Why Being Significant Matters

Within the start of 2023, Leaders Helping Leaders Network is unveiling it’s Significant Leader Award. This is different from any other award you may have, because it recognizes your commitment to personal growth by taking all three of our life-changing classes. There is no specific order in which you must take them - all we ask is that you focus on the underlying message of each class and commit to incorporating those lessons into your daily leadership, be it at home or in the office. I created each of these classes around three core concepts that create "Significant Leaders": Service, Intention, and Connection.

Service: Our Servant Officer class is focused on what it means to police in the modern era. It reconnects veteran officers while giving new officers a sense of what it truly means to be a peace officer of the law. By focusing on the key elements of service to the community through people-centric values and people-centric skills, the class is designed to create officers who are tactically prepared and serve the community from the heart. After all, helping people is at the core of what law enforcement does - at the individual level as well as the community level. While the class was created initially for law enforcement, we have seen so many civilian leaders benefit from the class, as well.

Intention: Our Intentional Leadership class takes students on a journey of what it means to be and act with intention as a leader. In this class, we focus on the four simple truths of leadership that all Significant Leaders do as well as help them understand the importance of knowing your “why “ of leadership, how emotional intelligence factors into leadership, and how to have tough conversations. Significant Leaders act with intention, which means they are focused on what their day-to-day goals and objectives are and that they act on those with intention and purpose.

Connection: The Master Leadership class is our most challenging and most rewarding class. Built around the concept that Significant Leaders know how to connect with others for effective communication, this 5-day course pushes students to go to the next level as a communicator by learning to connect with their audience, getting the audience to connect with you, and getting them to connect with each other.

Combined, these three concepts have made me into the leader I am today. I am by no means perfect, nor am I the ideal, but as I always say to students, "Leadership is simple, but it certainly isn’t easy." These three main concepts and the subtopics we dive into within each of these courses are all from lessons I’ve learned along the way. What I do know is that the leaders I admire have a successful combination of all three of these that work for them personally. Because of that, LHLN created the Significant Leader Award for those who show their commitment to personal growth.

Significant Leadership means that you have chosen to grow your leadership daily AND to grow the leadership of others. We all know leaders who we would call successful. Successful leaders understand that they must look out for the interests of their team and they do so. They focus on the “we”, aka: the team. Then there are some leaders we would call survival leaders. Their goal is to survive. They focus on “me” and what their own interests are. Any of us can find ourselves or have found ourselves in any of these categories throughout our career. Our goal at LHLN, is to introduce a different path for all leaders… a path to Significant Leadership.

Significant Leaders focus on “all of us.” They see the bigger picture and embrace a daily routine that helps themselves and those they lead personally connect to the organizational purpose and mission. Significant Leaders explain the “why” before it's asked. They take the time to connect with each person with whom they lead and help them find their intrinsic motivation to complete organizational goals. This is the pathway we have painted with our three signature courses. It’s a pathway of personal growth and professional significance. It’s a commitment to take the time daily to grow yourself first and to find ways to grow the leadership skills and abilities of those you lead. After all, the rent you pay as a leader are the types of leaders you leave behind when you move on to another organization or even retire.

I look forward to seeing you and your team become the Significant Leaders I know you were born to be!

- Dean