Leadership in Manufacturing

Operations, Planning, & Prioritization

Date: Thursday November 6, 2025

This session focuses on practical tools and techniques for managing time and operations, ensuring your team can handle scheduling, capacity planning, and forecasting with ease. Learn how strong communication, smart decision-making, and solid interpersonal relationships can drive success in your manufacturing environment.

Key Learning Topics:

• Identify criteria for task prioritization.
• Distinguish between important and urgent tasks.
• Use effective time management.
• Delegate tasks to ensure success and team engagement.
• Avoid time stealers.
• Make effective planning and organizing decisions.

Instructor: Helena Long

Helena is focused on the development and growth of organizations and the people that make up those organizations. Her career of over 25 years includes senior- and executive-level positions in Strategic Planning, Human Resources and Learning & Development in organizations such as Tennessee Valley Authority, Knox County Government (Knoxville, Tennessee), Rockwell-Collins, Kinze Manufacturing and JET Engineering. With each of these organizations, Helena facilitated strategic planning processes throughout the organization and provided extensive team and leader training.

Helena brings not only her vast experience but also her positive attitude, enthusiasm and total commitment to ensure a successful experience for her customers with tangible results. She works closely with her clients to fully understand what they want to accomplish then customizes a solution to ensure the desired results are achieved. Helena’s sessions are high-energy, interactive and engaging to ensure participation, learning and growth—with measurable results.

Understanding & Applying Manufacturing Business Information

Date: Tuesday December 9, 2025

This class is designed to help you find, interpret, and act on critical business information from various sources, including executive leadership, your boss, and your team. You'll accelerate your business acumen and leadership development, committing to specific actions to apply your learning effectively.

Key Learning Topics:

• Learn to gather and understand key insights from executive leadership, your boss, and your team.
• Develop your business knowledge and leadership skills to drive better decisions and outcomes.
• Commit to specific actions that ensure you follow through on your learning.

Instructor: Dan Topf

Dan is a successful performance improvement consultant who is passionate about helping people and businesses achieve dramatic performance improvement through business learning. Dan designs, leads, and implements learning and development initiatives aligned with the strategic goals of his client organizations.   His imaginative and professional live online and in-person presentations produce outstanding results, as documented by attendees’ performance.  Dan can help you and your company develop business acumen, implement human performance technology, and design learning systems to achieve outstanding results.

Dan leads and implements multiple large and small-scale business training design projects for his clients.  He also does 1:1 advising, coaching, and training for emerging leaders.  Known for his outstanding skills to make the complexities of business accessible and understandable, Dan serves as a lead facilitator for business simulations and business acumen programs.

Building & Leading Effective Work Teams

Date: Wednesday January 7, 2025

Teams collaborate in a variety of modes; virtually, in-person, or a hybrid method. How we connect/communicate is just one element of building and maintaining an effective team. Effective teams should be a balance of diverse individuals who bring different skill sets and perspectives. When developing your team, make sure these essential skills exist or they can be developed; communication and listening skills, organizational and time management, problem solving, resolving conflict, and having an awareness of each teammate's uniqueness. (Behavior styles and working preferences) In this course, we will discuss all these concepts and more to help you create and maintain a high-functioning and successful team.

Key Learning Topics:

• Explain the keys to establishing a virtual team and how to manage them during projects
• Manage effective meetings and group discussions
• Describe effective ways to communicate with team members to build trust and confidence among each employee
• Discuss how to handle poor performing employees
• Create common goals, clear direction, and build/develop accountability
• Define roles, cross-functions, and openness to change and adjust

Instructor: Stacie Lightner

Founder of Courageous Innovations, LLC, Stacie is known for her enlightening perspectives surrounding the human side of individuals and their uniqueness. She has built a business focusing on communication, empathy, employee and team development.

For more than 20 years, Stacie has facilitated/coached a range of individuals including women in business, financial institution leaders, middle and high school students, and volunteers. She has worked with for-profit and not-for-profit organizations tying strategy to growth and talent development initiatives. She designs, speaks, and facilitates a wide variety of areas including; customer relations, coaching/mentoring individuals, diversity and inclusion, Emotional Intelligence, and time and organization management.

Stacie earned a bachelor's degree in Education from Iowa State University and is certified in several people building programs. She has volunteered and worked for the Urbandale School District, been a PTO board member, mock trial judge and coach, church council member, director of Vacation Bible School, assisting minister, and board member for ATD (Association for Talent Development).

Performance Management

Date: Thursday February 12, 2025

This class will guide you through the essential approaches to coaching and mentoring, helping you foster a supportive and growth-oriented environment. You'll learn how to implement effective learning and development programs tailored to your team's needs. The course also covers best practices for setting and achieving goals, ensuring your team stays focused and motivated. Additionally, you'll explore various recognition strategies to acknowledge and reward your team's efforts, promoting a positive and productive workplace culture.

Key Learning Topics:

• Understand effective use of performance analysis & management systems.
• Develop methods to handle difficult behavior & respond with appropriate corrective action.
• Implement a learning & development program.
• Understand goal setting practices.

Instructor: Mollie Frideres-Smith

Mollie Frideres is the founder and owner of MFS HR Solutions, which focuses on human capital management. With over 20 years of experience in human resources and a passion for problem- solving and innovation, Mollie founded MFS HR Solutions to make a meaningful impact and help businesses achieve goals and solve problems. Her approach places a strong emphasis on collaboration and provides tailored HR solutions that align with each company’s unique goals and challenges. Mollie empowers organizations to attract, retain and develop top talent while fostering a productive work environment.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, she is active in several local organizations including the Ames Chamber of Commerce, Urbandale Chamber of Commerce, Central Iowa SHRM, Cyclone SHRM, and the Iowa Chapter of National Association of Women Business Owners as co- president.

Difficult Conversations

Date: Wednesday March 11, 2026

This session helps leaders create an environment where people speak up more candidly, fully, and purposefully to achieve their goals. The program provides simple, high-impact, sustainable practices to create safe and collaborative environments. Leaders emerge from the workshop with skills and tools that enable other to bring up better ideas, challenge the status quo, raise critical questions, resolve problems early, break through organizational silence and talk about undiscussables.

Key Learning Topics:

• Tools to assess your team's current "State of Candor" and to measure progress.
• Practices to create the environment where your organization speaks up and talk about what matters.
• A safe process to learn and honor individual, team and organizational Undiscussables - and address them.
• Fast-paced delivery with active participation.
• Skills and resources to strengthen your organization's capability to continually, candidly and optimally talk about what matters.

Instructor: Tom Greene

Tom Green is dedicated to helping leaders and teams talk more candidly, fully, and purposefully to resolve conflict and talk about difficult matters. Though his workshops, he provides assessments, tools, and easy-to-implement practices to help leaders and teams address conflict, reach agreements, hold others accountable, and strengthen relationships to achieve their goals.

Known for his thoughtful, research-based, and insightful approach, Tom Green is a coach and accomplished human resources professional with expertise in performance consulting, learning and development, performance management, and leadership development. Tom is trained in conflict resolution, mediation, and instructional design for curriculum, classroom, and web-based instruction. His workshops use key data, energizing and interactive exercises, case studies, and effective check-in practices to assure learning.

Innovative Problem Solving

Date: Wednesday April 8, 2026

Discover the thinking preferences that secretly rule your problem-solving behavior. The “FourSight Mindset Reveal” dives deep into the way individuals solve problems together. Content-rich, fun and immediately actionable, this session introduces the mindset needed to spark and sustain more innovative problem solving.

Instructor: Stacie Lightner

Founder of Courageous Innovations, LLC, Stacie is known for her enlightening perspectives surrounding the human side of individuals and their uniqueness. She has built a business focusing on communication, empathy, employee and team development. For more than 20 years, Stacie has facilitated/coached a range of individuals including women in business, financial institution leaders, middle and high school students, and volunteers. She has worked with for-profit and not-for-profit organizations tying strategy to growth and talent development initiatives. She designs, speaks, and facilitates a wide variety of areas including; customer relations, coaching/mentoring individuals, diversity and inclusion, Emotional Intelligence, and time and organization management. Stacie earned a bachelor's degree in Education from Iowa State University and is certified in several people building programs. She has volunteered and worked for the Urbandale School District, been a PTO board member, mock trial judge and coach, church council member, director of Vacation Bible School, assisting minister, and board member for ATD (Association for Talent Development).

Lean Principles

Date: Thursday May 14, 2026

Participants will be introduced to Lean concepts and tools that are helping organizations of all types improve efficiency, streamline process, and reduce costs. During this session we will teach people how to recognize “waste” in their work environment, how Lean tools can be used to reduce or eliminate those wastes. 

Key Learning Topics:

• What is Lean
• Change
• Determining value in your process
• Identifying waste
• Introduction to popular Lean tools

Instructor: Bonnie Slykhuis

Bonnie is a professional Trainer and Consultant with over 20 years of experience designing and providing Lean/Continuous Improvement, teambuilding, and soft skills training to various types of organizations including city/state governments, manufacturing, service organizations, higher education, and K-12 education. She has conducted over 2000 training sessions in these topics for more than 200 organizations throughout the US. She is a published author (Continuous Improvement In Higher Education), a business owner, a certified hypnotist and certified hypnosis instructor.

Methods of Quality Management

Date: Wednesday June 18, 2026

This course covers essential topics such as lean leadership, value creation, and managing lean projects. Dive into quality and people aspects, and master lean/quality tools including 5S, value stream mapping, process control, root cause analysis, standard work, scheduling, and A-3. Equip your team with the skills to drive efficiency and excellence in your organization.

Key Learning Topics:

• 5S
• Process Control
• Root Cause Analysis
• Value Stream Mapping

Instructor: Chuck Nemor

Charles Nemer is a trainer/consultant with 47 years of experience in Supply Chain Management, Lean, Leadership, and APICS. He teaches Supply Chin Management courses at universities and is active both locally and nationally in his ASCM professional society as well. 

Charles has spent his career in various areas of Sourcing, Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Leadership.  Within those 47 years, he has taught, and continues to teach, professional certification classes for ASCM, professional development seminars and programs on his own, and on behalf of colleges in their outreach programs to local and regional manufacturing firms.  He has a Bachelors degree in Accounting from the University of Minnesota, a Masters degree in Leadership from Augsburg University in Minneapolis Mn., CPIM, CSCP, CLTD, and CTSC certification from ASCM, in Circular Economy and Sustainability

Leading Through Change

Date: Wednesday July 15, 2026

If there is one word to describe the world of work, in recent times it would have to be CHANGE!!  If there is one word to describe what creates the most conflict in the world of work, it would have to be CHANGE!!  Serving as a leader during times of change requires strategy, process, empathy and savvy.  While change can never be predicted, great leaders can certainly anticipate and prepare for navigating change.  Join us for an interactive discussion on understanding the actions leaders must implement to be positioned for success while LEADING THROUGH CHANGE.

Instructor: Cassandra Halls

Cassandra Halls has been training and consulting since 2007, offering a wide variety of business consulting services to corporate, non-profit and local governmental entities primarily in the Midwest. Areas of specialty include: strategic planning, project management, research services, training facilitation, workforce recruitment and retention, generational perspectives, succession planning and operations process improvements. Halls spent 10 years of her career in public administration in Iowa, and then shifted to corporate employment, working in multiple strategic roles for a start-up technology company which grew from 20 employees to over 1,000 employees over the course of two short years! She has served in the Vice President role in both non-profit and corporate operations, utilizing her broad perspective to drive solutions to the challenges encountered in many work cultures and environments. Halls earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from William Penn University.

Strategic Thinking

Date: Tuesday August 18, 2026

Today’s organization must respond to dramatic shifting forces and a leader's ability to think through complex and changing situations is critical to future success.  Practice how to scan the external environment so it improves judgment and decision-making internally.  Expand your perspective further, use tools that support strategic thinking and learn ways to engage in new methods daily.

Instructor: Celina Peerman

Dr. Celina Peerman currently serves as an organizational psychologist with over 27 years of experience from front line to senior level positions, in a wide range of industries and organizations. She is passionate about engaging our human resources in new ways to achieve even better organizational results. Celina has presented at numerous conferences for local, state, and national audiences. Her work in Southeast Asia, Canada and Central America give additional operations experience, further developing her strong international interests with the ability to walk into every type of company daily to learn firsthand the challenges and opportunities to build better performance. Celina holds a Ph.D. in Psychology, a master’s degree in business, with undergraduate degrees in psychology and international studies, and workplace behavior.