Editorial
Front Page - Friday, June 26, 2009
Dale Carnegie helps prospective leaders ‘develop people skills’
Samara Litvack
The namesake’s program was developed around Dale Carnegie Training book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which was written after years of experience teaching public speaking at the New York YMCA.
“His book was really developed around stories that the people who were taking these classes would tell him, experiences they had,” says Ed Turner, regional vice president of Dale Carnegie Training of Tennessee.
“From that, he was able to develop a series of ideas, principles, problems that were common among a lot of people (and) some ways that people had overcome those issues.”
Today, the 96-year-old program is offered in 26 countries, in several different languages, and has over 8 million graduates worldwide. It has been in East Tennessee for 55 years and has over 15,000 graduates in this region.
Dale Carnegie Training has a specific purpose: to help businesses grow by teaching employees the people skills they need to maximize their potential.
“I don’t really like to use the word ‘training’ for what Dale Carnegie does because what we’re really doing is helping people develop the skills that they need to be successful both in their business careers and at home,” says Turner. “What most people refer to as the people skills, relationship skills, communication skills is what we’re all about.”
Courses are offered to business owners, people who wish to advance in their careers and people who are already good at what they do but need a little fine-tuning in specific areas to move into management roles.
“You go all through college and you get a good education,” says Turner. “You may come out and you’re an engineer and you’re a great engineer. You’re very good at what you do. You have the knowledge, the technical ability to be a good engineer, but you never had that opportunity really for anyone to help you develop the relationship skills, the people skills, which are what makes you successful, generally, in whatever you try.”
Dale Carnegie works with all types of businesses through a variety of program structures to ensure that those who participate gain the knowledge they are seeking.
From accounting firms to architects to manufacturing companies that have promoted people from within, employees from all walks of life stand something to gain from the program.
“What we say at Dale Carnegie is we’re about helping our client companies improve their bottom line through their team performance,” says Turner.
This is done through two types of programs, which are comprised of several different courses.
The first program, also the most popular, is the public course, each of which consists of 15 to 25 people from a variety of companies. The group meets once a week for a three-and-a-half hour course for 12 weeks, covering each of the Dale Carnegie principles.
“This week it may be ‘seeing things from the other person’s perspective’ or ‘being better at listening skills,’” says Turner. “They’ll be given some proven principles and strategies and tactics and techniques that we know that work, and we’ll ask them to go out that next week and to practice those things.”
When the group reconvenes the following week, each member will share his or her experiences and explain how they worked through them. They not only gain confidence through accountability; they also learn from each other.
After the three-month course, participants have been working out of their comfort zones and trying new things for so long that they begin to instinctively react to situations based on the principles.
This, says Turner, is exactly why Dale Carnegie Training works. Instead of sitting through a day or two of seminar lectures, employees are learning, doing and sharing their experiences, and therefore they are developing different behaviors.
“I think, in a nutshell, if I had to say what’s made Dale Carnegie successful over these 96 years, that’s what it is,” he says. “Our courses actually change behaviors. They actually get results for our companies and for our individuals.”
And not only do participants benefit on the professional end, they also experience great changes in their personal life. Turner follows up with graduates of the program and he says invariably that at least once or twice a week, he hears people say Dale Carnegie changed their life.
“That sounds dramatic, but when you think about it, if you’re helping people develop the skills that they can use in their business and person life to be better … that’s probably a life-changing experience for a lot of people,” he says.
The second type of program Dale Carnegie offers works with specific companies, offering courses at their location tailored to meet their needs.
In this program, employers still get the full Dale Carnegie program, but they also get special consideration about the specific skill sets they are interested in seeing within their employee base.
“We take those people who are already very good at what they do and give them the training and the skills they need to be great,” says Turner.
“We’re all about taking your top performers and your team leaders and building those leadership, self-confidence, personal development skills to get them more ready for the next level.”
Turner emphasizes that the Dale Carnegie program is not personality based. If it were, he says, the same program couldn’t work in Chattanooga, New York City and Bejing.
“These things have to work across the board, so they’re proven principles and process that if a person follows those processes and tries these different ways of doing things, it will lead to success for them,” he says.
Dale Carnegie offers a variety of courses, including the basic course, called “Effective Communications and Human Relations”; “The Sales Advantage,” which deals with applying the Dale Carnegie principles to the sales process; and “Leadership Training for Managers,” which is a detailed course that focuses on enhancing tasks managers already perform.
For more information on Dale Carnegie Training, visit www.chattanooga.dalecarnegie.com, or contact Turner at ed_turner@dalecarnegie.com or 423-267-6280.
|
|