At first, there were some doubters in the classroom at Clysar Industries. Not everyone believed they needed Frontline Leadership Training from EICC.
The Clinton, Iowa company that specializes in high performance shrink packaging was offering the five-week course to benefit some of its existing and recently promoted supervisors. But once the course started, the doubters’ attitudes quickly flipped.
“Almost instantly, we were having fun,” said Kambren Bigwood, Clysar Human Resources. “And learning. Pretty soon managers around the company who were not in the training were asking about it.”
Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of companies had put off training that might have been happening on a regular basis during normal circumstances. That’s the position Clysar found itself in. And the company had some new supervisors, promoted from within, who hadn’t had any type of leadership training.
“Usually when people are promoted,” said Tyne Rieck, business program manager at EICC, “they are really good at the technical aspect of their job. But then leadership introduces this entirely different element of managing people, which is completely different from being technically good at your job.”
The Frontline Leadership Series at Clysar lasted five modules because, as Rieck says,
“while we have some set curriculum, pretty much everything we offer is customizable.
We always tweak it for the specific company.”
“It was a very smooth process working with EICC,” Bigwood said. “In fact, it’s always
easy working with EICC, whether it’s leadership training or forklift training. We
just send an email and they take great care of us.”
Soon management began hearing remarkable things about the class and its instructor,
Jess Fah.
“She is inspiring, encouraging, and exciting, creating an engaging environment for our class,” Bigwood said. “She has such a presence in the room, making the training even more effective because of her knowledge and personality.”
Fah works hard to make her trainings worthwhile with her content and performance.
“The investment of time, money, and effort spent on these classes means that the return has to be visible and actually applicable. And it’s not going to be applied if it’s a dry, boring time.”
Sometimes Fah can see the ideas she is presenting are registering by looking at the faces of those in her class. Other times, she says, they just say it.
“One of the guys at Clysar, suddenly realizing the different communication styles, announced: ‘This is why my wife and I got into a fight this morning!’ It was hilarious, not only because the fight was not anything bad, but it showed how Frontline doesn’t have to apply to only work life.”
Clysar extrusion supervisor, Troy Yoder, liked that it was interactive and not simply someone reading slides.
“It was very good for some of the newer supervisors and shift leads, especially the part about dealing with conflict and motivating your employees.”
If you or your organization would like to enroll in a Frontline Leadership class, please reach out to one of our business solutions consultants or visit eicc.edu/leadership. Classes are scheduled for Jan. and March.