Leadership 2.0, the University of the Aftermarket’s annual Leadership Development Program, officially began its second session Sunday at Northwood University’s West Palm Beach, Fla., campus. This week, several participants in this year’s class will bring us their firsthand perspective on the experience. Today, we present blog entry No. 1 from Melissa Jablonksi, director of global program and change management at Delphi Product & Service Solutions.
The second session of this year’s Leadership 2.0 class started Sunday evening and will conclude on Friday. Sunday evening began with a dinner reception attended by all 36 participants, plus faculty, staff and our keynote speaker, Neil Stockel, former president of BWP Distributors.
His message was inspiring and educational for everyone in attendance. One of Neil’s key messages was to remember that the aftermarket is a people business and we must care about the people in the business in order to be successful in the services that we provide.
The agenda for the week is packed full of leadership education. For me, one of the highlights of the week includes a daily aftermarket roundtable discussion, which is quite interesting based on the diverse background of the class participants. We have participants from all segments of the aftermarket: manufacturers, technicians, retailers, warehouse distributors, stores, associations and marketing organizations. The week concludes with the participants presenting the team projects they have been working on since the first session concluded in August.
Here’s what a few of my own teammates said were the things they were looking forward to this week: Dawn Gonzalez from Trico is excited to network with industry peers, build relationships and gain deeper leadership knowledge from this session. Chuck Hartogh, owner of C & M Auto Services, stated that he is looking forward to synthesizing the key learnings from the first session with this second session to further build his leadership skills. Jon Sechrist from Motown Automotive Distributing is very interested in further discussing the market consolidations that are occurring and to gain the perspective of the industry leaders attending the session. It is going to be great week for everyone!