Shawn Furlong

Prior to taking LBT, I felt I had some natural leadership behaviours and had led others well when called upon or the situation required so. I had led teams for years, with generally good success. However, I felt that I needed to be more deliberate and strategic in the leadership approach, and although I had taken other leadership/management courses, it did not improve my day to day performance. LBT filled this void very well, it hit on all the major topics required for good leadership, but as the title suggests, in a very practical, hands on approach that I could relate to and utilize.

This was done very well. The webinars were a big part of this, with ALL my questions and comments addressed - well done. The personalised video response was the icing on the cake and really helped!

No Bullsh!t! Love the practical way it is taught.

After listening to the first 25 'No Bullsh!t Leadership' podcasts by Marty and Em, I found them to hit the mark on so many topics, that I actually stopped, and went back and listened to them all again. So, when the opportunity came to take the LBT course, I reviewed the agenda, and was excited to dig further into many of the podcast topics. I also felt that the cost of the 8 week course was reasonable and having now completed it, it was good value.

There were many gold nuggets to take from the course, both big concepts and detailed implementation tools. A few things that did stand out for me was on the Make Great Decisions module, and the topics on how decisions should be a balance of speed and accuracy. As someone who has in the past spent too much time trying to perfect the details, the sections on excellence over perfection was very helpful.

The course concluded with "Next Steps" and highlighted the importance of communicating to your team the changes you were going to make. Just because you as a leader are changing behaviours, doesn't mean everyone will understand why this is. Clear communication on changes and any new expectations up front is key to successful implementation.

For those more senior leaders about to take the LBT course, listen to Marty's advice up front that not all the content will be new and ground breaking for you. However even the concepts that I had learnt and lived before, it either gave me a different perspective on it, or in most cases, a better way to frame the content and better communicate it with my peers and team.

I am hoping that others in my organisation will be taking this course, which will only further improve communication and coaching in general as we will have a common language when discussing leadership.

I found the best way to fit the course into an already full schedule was to plan ahead and carve out time at the beginning of each week on when I was going to review the material. I put aside enough time to really absorb the content, as there is a lot of information to digest, and would take more time than just the video run times.

Yes, pretty much as I expected. Definitely helped me put the concepts into a box and will help me to communicate leadership concepts much better. I will also utilize the resources to formalize strategies.