Leadership Philosophy
By Raf Verbruggen

The two most interesting training sessions for me were "Leadership Philosophy" by John Spears and "Decision Making for Leaders" by Victor Vroom.

Of course, everybody has some ideas about leadership. We all know a few very good leaders and most of us know a lot of bad leaders. This not only from our own work experience, but also from friends, news media reports of politicians, and history.

During this training session we were pushed in the position of leader. What is your philosophy about leadership ? What are your values, how will you act
when you are in that position?

We learned that leadership does not always have to do with your job. If you think that you only have to worry about leadership when you rise to the position of CEO, you are wrong.

When you have children, you are a leader as a father or a mother. John Spears gave us his Leadership Model as a father of two sons. What are his values, how will he act, what does he want to obtain?

At this moment it was very clear to me that we all have a role as leader. If you want to be successful, a good idea is to write your goal on paper and evaluate yourself on monthly / yearly basis. Check yourself to determine if you are effective. Make sure everything you do suits your leadership model -- what you are, what you value, what your priorities are, what you will stand for and, importantly, what you will NOT stand for. For example, if you are not consistent or straightforward, people will not believe you anymore. Make sure that you know where you are heading for, and act that way !!!

I also want to share a few thoughts I had following our Training Conference.

Today is my first day at the office because I went to New York after the Litchfield training. There is a lot of work waiting on my desk, but first of all I am writing this email to thank all of you for the fantastic week I had in Litchfield.

First of all I want to thank Donna for the perfect organization. I think I can speak for all of us but I have never had a training that was so perfectly organized.

I will also thank all the individual speakers. All the different items were very interesting and relevant for my job. I am sure I'm going to use a lot of this during the rest of my career.

I was also very happy with the fact that the training was not only theoretical; everyone had very good examples based on real-life experiences -- sailing, sons, family, West Point, etc.

This morning when I plugged-in my laptop, my Outlook Inbox already contained many emails from all over the world. I seems that we will keep in touch and the networking among the different coordinators already started.

Graduation ceremony/dinner on July 31st, 2001.  APS Group in fron tof the flower garden at the Mayflower Inn, Washington, CT.

(L-R) Stephanie (Proud mom of Bailey) and Bailey Vandenbranden, and Marie Arsenault enjoy a stoll through Thunder Ridge Farms.

(L-R) Jim and Marie Arsenault from Prince Edward Island, Canada.