Don't Wait for a Title. Start Leading at Millerbernd Today.
Millerbernd’s Leadership Academy develops personal leadership qualities at every level of the company.
A lot of manufacturers talk about growing from within. It sounds like an admirable philosophy. However, in practice, most leadership training starts after someone already has the title. The strongest operator becomes a supervisor. Then the company sends that person to a short course on running a meeting and writing a review. The promotion came. The growth often did not.
Millerbernd approaches leadership development from a different angle. The company calls it growing our people, and the Millerbernd Leadership Academy is how that idea is put into practice.
The academy started in 2019 as a long-term answer to a question every manufacturer faces: where will the next generation of leaders come from? The program was built to develop people at every level of the company, not only those already sitting in a supervisor’s chair. Participants learn how to lead a team, how to sharpen judgment and communication, and how to build the kind of personal leadership that holds up at work and away from it. More than 100 employees have completed the academy, and many of those graduates now hold leadership roles at Millerbernd. In a typical year, 50 or more people take part in the 8 month program.
“Most leadership training is about managing people,” said Renee Regep, Millerbernd’s Learning & Development Manager. “We’re growing personal leadership qualities at every level of the company, including in those who may never have ‘manager’ in their title.”
The program starts with a wide view of leadership and the fundamentals. That coursework is open to every employee and covers core skills online. People who are new to leading, or want to be, move into Emerging Leaders as Millerbernd brings them into a team-leader role. Supervisors and managers continue in Manager Essentials. Directors and other senior leaders continue on to Strategic Leadership, where the work is leading across departments, not only running their own team.
Manager Essentials and Strategic Leadership both finish with a live assignment. Participants take a challenge Millerbernd has already identified and work out a solution with people from other parts of the company. A marketer might sit with someone from IT. An engineer might sit with someone from operations. The point is to get past a single department’s view and land on an answer that helps that team and the company.
“If you think about building the best team, it starts with internships,” said Aaron Ebert, vice president of operations and engineering. “That’s where the next generation of manufacturing talent starts. The Leadership Academy is one way we continue to develop that talent. We have to build our people with the same care we put into developing our product.”
Plenty of companies will train a new supervisor to run a shift. Fewer will put an operator, a planner, a marketer, and a director on the same ladder, then ask them to work a live problem together. That mix is what Millerbernd wants recruits to see: people from across the company learning to lead together. It is one of the clearest examples of a place that offers more than a job, but grows a career as well.
