Knock, knock.Who’s there? Leadership Lorain County.
Leadership who? Leadership Lorain County, that’s who.
Sorry, this is the networking door, go away.
The Cool Networking Group of the Week
Just the Facts (click me!)»
If you’ve ever gone to the cupboard, looked around and yelled, “Honey, I can’t find the salt” and then had Honey reach around you and pick up the salt from right in front of your face – then you know how I feel.
If you are a mammal – and I know that most of you are, then you have a scotoma in each of your eyes. Nature gives us these two blind spots and, often, we give ourselves even more. This is called self-limiting thinking or, more simply, head trash. Continued…
My head trash had to do with looking for networking opportunities and not seeing a great one that was in front of my face. Here is how knuckle headed I can be: I was graciously invited to join, I was engaged to speak at the Leadership Lorain County class of 2009’s retreat, I had several local business contacts (Steve Hosler of Mehco Printing in particular) tell me it was their best networking group and still I hesitated.
The charming, gracious, intelligent and relentless leader of Leadership Lorain County, Gail Stumphauzer, finally sat me down and, without leaving any visible bruises, helped me empty my head trash. Scotoma cleared, here is what I see: I am a member of the 43 member, largest, greatest ever, Silver 25th Anniversary 2010 Class of Leadership Lorain County. I invest a day each month getting to know this large group of local leaders from business, government and philanthropic organizations while learning about my community.
Learning about my community often means – more networking. Last month I also had the privilege of attending a regional leadership conference held at the University of Akron. In attendance were 400 or so members of North East Ohio leadership organizations. This terrific event was planned for and hosted by Leadership Akron.
Many of the best networking opportunities are not called networking opportunities. Successful business owners and individuals are often found in organizations they have chosen because they want to give back to their communities. To network with them – show up and help out.
-Coach Dennis
Link to this pageThey are probably in your county too, visit the Northeast Ohio Regional Leadership Task Force for more information on regional leadership groups.
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There are over 20 community leadership programs in Northeast Ohio. These are a great investment of resources for personal and professional development as well as networking. See the list of these and the other community leadership programs throughout Ohio at the Leadership Ohio web site, http://www.leadershipohio.org.
Ann Otto
The Otto HR Group, Ltd.
Alum of Leadership Ohio, Leadership Portage County, Associate member of Leadership Akron Alumni, and involved in programming for Leadership Hudson, Leadership Stark and Leadership Stow-Monroe Falls.
Best of Class of 2009 here!!! I remember our session day with you, very insightful and informative. I kept everything from that day to continuously remind me to reprogram my RAS to search for the positive in Lorain County! Glad you’re a part of the silver class Dennis! Best wishes for the rest of your year!
To those reading, LLC is such a tremendous and fun opportunity to be a part of! I think “family” is a better word! I would strongly encourage anyone considering going through the program to become an alumni, or for those who aren’t aware of who and what we are to find out! You’ll be glad you did!
@Ann Otto – Anna, Thanks for the comments and the great link. Keep up the great leadership work.
@Reuben N – Reuben, Glad to hear you are focusing your RAS. The great experience I had with your class helped get me into this years GREATEST class
.
I’m glad to be part of the family.
Yours,
Dennis
[...] Fellow business coach Dennis Willis is also a member of my class and he posted his thoughts on what a great networking opportunity this is for him in this blog posting. [...]