and other key decision-makers for more than 30 years, consulting them about managing disruptive change, developing leaders and creating growth-oriented and self-sustaining corporate cultures.

The seminar, titled “The Leadership Imperative, Managing Yourself for Growth and Change,” runs from Sept. 16-18 at the Hampton Inn.

Part of an executive education series, the seminar was organized in association with the School of Business Administration at the University of Montana, where Shechtman teaches several MBA courses as an adjunct instructor.

A seminar in Missoula in June drew people from across the country. Shechtman hopes to build on that national participation with the seminar in Kalispell and draw in leaders from the Flathead Valley.

“We’re trying to recruit people from all over the country to this, but we really want significant participation by leaders in the Flathead in all kinds of organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit. Everyone can really benefit from this,” Shechtman said.

The seminar will teach people to be quick and regret-free decision makers; clarify personal vision and core values; become a high-intimacy and low-maintenance relationship builder; and develop the feedback, listening and observational skills needed to enhance relationships and promote talent.

Leaders are being confronted by an accelerating rate of change in their organizations, and the need for lifelong personal growth extends to everyone, Shechtman said.

“This culture demands you stay in a growth curve your whole life ... One reason we have a large unemployment rate is the people who haven’t grown their skill base or people skills. If they don’t realize it’s about them, they’ll stay unemployed.”

A key focus of the seminar is teaching leaders how they can grow their organizations to have better people than their competitors.

Organizations that can do that will be able to grow and thrive, Shechtman said. He added that growth is imperative in the current economic climate, and organizations are either growing or dying.

“A lot of people are trying to hold steady. That won’t work any more because people have a lot more information and higher expectations. You either grow into those expectations or go out of business.”

Many of those higher expectations come from the rise of the Internet, which has created a range of new opportunities and challenges for businesses and organizations.

“It gives clients and consumers an enormous information base. People then go to organizations and challenge them with the information they have,” Shechtman said.

“That challenge is good because it grows the organizations being challenged. But it will also put some people behind the eight ball if they don’t change the way they’ve always operated.”

The cost to participate in the seminar is $1,500. That includes meals and a tour of Glacier National Park. For more information or to register, visit www.business.umt.edu/LeadershipImperative. To register by phone, call Kathy White at 243-6715.