Six Essential Business Lessons I Learned From Dave Orledge, Instructor Relations Director, Learning Tree International

Dave Orledge - Learning Tree International Celebrity

On Thursday 30th November @Dave Orledge, a legend I’ve been privileged to do business with, for several decades, decided to retire from his position of Director of Instructor Relations and Course Operations for Learning Tree International, to spend more time with his family.

Learning Tree International is a global organisation which has sent me all over the globe to educate, train, coach and mentor start-ups to FTSE 100 corporations in business and systems.

Without Learning Tree International, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Dave’s help and encouragement, I truly believe I would never have developed the skills, insights, stage presence, experience and impact I have today.

Dave took over the helm of managing nearly 500 instructor/educators in 1997. At that time, the internal instructor force was in turmoil having lost three instructor relationship managers within a year. To make Dave's position more challenging, at the time, several instructors' egos dominated the arena, and there was an unofficial clique of instructors who had a habit of removing good instructors using a variety of unprofessional methods.

Dave survived his baptism by fire. In Dave’s two decades, he has achieved a lot for Learning Tree. From the instructor perspective, Dave managed to remove many of the bad apples, and mould the instructor force to be the incredible, formidable, and supportive team of educators, trainers and coaches that it is today.

Dave’s achievements are legendary and without Dave’s massive support for me, I would not be able to do the things I am able to do today. Dave is not the kind of person who would immediately react to anything someone shared with him. Instead he would take his time to reflect about the validity of the claims made before creating a proactive, diplomatic and strategic plan.

On several occasions, I asked Dave’s team why, after several unkind rumours had been spread about me, I was still contracted.

The answer has always been the same. “Ben we know you. We know what you are like. We know your heart. We know all about your unusual and sometimes creative way of delivering world class courses. You always deliver, and are consistently one of our highest scorers even under difficult situations. More importantly, the students like you and always return for further courses because of their interaction with you.”

Dave, thank you and your team for all your support. You have blessed me over and over with your support, I wish you all the best on your next adventure and hope you will at least do some consultancy with Learning Tree International.

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Off the top of my head, here are six essential business insights Dave’s behaviour has taught me.

Diplomacy

If there is one word that totally embodies Dave it is the word diplomacy. Being part of an international company means that challenges are just part of the journey. Whether the challenges be language misunderstandings, delays due to border control, challenges with other instructors, you can bet that Dave would be the embodiment of diplomacy in every situation.

If anyone ever presented any kind of disagreement with Dave, you could guarantee that Dave would begin with something like. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I’ll think about it.” If you pushed the issue, Dave would agree a time when he or one of his staff would get back to you on the issue.

Diplomacy is a forgotten art form that would make people’s business and engagement with others more pleasurable and much easier. You cannot work in an organisation for decades without having to deal with some issue on either side. Even though dealing with a diplomatic person can be quite infuriating especially when one wants to vent, however you always know that a diplomatic person will always give you the best possible outcome.

There was one situation I urgently needed to deal with where certain rules were being abused. Dave agreed to make an unofficial exception which resulted in a win-win scenario for both Learning Tree International and myself. On a few occasions, Dave also had to approach me about certain rumours. We discussed these situations like adults. There were no accusations of “excuses” or “bad behaviours.” If Dave felt it appropriate, he would suggest ways that I could deal with a situation and in other areas Dave would ask for suggestions.

Due Diligence

Any kind of resolution to diplomacy based solution requires due diligence. If a challenging situation was brought to Dave, he would never react. Instead he would do as much fact finding as possible to ascertain how much of a problem and risk the situation was and deal with it in a calm appropriate manner. Much of my business coaching and educational broadcasts urge people to do their own due diligence before issuing a response. Dave’s due diligence would be on the situation. What was required to resolve the situation. Who the people involved in the situation were and how to deal with each of their respective personalities.

Be Pro-active

Due diligence provides you with the necessary facts, you require to resolve a challenge. Rather than giving an immediate reactive response, Dave would create a more proactive response with a back-up course of action should the initial proactive approach not work. This pro-active approach was essential in helping everyone involved stay clam in very challenging and stressful situations.

Support Your People

Over time, Dave got to know everyone in the instructor force through their interaction with him, the Learning Tree staff and the student feedback forms. I’m pretty sure Dave probably knows each one of our strengths and weaknesses and most importantly our hearts and the authenticity of each instructor. Based on his knowledge Dave seemed to have an uncanny knowledge on who to believe and even if he knew someone was not being authentic, he would find a solution to diplomatically deal with them.

Over my decades at Learning Tree, I can truly say and feel, Dave has supported me through every challenging situation. Dave’s support personally helped me to increase my value to Learning Tree's customers and enabled me to go more than the extra mile on many occasions.

Know your statistics

Knowing your business’s statistics at any stage and cycle of the business allows you to proactively react to your customer requirements and to create implementation plans if there is a potential shortfall. To be oblivious of one’s business statistics is to court disaster.

Dave always seemed to know the business and instructor statistics in-depth. I have no evidence to support this but I’m sure Dave would probably read an instructor’s statistics before he had a meeting with them.

These statistics showed what courses we taught, how many classes we’ve taught in each category, our top and average grades, and where we were positioned in the UK and the international instructor force, the current revenue and the projected revenue.

A Kind Word and a Smile

A month ago, I released a book entitled Social Magnetism. Having good social magnetism enables you to engage with people in a manner where people feel calm and truly listened to. Smiling is part of that social magnetism. Smiles are contagious and according to one Ted talk, smiles have benefits beyond business, such as an increased life expectancy. Even under extremely difficult situations, Dave has always seemed to have an air of calm and a smile for everyone. Dave’s smile, in turn has helped others to become calmer under those situations.

There are many many many more aspects I learned from watching Dave but the most important was to live your words. Thank you again Dave Orledge for your very valuable input in my life. I wish you tons of best wishes in your next adventures.