“BOSS UP!” Programs

Do you know what your people need to know before they're bossing anyone? Not what they picked up watching you, not what they guessed at under pressure. What they actually need to know.

If you're confident the answer is yes, good. Keep doing what you're doing.

If you're not, or if you're the one about to get promoted and nobody's handed you anything but a title, this is for you.

I spent thirty-three years in the fire service, twenty of them responsible for other people. Almost everything I learned about being a boss, I learned the hard way, on my own, usually after I already got it wrong.

An untrained boss doesn't just have a bad day. They make a bad call, and that call turns into a grievance, a lawsuit, or an organization standing behind a decision it never should have let happen.

Why this exists

Not everyone can get twenty people in a room for four days. Some of you need to build that foundation on your own time, at your own pace, and that's exactly what this program is built for. The Academy gets a room full of people aligned in four days. Self-Study gets one person there on their own schedule, working through the same material, one piece at a time.

What's in it

Supervisor, Manager, Leader: The Basics of Being a Boss. This is the foundation. It lays out the three roles, supervisor, manager, and leader, and what each one actually requires. Everything else in the Self-Study program builds off this book.

The Self-Assessment Workbook. Before you can grow, you have to know where you stand. This workbook walks you through an honest look at where you're solid and where you're not, across all three roles, so you're not guessing at what to work on first.

The Study Guide Workbook. This is where the book turns into practice. It pushes you past reading and into applying, working through real scenarios and questions tied to your own job, your own people, your own organization.

The 52 Week Professional Growth Series. One idea a week, every week, for a year. Leadership isn't built in a weekend. It's built one habit, one lesson, one deliberate choice at a time, and this keeps you working at it long after you've finished the book.

The Details

• Format: Self-paced, work through it on your own schedule

• Includes: The book, both companion workbooks, and the 52 Week Professional Growth Series

• Buy individually or purchase as a bundle. Volume discounts available for organizations equipping multiple people.

Ready to start?

Are you confident that the people you've promoted have been given the foundational training they need to carry out their jobs efficiently and effectively?

Are you confident enough to stand behind every decision they make, even when you're not around, knowing full well that you are ultimately responsible for their actions?

If your answer is Yes, then please accept my congratulations. I'm proud of you. Keep it up!

But if you're not confident, stop making excuses and do something about it. It's not too late, but it also won't fix itself. You owe it to them, you owe it to your organization, and most of all, you owe it to yourself.

When an untrained supervisor makes the wrong call, it's not just a bad day. It's a grievance, a lawsuit, or at minimum, an embarrassment to the organization.

4 days. Your house. Your people. Together.

Public sector or private, most of us got handed a promotion and a "good luck."

I did. Thirty-three years in the fire service, twenty of them responsible for other people, and almost everything I learned about being a boss I learned the hard way, on my own, usually after I'd already gotten it wrong. That's not a failure of the people we promote. It's a failure of the organization to prepare them.

The tragedy isn't that these concepts are unknown. It's that they're untaught.

The Boss Academy is four days of the preparation your people never got.

Why I come to you

You could send one boss to a conference. Registration, airfare, hotel, per diem, coverage backfilled, and they come home alone with a binder.

Or I come to your house, and twenty of your people go through it together.

That's the part that matters. When your team works the same personnel scenarios, filters the same ethical dilemmas, and uses their own guiding documents to make decisions, they don't come back with twenty different ideas about what a boss is. They come back aligned. You can't buy that one seat at a time.

What the four days actually are

• Monday - Supervision: keeping people between the lines, and the hardest job a supervisor has - having difficult conversations and changing behavior when it needs changing.

• Tuesday - Management: responsibilities, time, systems, programs, budget, and organizational change.

• Wednesday - Leadership, Part 1: who a leader is. Leadership is the heaviest of the three, and the one almost nobody teaches.

• Thursday - Leadership, Part 2: what a leader does, under pressure, all the way to the fog of war.

Mornings are discussion, not lecture. Afternoons, your people apply it. Thursday is a hard day on purpose. They'll leave spent. They'll also leave ready.

Supervision and management are inseparable. Leadership is the deliberate step above them. Plenty of organizations get by without ever taking that step. They just never become anything more than they already are.

I teach every class personally, because this stuff is important to me, and I won't put my name on something I can't personally stand behind.

The Details

• Format: Four days, live and in person at your location

• Class size: Maximum 20 students. I do quality, not quantity.

• Investment: $20,000, plus my travel and lodging (that's only $250 per person, per day)

• Included: Supervisor, Manager, Leader (the book and both companion workbooks), plus the 52 Week Professional Growth Series, for each student.

Ready to talk dates for this or the next budget year? Hit the button!