Strategic Leadership Track

New in 2023!

NACM Strategic Leadership Track:
Transform into a Strategic Leader

Credit professionals make dozens if not hundreds of decisions each day—decisions that play a massive role in the success or downfall of their company. But in order to get recognition from the C-Suite, creditors must adopt a strategic mindset and start making decisions that shape the company’s vision.

Managers can no longer act as a leader in name only. Ensure your spot on the A-Team by separating yourself from the rest as a strategic leader who successfully guides your company through today’s ever-changing economic climate. The primary difference between an operational leader and a strategic leader is the ability to lead for the future, acting as the motivating force for innovation and helping the company reach its long-term goals.

Gain a competitive edge, learn to better direct your team, add value to your organization and develop a deeper understanding of your customer’s need by participating in this newly developed track of sessions.

32010. Moving Beyond Operational Leadership to Strategic Leadership (Part 1 of 2)

Valid for .125 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Operational leaders master their functional area, meet short-term targets and create stability for focused execution. Strategic leaders move beyond that and focus on multiple facets of the business instead of ensuring success in a single area. In this session, you will learn to:

Inspire and direct your team to greater readiness and competitiveness
Add value to your organization by embracing innovation and understanding the needs of your customers
Anticipate, create and encourage change
Spot opportunities to build successful strategic alliances
Develop the vision to establish a strategic culture
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team
Grow your team

32020. Moving Beyond Operational to Strategic Leader (Part 2 of 2)

Valid for .125 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

This session continues with a focus on:

Crossing the line to strategic effectiveness
Learning the strategic leadership approach
Vision and strategic leadership
Building influence through communication
Understanding the role of teams
Managing change with action-oriented skills

32030. Creating a Culture of Trust through Effective Listening: Understanding Others Before Being Understood

Valid for .15 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Trust is at the very core of sound business relationships. Intrinsic to trust is the expectation that all will act in a way that is mutually beneficial, meaning that trust is a critical component of effective leadership. Trust breeds stronger working relationships and a healthier organizational culture. In this session, you will learn how to:

Create a culture of trust: Where does it start?
Extend your trust to others
Be an approachable source of confidential support
Actively listen
Sincerely acknowledge other’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings
Collaboratively take ownership
Provide the needed support to enable your team to perform at the highest level possible

32040. Creating High Performing Teams and Team Development

Valid for .125 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

A high-performance team is comprised of highly skilled members, working in cross-functional areas and focused on achieving common business goals. They are aligned with and committed to shared values and vision. The team is innovative in problem-solving and is known for displaying a high level of communication and collaboration, delivering consistent and superior results. In this session you will learn to:

Manage your entire remote team, especially for the first time
Boost productivity at every location
Significantly decrease email and phone communication, shifting to collaborative platforms such as Teams or Zoom
Know team members are following rules and implementing proper policies and procedures
Spot problems even when you are far away
Tuckman’s five stages of teams
Eight characteristics of effective teams
Leadership steps when your team is forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning
Grow one-on-one collaborative working relationships to improve team effectiveness

32050. Coaching and Mentoring (Even Experienced Staff)

Valid for .125 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Coaching and mentoring are key to retain top talent and build a leadership pipeline. While coaching typically focuses on enhancing current job performance, mentoring programs can reduce and reframe personal, structural and cultural barriers that may be holding emerging leaders back from achieving their full potential. Those who mentor and advocate for others are perceived by as more effective leaders. Great leaders need to be mentored and great leaders need to mentor. In this session, we’ll examine:

Stages of a coaching relationship
Coaching and constructive feedback
The Coaching Strategy Spectrum
Coaching effectively using relating, strategizing, and implementing
The history and essentials of mentoring
Formal and informal mentoring
Challenges of coaching and mentoring experienced staff and how to succeed

32060. Persuasion and Influencing Skills

Valid for .15 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Building a positive reputation and strong relationships are fundamental to your ability to successfully persuade your team to accomplish its objectives and goals. In order to build your persuasive and influence leadership skills, we will:

Define persuasion and how to use it to influence others
Plan to influence
Learn to create rapport
Examine expectations and results
Gain commitment
Build assertiveness
Influence in groups
Win-win influence

32070. Developing Creativity and Innovation

Valid for .15 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Learn how to inspire your team to open their minds and unlock creativity to achieve the best results by:

Stimulating creativity in yourself and others
Learning the impact of innovation on growth creation
Understanding innovation concepts and methodologies
Applying creative thinking to real-world business situations
Learning how to build and lead an innovative team

32080. Mastering Politics, Influence and Alliances

Valid for .1 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

Learn practical techniques to use power, influence and politics to engage stakeholders effectively and key factors to effectively manage politics.

You will learn:

Key competencies and critical success factors of effective management
360-degree approach to managing up, down, and across your organization
Negative politics and strategies to navigate an intense political climate
The sources of organizational power and the relationship between politics and influence
How to influence and manage beyond your own authority

32090. Strategic Leadership Exchange!

Valid for .1 CEUs & CCE Recertification Points.

We’ll bring everything we’ve learned together about strategic leadership to ensure you are leaving our Strategic Leadership Track and NACM’s Credit Congress with a solid action plan, which you will put into action before you leave and really get rolling once you return to work! Your colleagues and manager will be looking at you as if to say, “What happened to you?” and you can tell them, “I got a healthy dose of Strategic Leadership at the NACM Credit Congress and Expo!”

A fee of $399 in addition to a full delegate registration is required to attend any of the sessions in this track. You must pre-register and pay an additional fee to be admitted into these sessions. Space is limited for this special programming.

Meet Our Strategic Leadership Track Speaker and Guide

Chris DeVany is the founder and president of Pinnacle Performance Improvement Worldwide, a firm which focuses on management and organization development. Pinnacle's clients include global organizations such as Visa International, Cadence Design Systems, Coca Cola, Sprint, Microsoft, Aviva Insurance, Schlumberger and over 500 other organizations in 22 countries. He also has consulted to government agencies from the United States, the Royal Government of Saudi Arabia, Canada, Cayman Islands and the United Kingdom.   

He has published numerous articles in the fields of surviving mergers and acquisitions, surviving change, project management, management, sales, team-building, leadership, ethics, customer service, diversity and work-life balance. His book, "90 Days to a High-Performance Team," has helped thousands of executives, managers and team leaders improve performance.

  He has appeared hundreds of times on radio and television interview programs to discuss mergers and acquisitions (how to manage and survive them), project management, sales, customer service, effective workplace communication, management, handling rapid personal and organizational change and other topical business issues.   

He has served or is currently serving as a board member of the International Association of Facilitators, Sales and Marketing Executives International, American Management Association, American Society of Training and Development, Institute of Management Consultants, American Society of Association Executives, Meeting Professionals International and National Speakers Association. Chris is an award-winning Toastmaster's International Competition speaker. He recently participated in the Fortune 500 Annual Management Forum as a speaker, panelist and seminar leader.   

Chris has distinguished himself professionally by serving multiple corporations as manager and trainer of sales, operations, project management, IT, customer service and marketing professionals. Included among those business leaders are Prudential Insurance, Sprint, BayBank (now part of Bank of America), US Health Care and Marriott Corporation. Chris holds degrees in management studies and organizational behavior from Boston University.