Professional Growth Guides (Digital set)
You Don't Have a Leadership Knowledge Problem. You Have a Leadership application Problem.
You've read the books. Sat through the seminars. Nodded along to the presentations. And somewhere around 3 days later, you’ve forgotten most of what you’ve learned. It all evaporated back into the daily grind of putting out fires (sometimes literally).
That's not a you problem. That's how leadership development usually works: a one time download of information with no system to actually apply the knowledge while learning it, so it sticks.
The Professional Growth Series fixes that.
52 weekly Digital guides. One full year. Built to be applied while learning, not just read.
Written by Mike Kraus, a 33 year fire service veteran who climbed every rung from firefighter to fire chief, this series distills the hard lessons of an entire career, including the Great Recession budget cuts, nearly losing two of his beloved firefighters at a “routine” structure fire, a nearly career ending mistake of yelling at his boss, and every other lesson learned from a career of learning on the fly, into one guide a week, every week, for a year.
No fluff. No theory for theory's sake. Just direct, practical leadership development organized into four progressive sections:
Supervisor (17 guides): the guiding documents, hard conversations, and disciplinary process every new supervisor needs and almost never gets trained on.
Manager (10 guides): time, budgets, committees, conflict, and change, including a clear eyed guide on where AI helps a manager and where it absolutely cannot replace judgment.
Leader (17 guides): the traits, decision making frameworks, and crisis tested wisdom that separate someone who manages a team from someone who actually inspires one.
Team Building (8 guides): trust, accountability, and the discipline of sustaining a high performing team long after the initial momentum fades.
Every single digital guide includes
A real framework you can use Monday morning. A self-assessment that won't let you lie to yourself. A specific weekly challenge, not "think about this" but "do this, this week." A quote worth remembering. And key takeaways that actually fit on a sticky note.
Here's why weekly works when everything else hasn't
You can't absorb a year of leadership growth in a single offsite. You absorb it one honest self-assessment, one difficult conversation, one corrected mistake at a time. This series is built on that premise, and it doesn't let you off the hook. The standard isn't perfection. It's honest, consistent pursuit, week after week, for 52 weeks straight.
Who this is for
The future boss who wants to be promoted but has no career development program to follow. The new boss who’s been promoted and handed zero training. The current division boss who has no idea how to measure the effectiveness of his area of responsibility. The head of the organization who knows she's good at the day to day but hasn't built the team that outperforms her individually. And the organization as a whole, that needs and deserves a real, structured leadership pipeline, instead of an annual training day nobody remembers by lunch tomorrow.
It begins and ends with your people. Lead them well.
Get the full year. One guide a week.
One year from now, you won't be the same leader you are today.
The Professional Growth Series is a year-long leadership development program built on one simple premise: growth happens one week at a time, when it is intentional, practical, and grounded in real experience.
This series delivers 52 weekly guides — one per week for an entire year — organized across four progressive sections: Supervisor, Manager, Leader, and Team Building.
Each guide is drawn from the content of Mike Kraus’s book Supervisor, Manager, Leader: The Basics of Being a Boss, built out with frameworks, self-assessments, practical challenges, and the kind of direct, experience-grounded guidance that comes from 33 years in the fire service and a career spent learning leadership the hard way.
The guides are designed to be used individually, or as part of an organizational development program. They work equally well for the new boss finding their footing and the senior boss committed to continuous improvement. The standard is not perfection. It is honest, consistent pursuit.
—
Individual licenses are for personal use only. Organizational licenses cover internal use with your organization. We operate on an honor system. Questions or custom licensing? Contact us at mike@mkleadership.com
The Professional Growth Series is a year-long leadership development program built on one simple premise: growth happens one week at a time, when it is intentional, practical, and grounded in real experience.
This series delivers 52 weekly guides — one per week for an entire year — organized across four progressive sections: Supervisor, Manager, Leader, and Team Building.
Each guide is drawn from the content of Mike Kraus’s book Supervisor, Manager, Leader: The Basics of Being a Boss, built out with frameworks, self-assessments, practical challenges, and the kind of direct, experience-grounded guidance that comes from 33 years in the fire service and a career spent learning leadership the hard way.
The guides are designed to be used individually, or as part of an organizational development program. They work equally well for the new boss finding their footing and the senior boss committed to continuous improvement. The standard is not perfection. It is honest, consistent pursuit.
—
Individual licenses are for personal use only. Organizational licenses cover internal use with your organization. We operate on an honor system. Questions or custom licensing? Contact us at mike@mkleadership.com