程阳：北美彩协彩票领导者学院打造彩业新星

Building Industry Superstars at the Lottery Leadership Institute

What does it take to succeed in business? And what specifically does it take to succeed in the lottery business? These questions and more will be answered at NASPL’s annual Lottery Leadership Institute, to be held March 4-8 in Charleston, S.C. This is the 19th year of the Institute, known as Lottery College in its early years, and it is one of NASPL’s signature education and training events. An exciting element, new this year, is the inclusion of a leadership program from Dale Carnegie Training, which will offer Continuing Education Units and Continuing Professional Education Units for qualifying students. It is the first NASPL event to offer these credits.

Dale Carnegie Training, which will offer Continuing Education Units and Continuing Professional Education Units for qualifying students. It is the first NASPL event to offer these credits.

“We are thrilled to partner with Dale Carnegie Training at Lottery Leadership Institute this year,” said NASPL Executive Director David Gale. “It adds significant value to our educational program and is a great example of the advances NASPL is making in the area of education for the lottery industry.”

Lottery Leadership is designed to build on attendees’ general knowledge of the lottery industry, with discussions on retailer issues, vendor relations and research, among other topics critical to lotteries’ success in today’s challenging environment. The program focuses on communications, quality management, human relations, lottery business management and ethics, and offers participants the opportunity to refine their leadership skills, expand their problem-solving techniques and learn new strategic planning methods. In small groups, participants will also spend six hours during the week working on a hands-on game development project. All sessions are completed in a controlled learning environment by qualified traditional and nontraditional facilitators, including industry leaders from the lottery and vendor community.

Over the years, more than 1,100 individuals have participated in Lottery Leadership and Lottery College. They have represented just about any position imaginable in lottery and vendor organizations. In recent years, attendees have ranged from executive assistants to a chief financial officer and everything in between. “They come because they know they will improve upon their leadership skills and learn more in-depth information about our industry, and that will create a new level of performance for their employers designed to improve results in a very challenging business and competitive environment,” said Gale.

Leadership training from Dale Carnegie

One of the most anticipated components of Lottery Leadership this year is the addition of a Dale Carnegie course in leadership training. More than nine hours are dedicated to the program, led by John Langdon, President of North Coast Training Solutions, DBA Dale Carnegie Training of Northeast Ohio. He has more than 30 years of instructional experience in the field, and his background includes a leadership training program for the Ohio Lottery many years ago.

“We have a full agenda, covering a number of topics,” said Landgon. “It’s going to be like drinking water out of a fire hose, trying to soak it all up in a day and a half. The goal is to have everyone find at least one topic that really hits home so they can go back to their workplace and implement it, to help them become better managers and leaders.” Some of the work will be about specific management skills, including delegation, communications and interpersonal skills, again designed for practical application.

One of the basics of the program is understanding the difference between managers and leaders. “All good managers don’t make good leaders and all good leaders don’t necessarily make good managers,” explained Langdon. “A good definition of leadership is the ability to enlist the willing cooperation of others to achieve results. The key word there is willing, so this is a human relations approach to managing.”

Through minimal lectures and a lot of group interaction and role-playing, Langdon hopes to create an environment of acceptance, where participants step outside their own comfort zone to find new things they can take back and use in their workplace. “The training is designed to make each of the participants look at themselves and find areas they need to improve upon. And hopefully through the workshops they will learn some additional skills to help them in those areas.”

For example, one of the skills that will be explored is delegation. If managers don’t learn to delegate, they end up getting burned out on the job because there are only so many hours in a day; this is one of the biggest downfalls of younger managers, and even older managers according to Langdon. A related topic is the need for a manager to develop others. “The reason a manager’s job exists is to produce results and to grow people. So many managers get hung up on the producing results piece that they forget to develop others to take over some of the responsibilities.” Again the end results are burnout and stagnation as the manager ends up doing everything.

Before the March event, registrants will receive a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. By reading the book before the course, participants can apply something from the book to their jobs and be ready to discuss their successes or their challenges during the seminars. “It’s all about people rolling up their sleeves and jumping right in. It’s not about foreign case studies, it’s not about what someone else would do. It’s about applying the learning to their own jobs, to make it real.”

For his part, Langdon is looking forward to working with lottery people again after all these years. “They are fun people, willing to try new things. Sometimes that’s the biggest problem in training – people are too afraid to try things. And if they don’t try it here, they certainly aren’t going to try it under the heat of the moment.”