Welcome back to The BizLibrary Podcast! In this episode, we meet with Kristen Davidson, the Vice President of Organizational Development at Consumer's Credit Union in Michigan. Kristen not only focuses on adult learning practices and delivering programs that align with business metrics but creates award-winning leadership programs, drives employee engagement, develops and manages succession planning and talent development strategies.  

In 2017, Kristen was named the CUNA HR Professional of the Year and she has an array of training awards over the last few years.  Kristen is the President-Elect at the local SHRM chapter and has been a part of that board since 2013.  

She also serves on the Executive Leadership board for Go Red for Women in Kalamazoo and is deeply involved with her children’s school system and their many activities as she is a mom of 5. Kristen joins us and outlines her unique model for training experienced managers.

Too often we worry about skilling up new managers and developing our more executive leaders. It can be easy to lose track of the continuous development of our managers; after all, when you take into consideration all of the tasks we ask managers to accomplish for L&D - coaching employees, reporting on and occasionally managing training, it can be difficult to ask for more from these employees.

Kristen talks to us about her management program and emphasizes an opt-in policy. Like many training professionals, Kristen initially worried that the new program might suffer from low engagement. 

Kristen also insisted that all training at Consumer's Credit Union be elective, so there was some risk that attendance would be poor. However, Kristen tells us that the biggest challenge she faces with her manager training program today is hosting enough sessions to include everyone. 

Kristen's success has come after segmenting training into four separate tiers. Each tier develops new skills and then gives the learners an opportunity to practice and use their new skills in on-the-job situations.