Moving Ahead Leads the Way!

Last week, the leaders of Moving Ahead Services’ Cleveland office attended a Boss’s Day breakfast, where professional speaker Drew Dudley discussed the qualities of leadership and how to help everyone in your workplace become an active leader.

Drew Dudley is an entrepreneur/educator/writer who has spoken to audiences all over the world about empowering oneself and those around you. He has been heavily involved in various charities and is currently the founder of Nuance Leadership, Inc. We were delighted to hear that he would be speaking at a venue near our Cleveland office and were quick to book ourselves a table so that we could take advantage of an opportunity to further our leadership abilities.

Moving Ahead has always stressed the significance of leadership and we encourage everyone we hire to be leaders in one way or another. When we send crews out to complete a move, we always tell them how important it is to lead by example, and that one person being seen doing something positive or negative can influence whether or not someone else does something positive or negative. We’ve always said that one is not only responsible for oneself, but for those around them as well. Listening to Dudley reaffirmed these ideas for us, as he talked a lot about how to empower others to perform to higher levels.

Along similar lines, a lot of what Dudley discussed involved forming the proper attitude and perspective regarding one’s importance and the importance of those around them. One of our favorite stories that he shared was about the janitor from his high school. This janitor had a photographic memory and could remember anyone’s name and birthday. Not only did he make a point to learn every student’s birthday and give them a card, but he helped students deal with bullying, left flowers in their locker when they experienced a death in the family, and Dudley proclaimed that this very janitor played a key role in Dudley’s current success by encouraging him throughout his high school years. As Dudley explained, most people view a janitorial position as one that shouldn’t be aspired to, as people see such a job as lacking importance, but this janitor was able to do a lot for many students by simply acting as a leader to them. This story in particular got us thinking about our own approaches to those around us and how we would like to make more of a point to demonstrate our value for those in our company who don’t consider themselves leaders.

Dudley offered a lot of helpful advice and insight for us to bring back to the company. We already have some ideas in mind for changes that we would like to implement in our offices. We regret that the breakfast was too far away for anyone from our Columbus or Peoria offices to attend, but since Dudley emailed his slideshow presentation to those in attendance and we took ample notes of our own, we shouldn’t have much trouble relaying his strategies to them. Having taken a lot from this lecture, we can’t wait to spread Dudley’s insights to our entire team so that Moving Ahead leads the way.