In my Season Seven premiere, I’m joined by trusted learning and development expert Shannon Long; whose career includes mixing technology tools into training best-practices.  Along the way she’s led increasing sized teams with several of the most-respected professional training & performance-improvement organizations in the US.  Past employees praise Shannon for her enthusiasm, and the time she invests in developing other people’s careers.  She’s owned ground-level product development processes all the way through strategic organizational planning, and she recorded this episode with me to share some of her story and people-leadership approach.  In our discussion, you’ll hear her discuss applying technology in learning with her staff, and we’ll talk though best-practices for listening to individuals as a tool to develop the team.

I’ve invited Shannon to ManagerMirror because she was directly referred by past colleagues and employees for her impact on their careers.  Shannon started her career as a corporate trainer in telecom before earning her first promotion into people-leadership in the early 2000s.  She then worked as a National Curriculum Director for two top real-estate firms before stepping into the Director of Product Development role for Miller Heiman Group in 2012.  Over her 6 years with Miller Heiman, Shannon led training, product strategy, and cloud-based learning content development teams.  In 2018, She accepted a role as the Director of Product Development for Dale Carnegie Training where she built out global product vision driving the content you see from them today. 

Over the course of her career, Shannon established herself as someone who consistently exceeds goals by leading and growing teams that are built on a culture of collaboration.  Alumni from her groups reference her ability to drive 1:1 personal engagement as a key tool she’s used to drive team output and staff career development.  In October of 2023, Shannon stepped out on her own and founded UpSkill where you can find her coaching top US companies, executives, and their teams on how to rethink their definition of success by implementing impactful training experiences that directly impact their bottom-line, with tangible evidence of ROI. Follow Shannon on LinkedIn and visit her website, upskillresults.com, to stay current with her consultative leadership content!