Young Professional Leadership and Career Development in North ...

vice president of HR for her consideration. We wanted the group
to be organized as an optional employee group so that the time was
not considered on-the-clock. She requested a meeting to discuss our
intentions and her concerns.
This was when the three boosters I sought out really stepped up and
showed that they were interested in being true leaders for the group.
I had copied them on the e‐mail to HR, and they insisted on being
at the meeting with our vice president to help in any way that they
could. At this point, I realized that I wasn’t in this alone anymore,
that I could release some of the burden. Further, it reaffirmed that
this was an important cause, since other people were willing to fight
for it.
The vice president of HR was very supportive. Right off the bat, she
said that she loved what we were doing and that it was unfortunate
ECCU hadn’t been able to offer anything like this before. However,
she also wanted to confirm that we recognized the gray area this
crossed into. Most importantly, although this was technically an
optional employee- organized group, and not company sponsored, we
still had to be careful not to discuss ECCU business to ensure that
staff didn’t need to be compensated for their time at these lunches.
We were to discuss only general career development concepts, not
work.
She also told us that she had shared our communication with the
newly formed employee engagement committee, a group of about a
dozen employees from all levels and departments of the organization
who provide feedback on enterprise
goals and initiatives. They
The first meeting was a huge success. We had well over a dozen
provided two valuable pieces of
employees show up to that first meeting, and the guest speaker
feedback: First, their response
connected really well with the audience. It was a great start for
to the network was very positive
(more than one person said
the network.
they’d be interested in joining
such a group); second, they thought we should consider a name that
didn’t exclude people based on age, as some people become interested
in career development and advancement later in life. This has proved
to be quite true, as we have had several attendees who were older
than we expected. This second piece of advice is what spawned our
prelaunch name change from the Young Professionals Network to
the Career Development Network, as it is known today.
It was now time to send out our announcements and hold the first
lunch.
At this point, being the consensus leader type, I wanted to solidify
the boosters as part of a leadership team and not just as boosters for
the meetings. So I began using the title “CDN Leadership Team” in
19