Insight on Business

12 | I NSIGH T • J a n u a r y 2 0 2 1 A strong leader can make all the difference at a business or organization. e Center for Exceptional Leadership at St. Norbert College in De Pere shapes current and future leaders to ensure they have the right skills to succeed not only on a personal level but an organizational one as well. CEL Executive Director Dean Stewart sat down with Insight to discuss the importance of continuous learning and improvement and why leaders may need it most of all. Where did the idea for the CEL come from? Dean Stewart: e Center for Exceptional Leadership was the dream of a number of professionals in Northeast Wisconsin who said, "We want to build a world-class leadership development program for our region." Under the guidance of Tom Wiltzius and about 40 great professionals, they benchmarked against some of the best leadership programs in the country and came up with the CEL. ey approached St. Norbert College to house it … and that's how we got started in 2016. At its core, the Center for Exceptional Leadership is about creating more visionary, more strategic, more contemplative leaders for our organizations, families and communities. How do you teach leadership? Instead of taking on a particular model of leadership, we identified 12 facets of leadership that really exemplify exceptional leadership, such as collaboration, respect, diversity and inclusion, and strategic thinking. e program is built around creating self-awareness on where these leaders coming in are in relation to these aspects of leadership. Over 16 months, through a series of assessments and coaching and development days, we work with them on content that we've created to address those aspects of leadership. We created all of our content from scratch. It was the combined work

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