9-Leadership Training
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[00:00:00] Tiffany: Welcome listeners to day nine of the 12 days of GBA countdown. Ryan, can you believe we made it through 25% of this series already?

[00:00:14] Ryan: time flies when you're having fun.

[00:00:15] Tiffany: Yes, it does. And speaking of fun, today's topic is super fun. It's on leadership training, and just stick with me, okay? Because I know leadership training might not sound fun, but literally, one of GBA's leadership training programs is where Ryan and I met.

[00:00:35] I've made an. Awesome network out of all of the GBA training events and classes and programs that they have.

[00:00:44] So I am super pumped for us to tell you about all the different opportunities that resonate with Ryan and me. So Ryan, you wanna start with telling them about the career continuum that is already partially [00:01:00] developed and still being added to all the time.

[00:01:04] Ryan: Absolutely. But I would say we could talk all day about the leadership opportunity. So we're really gonna have to limit what we say here because both of us are so stoked about what we've learned and the relationships we've developed. So it's gonna be all we can do to keep this, uh, short and keep you ENERGAGED as we talk here. 

[00:01:21] Tiffany: Agree. Thanks for telling them our secret word and.

[00:01:25] Ryan: Enter engaged. Get engaged, everybody. Yeah, the career continuum. Essentially is just breaking up your career into different parts and the, the kind of main focus of GBA right now is that professional stage. You know, whether you're a zero to five year early professional or you're later in your leadership journey, you know, something like 11 plus years, GBA's got something for you.

[00:01:48] The early professional class is something that we definitely wanna touch on because it's been so well received. Both Tiffany and I have participated as subject matter experts. I got to participate [00:02:00] in the first four classes, and yeah, they're, they're filling up quickly too, so these have been great. 10 live virtual sessions, 75 minutes long, 75 minutes goes by really quickly, and these aren't boring trainings as Tiffany indicated, these are ENERGAGING and they're about topics that might sound boring on the top, but the training has been done in such a, a great way, focusing on the participants with breakouts for discussion that they've been amazing and so well received.

[00:02:35] Tiffany: Yeah, actually I love what GBA did with this. I, so I personally, you know, I screw up all the time. I'll admit here, I screwed up and didn't push us to get people into the first couple classes, but then GBA asked me to be one of the subject matter experts for the third class, and when I did, I was blown away at how well put together the program was for a virtual program.

[00:02:59] It's the [00:03:00] best one I've ever experienced. And that's because they didn't just throw together a program. They hired an industry expert in adult learning Brock Simmons, and they brought him in to completely run the program. And train all of the subject matter experts so that every single class is interactive. Participants are required to, participate, engaged, talk about the subjects. They have breakout groups. So this one's awesome. I'm super pumped about it. And Ryan, though, next is we're gonna talk about the emerging leaders, right? The best one ever where you and I

[00:03:37] met. 

[00:03:38] Ryan: It's where we met. Yep. It's where it all started. Yeah. The Emerging Leaders class is something for people maybe later in their leadership journey, and I think we talk about that being 11 plus years, but emerging leaders classes quite a bit different than the early professionals in that you're not just later in [00:04:00] your career journey, but it's just a different process.

[00:04:04] So briefly, it's 18 months. You participate with your cohort to complete at least one project, sometimes two. And meaningful projects, not just some quick short little thing. These are projects that take the whole 18 months. And I guess as an example, uh, emerging Leaders class four, where Tiffany and I met, oh .

[00:04:26] We developed the GBA podcast and it's still going. And as a result of that, started the multimedia delivery committee. So, these projects are significant to, to GBA and I think the industry, uh, the class following us, prepared the geo kits, which have been well received for STEM learning and teaching, uh, you know, high school and even, uh, middle and elementary school students about, the geo professional industry.

[00:04:53] So anything else you wanna add on that?

[00:04:55] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. I'll just add that to me. You know, hearing, oh, you [00:05:00] created some geo kits or you launched a podcast, you know, how much does that resonate with leadership and

[00:05:06] why would I wanna send someone. I learned so many amazing leadership skills by, you know, coming to the first kickoff, being introduced to like, you know, 15, 16 peers and being told, Hey, you have to pick a project and work on it together. We had to figure out how are we gonna meet, different time zones? What is everybody's. Style, what are we good at? You had to get leaders within your leadership group and figure out how to execute something. And it was so much fun. We had never done a podcast nobody had, but we figured out, okay, we need a content group, we need a logistics group.

[00:05:46] And we had like leaders emerge in each of those subgroups and we just built relationships that, you know, obviously have lasted. That's where Ryan and I met, but. Again, I learned so much about running an effective [00:06:00] meeting and getting everybody to collaborate. Amazing program.

[00:06:03] Ryan: Yeah. And beyond just the, I would say, practical lessons we learned, we developed this pretty tight knit network of peers both across the country and different disciplines. And so as a leader, it's been great to have resources outside sort of my own local bubble of experience and be able to, you know.

[00:06:25] Call Tiffany up and ask her about challenges with employees or you know, talk to Liz about her experience with her larger company, or talk to Tim about leadership, you know, with his company down in California. So that to me has been one of the most valuable things that I wasn't expecting. So yeah, all the practical stuff you definitely get and you get a lot more out of it too, and it's hard to, I think, quantify that.

[00:06:53] Tiffany: Absolutely. All right. The next one is the fall leadership summit. So [00:07:00] that's a conference, right? And that it's super cool what they do with that too. Essentially, the Fall Leadership summit is for anybody who participates in committees. You can go to it, you have some breakouts with your committee, you get some real heads down, what do we wanna work on? You know, time together, but GBA also brings in amazing presenters kind of as a reward for everything you've done for the committees. This year was Brock Simmons last year, I think was Dan Oblinger. Um, what are, what's your takeaway from the Fall Leadership Summit Ryan?

[00:07:38] Ryan: Yeah. One, it's just great to get everybody together in person to work on things. I think we found as part of the multimedia delivery committee being in person was, again, ENERGAGING. We came up with a great idea during our two hour meeting, and were immediately able to go and just start executing that, interviewing all the [00:08:00] different committee, chairs and some of the committee co-chairs.

[00:08:05] But yeah, being in person is great seeing everybody, and it's just a super effective way to get things done. But the, the keynotes again, as Tiffany mentioned, are awesome, and especially the last two you mentioned have been great.

[00:08:20] Tiffany: Yeah, keynotes, but this one they, they had a two hour working group for everybody where you got to learn from Brock in, in a smaller group and then his keynote as well. So yes, I, I think the fall leadership summit is absolutely amazing. And the side note, Ryan mentioned that our committee had some fun and immediately did some recordings.

[00:08:42] Those are all the snippets that you heard in 11, the 11th day of GBA. So making real things happen. Alright, next one, Ryan. The annual conference. So conferences, yes, everybody goes to network and learn, but talk [00:09:00] about some of the amazing learnings that GBA has at their annual conference.

[00:09:04] Ryan: Wow, put me on the spot.

[00:09:06] Tiffany: I 

[00:09:07] Ryan: Yeah, some of the keynote speakers at the conferences, Tiffany and I have actually interviewed for the podcast, but Sydne Jaques is one, Val Riese is another. Uh, we've had famous athletes. Uh, we've had. KP Ready, who talked a lot about ai, so there's lots of sort of timeless wisdom type keynote speeches as well as things that are new and practical for the current market.

[00:09:33] So they're always very thorough, well thought out, well presented, and you can get a lot from those.

[00:09:42] Tiffany: Yeah, Ryan, you just reminded me of one of my favorite keynotes, jim Abbott, the pitcher. Oh, his was amazing. And that also reminded me that one year it was Bill Samuels from Maker's Mark. That one was awesome as well. [00:10:00] Lots of leadership takeaways, great content and great networking at those for sure. All right, the last thing that I have that we were gonna talk about as far as far as specific leadership training that GBA does, let's talk about the peer groups. Ryan, what are peer groups?

[00:10:20] Ryan: Yeah, talk about leaders. This is, uh, where all the leaders from your various companies are gonna be. So it's a great place to be. And these are specific to a lot of different positions within the company, whether it's a group of CEOs. A group of executive geo professional women, COOs, CFOs, GBA's, got peer groups associated with all of those.

[00:10:43] And so similar to the networking we did as part of the emerging leaders, you can again develop a network of people in your profession across the United States and at different, uh, sort of time [00:11:00] periods within their career to bounce ideas off of.

[00:11:03] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. I've heard these are pretty awesome. A couple others that they currently have are HR leads, recently retired executives, and then geotechnical practice leads, but they are launching some new ones right now. The new ones that I am positive they are launching are safety and marketing. The marketing one I have to do is shout out 'cause my buddy Vanessa Zambo from Terracon is helping head that one up. Are there any others that you're aware of that are, uh, currently being launched? Right.

[00:11:42] Ryan: I know they're trying to start several others, and some of the ones they've talked about trying to get going in the next year include technology. So we've got the BizTech committee, so this would be a sort of a peer group for that. Environmental practice leads, project managers, [00:12:00] CoMET practice leads, and CTOs.

[00:12:03] So I think if there's enough people willing to put those together, those are things that they're gonna continue to grow, uh, in 2025, 2026, and on.

[00:12:15] Tiffany: Love it. Alright, so we've talked about a lot of different things, but I just realized, Ryan, we would be crazy if we didn't talk about. Committee leadership. The committees are one of the biggest parts, then kind of the sole behind GBA. They get so much done and by getting involved on one of the committees, you can very quickly get involved in the leadership of it and become a chair or a vice chair.

[00:12:43] Ryan, um, and I were co vice chairs for a while, then I was chair, he's chair. We learned so much through that.

[00:12:52] Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. The committees are what? The lifeblood of GBA. It's amazing that this is a [00:13:00] volunteer organization given how much stuff we get done, and that's largely due to participation in committees. So, so many dedicated committee chairs and vice chairs that help Facilitate getting these things done and not, not to leave out the people who actually do the work in the committees as well.

[00:13:19] It's a very dedicated group. I think all the committees have great people that are really interested in advancing the geo profession.

[00:13:29] Tiffany: Well, there you have it folks. Today. Day nine is all about all the leadership training opportunities within GBA, and let's be real, that's not all of them. There are so many more, but Ryan and I had to pick a few of our favorites. And those are the ones. So thank you. Don't forget, if you wanna, well, I guess if you wanna join peer groups, if you want information on any of this, you can go to our show notes.

[00:13:53] You can go to geo professional.org. Also, don't forget to comment on the LinkedIn [00:14:00] post. Tell us what you love about this episode and what questions you have, and we'll see you tomorrow.

[00:14:07] Ryan: Thanks everybody.