‘INVESTING IN THEMSELVES’ Cloquet Chamber program helps cultivate lifelong skills

By Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten Cloquet Pine Journal

CLOQUET — When Ruth Casper participated in the Cloquet Area Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Program, she was in her first management role.

“I was young and still learning how to be a manager and lead a team, so I jumped on it because I was like ‘This couldn’t come at a better time for me,’” she said.

Over more than 20 years, the leadership program has served employees of large Cloquet companies all the way to smallbusiness owners and staff at smaller businesses, said Kelly Zink, chamber president.

The sessions are offered every other year and run from December to May. Participants meet once a month, with a maximum of 24 people in the program.

The program is aimed at anyone in business looking to grow in their leadership skills, Zink said.

“If you are a leader of a business and you have 100 employees, or maybe you own your own business … our goal was to be able to build a program that would help all levels of leadership, and I believe that we’ve attained that,” she said.

All about leadership Casper works as the area sales manager for ZMC Hotels, but at the time she participated in the program, she worked at Kolar Chevrolet.

The program helped her learn more about herself and her leadership style, as well as different types of leadership.

“A lot of the things I really liked about the program were the ways that you learned about yourself. There were a lot of opportunities for you to learn why you do things the way you do and whether they were good or bad and how they affect people,” she said.

In her role at Kolar, Casper managed a variety of people. The leadership program taught her about the expectations people from different generations tend to have about leadership, from millennials to Gen Xers to baby boomers.

“It was very interesting for me to find my place in that,” she said. “And learning about different generations and different expectations that were there helped me communicate better and hold myself a little more professional in a lot of different situations.”

Ted Schick, owner of Schick Corporate Learning, kicks off the leadership program’s first session and is there when the program concludes.

A professional speaker and trainer, Schick said he loves speaking about leadership and has been involved with the Cloquet Chamber’s program since its inception.

Schick focuses on three things during his presentations to the group: leading yourself, servant leadership and community service.

“You can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself,” Schick said. “It’s one of the very first things I talk about when we open this program, and it’s a common theme all the way through.”

On servant leadership, Schick said he is a huge proponent.

Through 20 years in the U.S. Navy, Schick saw firsthand how servant leadership can make an impact on people.

“The best officers I knew, the best leaders I knew, they served their teams,” he said. “It’s taking care of your crews.”

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