NAED’s recent Eastern Region Conference created a chance for attendees to catch up in-person for the first time in many months. The common question was, “How are you doing?” The all-too-familiar response was, “Busy”.
We understand everyone is busy right now.
Amanda Witham, Director of Sales Operations at United Electric Supply and three-time NAED LEAD Conference attendee, calls it “good busy”. But she is also warning companies that are not investing in the future.
“This is a really hard time to invest in yourself,” Witham said on a recent “DistributED with tED magazine” podcast. “But this is still a fantastic time to reflect on how you want the coming year to be, and the LEAD conference is a great way to do that.”
“Everybody is wearing multiple hats and you need to hire more people,” Brock Klein, National Sales Manager and six-time NAED LEAD attendee said on the podcast. “As a conference that shifted to the end of the year, it’s a blessing because we can look at everything we went through this year, we can recap it, and set ourselves up for next year.”
The theme of this year’s LEAD Conference is “Creating Your Compass: Navigating Through the Gray.” It will feature a Leadership Competency course, “Be Okay with the Gray, Embrace Ambiguity,” and a Key Topic, “Leading Through Change and Uncertainty.”
Your leaders will benefit from attending the LEAD Conference with sessions on new challenges for leaders, how to build a change management map, and preparing for the future.
Both Witham and Klein see a tremendous amount of benefit in the roundtable discussions at the LEAD Conference. “You get to hear from peers about how they solved their problems so you can take them back to where you work,” Klein said.
The NAED LEAD Conference is December 15-17 at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter. The Early Bird rate to attend expires on Friday, November 19. On the first day at LEAD, attendees can join their colleagues for LEAD to FEED, working for Blessings in a Backpack to pack bags of food for children in need. This event will be sponsored by OmniCable.
Witham also points out that while there are countless leadership development programs, there is only one that focuses on our industry, and it comes from the LEAD Conference.
“It’s leadership in our industry,” Witham points out. “You can do leadership courses anywhere, but this is focused on our industry. It’s a two-for-one where you can get the leadership training and the industry experience at the same time.”
Klein says he can go back to what he learned at the LEAD conference six years ago and still use those leadership skills.
“Every time I have gone to LEAD I take away one or two things and try to learn more. Every year you can build upon the skills you learned the year before,” Klein said.
You can register for the LEAD Conference at the Early Bird rate at www.naed.org/lead