Personify Leadership
Bringing Learning to Life

Interactive classroom training programs have been developed to help leaders retain the learning and bring those to practice in the real world. Today’s training programs focus on delivering business impact by providing tools to drive the performance of a competent and inspirational leader. Perhaps this is the reason why organizations are spending a considerable amount of their budget - approx. $370 billion in 2019 alone as per Training Industry - on leadership training. However, Harvard Business Review and McKinsey & Company report that these programs have failed to deliver the desired results. A lack of clear and sustained means of learning and insights furnish that “Aha!” moment where the trainee can assimilate learning into the real world. One company has had a breakthrough in developing an experiential training program that delivers desired business impact - Personify Leadership.

Founded by Angela Sebaly and Michelle Cummings, Personify Leadership has blended the essence of classroom training and experiential team-building activities. “Angela, our CEO, brings in her practical business experience and I bring experiential, hands-on learning experience,” says Michelle Cummings, Co-founder, and Chief Creative Officer. “Marrying our skills, we are able to engage the leaders in their learning and experience in a way that is easy for them to access the skills that they learn in the classroom.” The company has broken the effective leadership program into eight core concepts.

These concepts are designed to work on each essential part of being an effective leader based on the human body. The Heart of a Leader aims to work on the intention, trust, and relationship that a leader builds with his team, while the Mind of a Leader helps identify and deal with various stress triggers. Similarly, Voice, Hands, Eyes, Ears, Feet and Spine of a Leader focus on developing individual aspects of a strategic, agile and resilient leader. What stands out is the methodology adopted by Personify Leadership to impart the training.

The first step is the usual one. After a thorough analysis of the client’s LMS systems and training needs, the company will go through the strategic plan with their clients and plug in the current training program to fit their needs.

89.2 percent of participants rated the content and delivery as immediately applicable to their jobs

Then the company brings in their methods of delivery of the content. It starts with experiential activities to bring learning to life and naturally surface the behaviors and skills. The participants are then moved to the classroom for group discussion and personal reflection of the experiential activity. This is succeeded by video demonstrations where a couple of characters demonstrate a day in the life of the everyday leader. The characters go through the regular ups and downs, making mistakes and re-thinking their approach to solve the issues.

The real world, solution-oriented Personify Leadership program has found adoption globally and in SMBs and large corporations alike. The clients have witnessed a massive ROI post-implementation of the training. One such example is CUNA Mutual Group. A credit union insurance company, CUNA had 1800 employees go through the training program and measured the direct impact on the business. “Based on the total benefit, the total cost, and the annualized benefits per person, they were able to show a 204 percent ROI,” informs Michelle. “89.2 percent participants rated the content and delivery as immediately applicable to their jobs.”

And that’s what Personify Leadership stands for - bring the learnings to life. The company is now focused on developing virtual, self-paced content for their programs combined with physical products for participants to work with, an endeavor they started during the pandemic. With Personify Leadership certified coaches in 26 countries and the content translated in multiple languages, the accessibility of state-of-the-art training is unfathomable.