Maximizing Your Leadership Potential
Chances are you’ve heard some positive – and perhaps more dubious – leadership advice over the years. Yet have you ever taken the time to consider how leadership actually looks for YOU? Is there a leadership quote or philosophy that guides your work? What are your top leadership values? What is your primary leadership style, and when should you adjust and use the strengths of other styles?
In Maximizing Your Leadership Potential, you will have the opportunity to explore these topics for yourself. In addition, the program is designed to help you with practical skills to achieve lasting, sustainable results through people. This course will enable you to sharpen your skills in four fundamental areas of leadership: self-awareness, learning agility, communication, and influence.
Who should attend:
- Managers and supervisors of individual contributors
- First-level managers who are facing new challenge
- People who have recently been promoted to a management role
Key Topics:
- Identifying your leadership style and what your personal strengths and weaknesses mean for leading your team
- Increase commitment and engagement to improve team effectiveness
- Build and strengthen relationships in ways that allow for better performance, effective delegation, and contribution of others
- Find constructive responses to conflict by understanding self and others
- Learn how and when to adjust leadership style and draw on others to understand and solve problems
Registration Information
Date: July 23, 2026
Schedule: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Location: Grainger Hall, Wisconsin School of Business, UW–Madison
Looking for leadership opportunities for your aspiring and emerging leaders?
See all GROW classes listed on our Classes & Training page. These affordable, skills-based courses focus on fundamental skills like conflict management, emotional intelligence, delegation, communication, and more.
We may also be able to bring training to your team!
Registration Summer 2026
Date: July 23, 2026
Time: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm CST
Location: UW–Madison
Fee: $289
Registration Deadline Type
Early Bird
Late Registration
Course Registration Closes
Date
Early Bird Closes: 6/23/2026
Late Registration Begins: 7/12/2026
7/22/2026
Fee
Early Registration Fee: $260
Late Registration Fee: $318
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Cancellation Policy: Due to program costs and space limitations for these programs, participants are expected to cancel their registration at least 24 hours ahead of the program. Cancellations that occur less than 24 hours prior to the start of the program will be considered no-shows and may be removed from future programming and/or charged a course fee.
Disability Statement: Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact the UW–Madison SBDC office at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu to request accommodations.
The Small Business Development Center at UW Madison is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP®.
Sarah Smyrk MA, CLF®, RCC™, CCMP®
Instructor
Sarah’s career is driven by her desire to understand and relate to people. Throughout her career, she has worked in many roles to help business leaders drive product and program strategies that are rooted in strong relationships, made by data-driven decisions, and centered around the holistic customer experience. She is passionate about working closely with individuals to help them achieve top levels of success and take their business to the next level while providing an outstanding client experience. Using her leadership skills and experience as a Registered Corporate Coach™ (RCC), she helps teams build and implement programs that strengthen and reinforce goals and top priorities.
Sarah joined Northwestern Mutual in 2016 and has held several leadership roles across the organization. In her current role, Sarah leads Enablement and Consulting for the Field Performance Team, where she is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing field leader consulting practices. She focuses on helping enterprise teams effectively execute on multi-year strategy initiatives and ensuring alignment on change readiness plans across business partners and the organization.
Previously, Sarah was with Trustage (formerly CUNA Mutual Group) in Madison, WI (2007-2016), where she was responsible for leading the strategy and execution of training initiatives for CUNA Brokerage Services, Inc. (CBSI). In addition, she also led the training strategy for the Annuity Product Sales Team. While at Trustage, she developed and led CBSI’s Women of Distinction program, a group of the company’s top female financial advisors. The group focused on mentoring advisors who were either new to the organization or to the industry.
Sarah currently holds several industry designations including FINRA Registrations Series 7, 63, 9, and 10 and her Chartered Leadership Fellow (CLF®) through the American College. She is certified through PROSCI as a Change Management Professional (CCMP®) and LaMarsh Global as a Certified Change Practitioner. In December 2023, Sarah graduated from The University of Alabama with her master’s degree in organizational leadership.
Sarah lives in Madison, WI with her husband Sam and dog Andy. She was recognized by Madison’s InBusiness Magazine as “40 Under 40”, is a competitive bodybuilder, enjoys working out, and always being active.
[I really enjoyed the] guided sharing stories, real examples [and] learning what time of leader/coach I tend most to be. Thank you Sarah!
Taking this course in person with others is very edifying, and I think those insights and discussions were invaluable!
[The class included] really good real-world examples and great interpersonal discussions. The instructor is clearly experienced in the subject, [and is] upbeat, fun, and educational.
[It was so valuable] being able to discuss with peers good ways to manage employees and discuss issues we’ve been running into.
I enjoyed the references to books, TED talks, videos, and other tools that can be utilized; Sarah did a fantastic job!
Sarah is very knowledgeable and has incredible insights, and her teaching style kept me engaged.
[Sarah was] very easy to follow and understand, and she genuinely cares what people have to say/add. [I liked] the discussions with other people who face similar situations to me but are in very different positions than I am.
[I appreciated] discussing real situations from each of our workplaces. Sarah was very personable and humorous – very enjoyable and a positive presence.
I loved learning about situational leadership! I had no idea that there were so many different approaches to leading people.
“The instructor was knowledgeable and gave real life practical methods on how to implement the strategies that were discussed throughout the class to maximize leadership potential! Would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in growing as a leader.”
I enjoyed the opportunity to be introspective and examine how I can tailor my leadership/coaching strategies to my unique strengths.She made it easy to pay attention for a whole day.
The Wisconsin SBDC Network is a proud part of the Office of Business & Entrepreneurship within the Universities of Wisconsin. It is funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Wisconsin SBDC at UW–Madison is also part of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub at UW–Madison.
The Wisconsin SBDC at UW–Madison helps entrepreneurs succeed at any stage. We offer no-cost, confidential consulting and business education across a wide region, primarily serving Dane, Sauk, and Columbia counties. SBDC services are provided in a nondiscriminatory way to all legal residents and citizens in the US.
Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact us at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu or call (608) 263-2221.