Talent Development That Builds Confidence In Leadership With Diane Kubal

 

You are not a leader unless you are developing leaders. That is what our guest today believes in. In this episode, Diane Kubal, the Experience-Based Virtual Learning Expert at Fulcrum Network, sits with Alicia Couri to discuss talent development that builds confidence in leadership. A real leader not only leads but helps produce other leaders who can develop other leaders. After all, leadership should help and inspire their team to grow, develop, and contribute. But how can you do that? What should we take into consideration to help our people look good, be confident, and have an impact? Tune in to this insightful episode as Diane shares some great tips!

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Talent Development That Builds Confidence In Leadership With Diane Kubal

I have an amazing guest who believes that you are not a leader unless you are developing leaders. I can’t wait for you to meet Diane. Before I do that, let me tell you a little bit more about who Diane is. Diane Kubal is the Founder of Fulcrum Network. She was a corporate leader and training specialist with expertise in customer service, experiential learning and career and leadership development. As a veteran entrepreneur, learning and development professional and consultant, she has developed numerous experience-based virtual learning programs. Through the Fulcrum Network, she has sold the products and services to hundreds of consultants, trainers, and coaches.

Over the past few years, she has developed an experience-based virtual learning methodology used in Fulcrum’s state-of-the-art learning platform. She has developed this methodology and platform to showcase her expertise through programs such as CAREER Essentials and the Modern Manager Series. She also helps to convert her clients’ and consultants’ content into engaging digital experiences. Fulcrum’s team of consultants has been hired by Fortune 1000 companies, including Accenture, Bosch, BP, CDW, McDonald’s, SC Johnson, Kraft, MillerCoors, Sears, United Airlines, and Wrigley. I want to welcome this powerhouse, Diane Kubal.

Thank you, Alicia. It is great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Before we dive into all the meat and potatoes that we are going to talk about, I want everybody to get to know a little bit more about you. What led you into learning and development training? What was your passion behind that?

I love to see the light bulbs go on. When I first started my business, I was doing a lot of connecting with clients and consultants. I was a master networker because I got laid off a number of times in my career. One of the things I did back in the day was I was the director of a job bank for a professional association for consultants and trainers. That was before we had Monster and Guru and all those platforms. People would send me their self-addressed stamped envelopes. I would make photocopies of the jobs, stuff them in there and mail them out to people. I was like this master networker and connector. Somebody said, “You need to create a business around that.” Back then, there wasn’t one. I had this network of change agents, leadership consultants, and trainers because that was my interest and feel.

This show is called Leading with Audacious Confidence. Help the audience understand because sometimes layoffs are devastating for people. They can’t overcome being laid off or fired from a job. You said you were laid off multiple times. How were you able to shift when you got laid off?

One of the things that I did was a lot of networking. In three months, I met with 75 people when I was laid off from my first job. People would say to me, “Diane, when are you going to go on some interviews?” All I was doing was networking, but I got my next job through that networking because the job that I got wasn’t advertised. It wasn’t on any boards or anything like that.

Networking was the thing that kept me engaged. I talked about what I was passionate about and interested in. I wanted to find out what other people were passionate about and interested in. When you talk about that and go in with more of an inquiry, asking for advice position, people are always willing to give you their opinion. They want to help you. That is human nature. That was how I approached it. I love to get your input. I have this idea. I love to hear what you are working at. That was over lunch, most of the time. Oftentimes I would buy people lunch. Even though I didn’t have a job, it was a good networking strategy and money well spent.

Many people lick their wounds, and they are like, “Woe was me.” You got into action and started networking. Networking is important while you have a job and are still employed. You need to be out there networking with a lot of people and seeing what else is out there for you. Sometimes people do get stuck in a rut in their jobs, and they don’t realize what else is out there for them. That is a great tip.

With the pandemic, many people haven’t been going out, including me. I decided I was going to start doing my networking lunches again. I have my calendar booked for December 2022. It is time to get out there. When you are talking to people, it does boost your confidence. They find things that are valuable to your doing, and you are building a relationship with them. Part of it is to focus on the relationship and how you can help them. Naturally, they will want to help you.

 

It is true that it helps build your confidence when you can talk about the things you are passionate about and how you do what you do. You discover how people want what you have and are willing to learn and know more about it. As we are on these layoffs, stay, and go, what have you found have been some of the most effective ways that employers can get employees to stay? What have you seen?

One of the things people are looking for, especially for the younger generation, is opportunities to learn and grow in their careers. A lot of companies think, “We are small. We don’t have a lot of open positions. We can’t promote people.” It is not about promotion and money. It is about the opportunity to learn, grow and broaden their skills.

That is something that the managers or the leaders in the organization need to be a little bit more creative about and think about, “What can I offer them in terms of projects and ways to add to their skillset, whether or not that means it is a formal position or whether that means more money?” Some people will take an opportunity because they are going to get to do a lot of things rather than being pigeonholed into one particular function. You got to build that into the culture, not for the top leaders but for all of the managers in the organization.

This brings us to one statement and one question. One of the assessments that we do with people is called motivational maps. It is important to understand where people are motivated because there are people that are motivated by growth. They are not motivated by getting more money, title or position. They want an opportunity to continue to grow their skillset, to learn and grow.

That will keep someone happy if you understand that that is their motivation. If you understand money is their motivation, you know how you can compensate them. Understanding people’s motivation is important. The other question I have is, what about those people that say, “If I provide all this training for them, they are going to take this training and go get another job, and I will be out.” What do you say to leaders who have that mindset?

I will answer that question and comment on what you said about the motivational maps. I believe that is important and key. It doesn’t matter what assessment you use, but if you are able to identify what that person is motivated by, and name that and make that known both to themselves, they need that insight for themselves and need to communicate that with their manager. That gives them to follow for, “What are the developmental assignments and things that we can do to get you to use that motivation and talent?” People are going to go above and beyond because they love it and they are having fun. They enjoy it.

It is in their wheelhouse. They don’t have to feel frustrated and don’t have worth or value because you are feeding them what they need. They are excited about that.

The key is, how do you identify what they are motivated by with what the company is trying to accomplish? How do you marry those two and integrate that? The managers need to be skilled enough to be able to figure out what to do with that. We do some work around career development. The goal for the manager and employee is to find a motivated developmental assignment that aligns with what the person is great at, loves to do and what the company needs some goals and objectives. It is a win-win. It is a win for the manager, employee and company.

That gets to, “What if I spend money on this assessment and give them some training? If my managers figure this out, everybody is accomplishing things, having fun, and wanting to stay.” Are you worried about the couple of thousand dollars you spent? How is that going to be infectious and spread throughout your culture? People are going to start to see so and so is doing a great job.

There is no race you can put on putting a fire under somebody and having them perform above and beyond because, naturally, they are not going to want to leave because if they leave, there is a risk that their manager or that company doesn’t do that. Many companies say they do it, but if you got one in hand, don’t go for the one in the bush because you never know.

 

There’s the scarcity mindset of, “I don’t want to train them because they will leave.” If you build a culture of appreciating who they are and allowing them to grow and develop in the position that they are in, people don’t want to leave. People don’t want to jump ship all the time and go from this job to that job. They want a place they can grow and feel great about. They leave when they feel frustrated.

My daughter is a great example of that. She is a college student. She is eighteen, and she works at Cane’s. That is the chicken finger place. She is vegetarian, and she feels bad about working there. She was like, “Mom, I love my manager and everybody I work with. It is such a great team. I could go to work at Whole Foods, and it is a lot closer, but I don’t want to give up all these great people that I’m working with.” She is making $15 an hour. For an eighteen-year-old, that is not bad. Because of the culture, she wants to stay because she is worried about going to Whole Foods, and maybe she wouldn’t have that environment.

What do you recommend companies do in addition to that to retain top talent? Is there something additional to that?

There are things that you can do to help, especially the top talent, feel like they are valued. There is recognition. Recognition isn’t necessarily just giving them kudos. You need to find out what that particular person values. It needs to be individualized. It does cost a little bit of money to provide some of these things, but what is the cost if that person leaves and you have to replace them? You got lost productivity. You have had that open position for a while. How does that affect other people when they see somebody leaving the organization? There is the cost of finding a new person and all of the time that goes into interviews and managers. You make an offer, and somebody goes too. There is such a huge cost to having people leave and having to rehire. The training and investing in your people is much cheaper than having to rehire.

 

I saw this post before, and I wonder if you commented on it. It was on LinkedIn. They said, “Would you rather please your top performers or top talent, or would you rather do it for the whole company and let the top performers feel a little bit not as valued?” That was an interesting question.

It is the 80/20 rule. You got 20% of your people doing 80% of the work in production and bringing value. You can’t run your company without your top talent.

It is as long as they are not doing things that are completely toxic and blowing people out of the water.

If a person is toxic, then no, because that is like cancer. That is going to grow and make people leave. They can’t be toxic. You wouldn’t say that is a top performer if they are toxic, which would be one of my criteria.

They might be bringing in revenue, but if they are killing the morale and everything else and the other people working there, that is not someone you want to keep on your team. You are shooting yourself in your foot. You have stuff coming in this way, but it is coming out the back door the other way. It is blowing out the back door. You got to look at the whole picture. They are bringing in money, but how much are you losing with turnover because of this person?

What else can companies do? Top talent likes to work with other top talents. You want to surround those talented people with other people that are talented that they can collaborate with because when they feel like they are working with other smart people, that is not an easy thing to find. How do you get them working together and collaborating? That is going to generate even more productivity, energy, ideas, and positivity in your culture.

I want to transition a little bit. A lot of people think that once you are promoted to manager or once you are a manager, your role now is to lord over those you are managing. What is a real manager’s role, and how can you help managers develop into that role?

The quote you mentioned at the beginning is, “If you are a leader that’s not producing other leaders who can produce other leaders, you are not a real leader.” There is management, which focuses on the tasks and getting the job done in productivity, and there is leadership which is inspiring and helping people to grow, develop and contribute in meaningful ways.

A leader that's not producing other leaders who can produce other leaders is not a real leader. Click To Tweet

You answered the first part of the question. The second part is, how can you teach managers how to develop their people?

It is not necessarily an innate thing. You have to learn some skills. The best way to do that is to provide them with opportunities to learn and practice how to do that. That could be training or group coaching. The younger generation of managers values learning from their peers. They want to hear what other people are doing. They don’t want to hear from the expert. That is why we have converted our Modern Managers Leadership Series from a training program to a group coaching program.

We ran it in a public version because one client with twelve managers wanted to go through it. They said the number one thing that was important to them was that these managers wanted to learn from people in other companies what they were doing. They wanted a broader perspective. If you think about this generation, they are on all social media.

My kids don’t believe anything that I say. They only believe their peers. My daughter in school, who is taking classes and trying to figure out what credits are going to count. She will nag. She refuses to listen to me. She doesn’t trust anything that I say. She is asking all of her friends who are taking classes in the same school that she is in. Peer learning is important.

One way to help them build their confidence is they hear from others who are in the same position. It is just not hearing from people above them, but they want to hear from other people, maybe in the same position but in a different company, because you might do something a little different than we do. I like to bring that in or learn some of those skills. I love what you say that leadership and management are not innate. Some of those things are innate, but leading people and understanding how to respond to people, how to help them develop, and how to ask the right questions, those things come through training. That is not something that is innate in you.

Peter Block wrote about servant leadership, and there are a lot of books about that perspective. I feel like leadership is not about me. Leadership is about them. How do you switch your mindset to start thinking about your people and what they need rather than doing my job, meeting my numbers, and how I look good? You have to help your people look good. If they are looking good and they are delivering, you are looking good, but it is turning the tables. Some organizations have cultures like that, and some are the old command and control.

Leadership is not about me. Leadership is about your team. So how do you switch your mindset to start thinking about your people and their needs? Click To Tweet

Is that part of your CAREER Essentials program?

The CAREER Essentials program has a number of different kinds of skills. It is moving from here to there. You are shifting your perspective to the other side of the table and starting to wear all these new hats leading with emotional intelligence. You have to become in tune, not just with what is going on, but with how people are reacting and paying attention to body language and best practices for leading hybrid and remote teams. Not only are you have to do that with people, but you have to do it when they are remote or hybrid, and you only get to see from here up, or you have no idea what else is going on, having those difficult conversations and dealing with conflict.

The level of skill that you need in terms of emotions and the mental piece is important. We teach about coaching skills, dealing with resilience and change. All of these things are not what managers need to do but what leaders need to do. The Modern Manager Series is getting people who are new to being a manager or a supervisor, or maybe they have been in that role for a while but they have never had any formal training. When they come to it, they go, “That is what that is called. That is why that works.” You get those a-ha moments based on what their previous experience was or why things don’t work.

I want to shift gears a little bit because you talked about hybrid. There is a huge swing in virtual learning now. A lot of people want virtual learning since the pandemic, but the thing is, not all virtual learning is created equal. I wanted to ask you because you have done a lot of work in this since the pandemic. You have studied it, seen how it works, and how to take in-person training and make them engaging and interactive. Do you believe this trend will continue with virtual learning? That is the first part of that question. Answer that, and then I will ask you the next one.

Organizations are typically not willing to spend the money for people to physically come together, especially with organizations being geographically dispersed. What happened is the talent pool has opened up with hybrid work. You no longer have to hire people physically in your location if the organization is willing to do that. You now got people who are talented spread out. How are you going to get them to learn and not have a huge training budget? Hybrid and remote are here to stay. Those organizations that aren’t doing it are probably not attracting the best talent.

It is important to incorporate that because it also gives the learner more flexibility in their time. They don’t have to take two days off of work to do this when you can spread it out over time, and they can engage in it at different times instead of all of us having to take the day off to do this training. It depends on how the training is laid out for that.

The other question around that is now that there is this virtual learning and a lot of people are throwing virtual learning out there, how do leaders have the confidence to choose what platform will be best for their organization or their people? Can you give them some tools or insight into how to choose these things?

To talk a little bit about digital learning and the formats that are available, you have asynchronous. It is like eLearning online. It is a self-study and self-paced approach. The person is off on their own watching LinkedIn learning and videos. It is passive. Not that there is anything wrong, but informational, often video-based, does not have a lot of application. The thing to know is that after six days of physical classroom training, people forget 75% of what they learned six days later. If you spend the money to get people physically in a room, they are going to forget it. If that one-and-done approach, let’s inculcate them with all these skills for a day around leadership or management, it is going to go out the window if there isn’t any reinforcement.

What you mentioned about spreading it out over time is important. The other side is synchronous learning, where everybody is in the same place at the same time. Many people are taking what they did in the physical classroom. They are putting it into a live virtual format. They are on Zoom or Teams. Many of them are multitasking. They are not necessarily paying attention, or they are too long. You need a combination of both of those because in order to do an effective learning journey, people need to be able to apply the content.

They can watch a video, but after that, they need to fill out a little worksheet and say, “How does this apply to my team?” You give them a little worksheet in which they are going to put their team members’ names. They are going to look at whatever they are learning. We like to incorporate a social community where they are making posts. This is how the younger generation is learning.

Even while they are doing the asynchronous, they are interacting with other people, perhaps with the facilitator, who is the expert, as well as their peers. You can have accountability partners. You can make them do a little practice of a difficult conversation prior to coming to a live session. They are going to have to talk about what worked well and what didn’t work well. Maybe you give them an assignment to do that, come back, debrief and share what worked well and maybe what didn’t. The things that are painful are usually the best learning experiences, not just see how it is done perfectly.

We use a lot of assessments. We break things down into little bite-size chunks. As you said, “Learning journeys over time.” People cannot get the firehose and absorb all of that. They need to take a little bite. They need to chew, digest it, practice, move on to the next thing and make it become part of them. Spreading it out over time is critical. There is the 70/20/10. 70% should be on-the-job training, 20% with other people, and 10% formal classroom training. Most people do 70% of formal training, but that is the least effective.

A consultant shouldn’t come to you and say, “We can do this in 1 or 2 sessions.” You have to look at how much information or how much they are planning to give you in that 1 or 2 sessions. We need to look at spreading this out, having opportunities for people to engage in the skill, learn by doing, and move on to the next thing instead of trying to shove everything down and say, “Yes, we did that. We gave them learning. Let’s not do the check-the-box thing.” Transformation, impact, development, and growth, if you want those things to happen, people have to be engaged for a longer period of time in the learning journey. It is not a one-day workshop or a one-time thing. I wanted to reinforce that point because of how much we lose.

What we call that is to make learning sticky. All of the things that you were talking about are making it sticky. There’s spiral learning in learning fractions. In one week, they are learning fractions. The next week they are learning about money, dollar bills and quarters. They are learning about percentages. They keep doing that same concept. They keep touching it, but in several different ways. This is what we’re doing with some of the touching content several times in different ways, so it becomes a part of them.

That is what you have to look for. The question that I asked is what to look out for. You have to look out for stickiness and ask questions of the person providing the training or consulting for you. How sticky? What is the stickiness? What do you do to make it sticky for them to avoid that forgetting curve? That’s what I was trying to remember.

The reason why I call it experience-based virtual learning is because people learn from experiences. You need to look for a platform and an approach that creates an ongoing learning experience. It needs to be reinforced by their boss and manager. One of the things that we provide is a coaching tip sheet for the participant’s boss. It tells them, “Here are the objectives of the program.” It is a specific coaching question that you can ask to reinforce and support. If it is not reinforced, people aren’t going to do it.

Virtual learning is here to stay. It is going to only grow and get bigger. You need to look at how to take advantage. There are times when you do want everybody in the room because that can also be effective in team building and getting those side conversations going that you can’t get as much of over Zoom. There will be opportunities that, I don’t want to say you do, but you may have to come together for certain things.

Virtual learning can also be effective if it is done correctly. Don’t look at buying a course or something and saying, “We have done it. We did it.” Look at how you are investing your money to get the most ROI out of it. It is not about cheapening out on these things. You want to make a good investment in these programs for your people to get the benefit out of it. Diane doesn’t have to say it, but I’m saying it.

Just because it is expensive, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is good. You need to ask questions about how they are reinforcing it. How are they measuring what people are learning so they can come back and say, “Here is the value?” One of the things we do is a pre and post-assessment, and three months later, you get a little bit of a measure and a self-perception from the people in the course of how much they learn.

Make sure that you have these things built into any engagement you are doing when it comes to learning. You have to be able to measure the learning that is happening and get those data points, so you know that it is being effective with your people. Is there anything before I go into the rapid-fire that you wanted to share that I didn’t ask about that you feel you want people to know more about?

It’s the approach for career development, training not just the employees but also the managers. The managers have to feel that their success is based on their employee’s success and being able to identify their talents and align them with company objectives for a period of time. You don’t have to, as the manager, be the career coach and say, “Who are you? Where do you want to go in the next several years with your career?”

 

Let’s look at a one-year time window. Let’s start with where you are now. What are the gaps where you need to improve in your role? Where do you want to go next in the company? What else do you want to do? The manager is going to be able to have a window and a view to that because the manager knows all the other departments, the folks and the opportunities within the organization and who they need to talk to and network with so that they can learn more. The manager has to be the door opener. A lot of managers want to have all the great people and hold on to them. The manager that allows people to be promoted is the one that everybody wants to work for. You have to be willing to let go.

It brought me right back to that scarcity mindset. It was like, “If I give them all these opportunities and show them where else they can go, they are going to leave me.” That is what you want. We don’t have children for them to stay with us their entire lives. We teach, raise, and groom them so they can be free to fly. What happens is people come back and say, “Your child is amazing, gracious and incredible.” People come back and tell you how incredible your children are when you have done a good job raising them. It is the same thing with managers. People will come back and say, “Such and such who you recommended for this job are amazing. You have done such a great job in helping groom and teach them.”

It is building your own capital, reputation, and brand of how you run your ship and how you manage people. It can also bring you more advancement in your career because people will notice those things. Climbing the ladder might not be the most important thing for you, but it will come to you anyway if you help develop people who want to continue to grow and give them that opportunity to grow. Don’t be closed-minded. I said all that to say that. Give people opportunities, and it will come back to you in multiple ways. Are you ready, Diane?

I’m ready.

The first question I have for you is, what is the biggest leadership mistake you have ever made or were the victim of?

I might be a victim of some of the things I’m talking about, focusing on the task and not the person. I did have a person who worked with me many years ago. I remember my attitude and thinking about her and butted heads with me. I rubbed her the wrong way because I didn’t value where she was coming from. She wasn’t, in my opinion, focused enough on the task and the business. She left. She had four kids. Several years later, she came back, and she is working for me. She is my star top performer. Maybe something has shifted in me because of all of this work that I’m doing, but sometimes you are not even aware of it. We love working together. She is phenomenal. Something happened and shifted there.

I remember working for someone years ago. I was her assistant, and she wouldn’t teach me anything. She kept closing her office door when she was on phone calls or doing deals on anything. She has me get them on the phone. She would tell me she was grooming me for her position, but she wouldn’t teach me a single thing about the position. She wouldn’t invite me into a conversation. She wouldn’t share anything with me. I thought that was interesting. It was something to be said, “I’m grooming you from my position,” but she never once taught me a single thing about what it is that she did. I had to learn on the fly.

Action speaks louder than words.

Absolutely. What is the best leadership advice you have gotten that you still implement now?

If you are able to follow your passion, do what you love to do, and identify what your best talents are and what you are motivated by, that is where you should focus. If you are a leader, you need to be excited about developing other people. If you are not, that is not the right role for you. Maybe you have some expertise to develop leaders in technology, science or research and development. That is such a key thing.

As a leader, you need to be excited about developing other people because if you're not, the role is not for you. Click To Tweet

Companies, it is important when you promote someone into leadership to give them the tools to lead. There are people who say, “I can’t lead people because I’m not a people person.” It is not about being a people person. It is about having the tools to understand how to engage and help other people grow, which we are not born with.

There are skills that can be taught, learned and practiced.

If you are promoting people, give them an opportunity to succeed. My third question is, if you were a castaway on a deserted island, what three things would you hope washed ashore? One of them can’t be a cell phone. Three things you can’t live without.

I have to have food. For me, another person.

You will be here. I’m not talking to myself. I’m not talking to a ball like Tom Hanks. I’m not making up somebody.

I need to interact with some folks. I would say like a Bible or something, but not necessarily Christian or a Bible, but something to help with that spiritual, that inward focus and how to remain settled, grounded, and clear. If you don’t have that, you are not going to be able to survive on that island. You need that peace of mind and Zen, or whatever you want to call it.

I was thinking, as you said, food. It reminded me of Cast Away. I have to look at that movie again. It was such a good movie. He was like, “I have made fire.” He is proud of himself. He made fire. Here is another one. If you were a song title, a song out there, what would that title be and why?

I don’t know why this came to me. It is not YMCA, but there is something about that passion, energy, excitement, engagement or something about motivation. I don’t know if those songs that you can sing with, and you believe them. I love Dead Poet Society. That music is energizing and motivational. It is building. I don’t know what those song titles are, but that is what it brings to mind for me.

The final one is, what are you reading now, or what would you recommend to be the three top favorite titles of all time? I will give you a choice there. Either what you are reading now or give three of your favorite titles.

I do a lot of things virtually. I’m attending webinars and things like that from other experts. That is how I learn in my field. I don’t know what name these other people are. There’s Peter Block’s servant-leadership. That is a good one to shift the perspective. I do some reading about learning and how people learn best. It is not what color your parachute is, but those kinds of books that help you to identify your motivations and talents.

It could be anything that is that inward self-searching look, and everybody has their own thing that they resonate with. Those things are valuable to do that inner self-reflection and have those moments. I read spiritual stuff. I’m into Dao. There is a book called Torch of Enlightenment and things like that. There are Confucius things, but I don’t know if that is what you are looking for.

What would you recommend other people to read that you have found valuable for you, having that information? That is where the question is coming from.

The Confucius stuff and the Torch of enlightenment have this perspective of how to be a better human being, and the way to do that is to help other people and to think about where other people are. Where I get it from is from this spiritual perspective. How to be a better human being and make a better world is to consider others. That is what leadership is all about. All religions have that saying, “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.” There is that in Christianity, Judaism, Muslim and Buddhism.

Thank you so much, Diane. I appreciated your time, expertise, and knowledge in this new, not because it’s brand new but new because it is opened up so much more since the pandemic opportunity for virtual learning, understanding people better, training and development, for leaders to understand what opportunities are out there for them, how to look at learning and development for your people virtually if you have never done that before, and how you find the right program. Thank you for sharing all of that with us.

Thank you for having me. This was fun.

People, go out there and lead yourself, your teams, and your organization with audacious confidence. I will see you next time in another episode. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Fulcrum Network
• CAREER Essentials
• Modern Manager Series
• Torch of Enlightenment
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/DianeKubal/

 

About Diane Kubal

Prior to founding Fulcrum Network, Diane was a corporate leader and training specialist with expertise in customer services, experiential learning, and career and leadership development.

As a veteran entrepreneur, learning and development professional and consultant, Diane Kubal has developed numerous experience-based, virtual learning programs. Through the Fulcrum Network, she has sold the products and services of hundreds of consultants, trainers, and coaches.

Over the past few years, Diane has developed an experience-based, virtual learning methodology used in Fulcrum’s state-of-the-art learning platform. Diane has adopted this methodology and platform to showcase her expertise through programs such as CAREER essentialsSM and the Modern Manager Series. She also helps to convert her clients and consultants’ content into engaging digital experiences.

Fulcrum’s team of consultants have been hired by Fortune 1000 companies including Accenture, Bosch, BP, CDW, McDonalds, SC Johnson, Kraft, MillerCoors, Sears, United Airlines, and Wrigley.