Leadership that elevates people and performance
Finding and retaining talent is critical for manufacturing companies as the industry faces growing operational challenges and a shrinking labor pool. However, doing so effectively doesn’t start with hiring — it starts with leadership.
Effective leaders do more than manage. They inspire and develop high-performing teams. They foster a culture that attracts top talent and keeps existing employees engaged. And when leaders are equipped to drive growth for themselves and others, your business can see measurable results, from reduced turnover to increased productivity.
Build the leaders you need to strengthen your business with Wipfli’s manufacturing leadership development.
Why Wipfli?
Many leadership training programs fail because they don’t drive lasting behavioral change. At Wipfli, we take a different approach that’s grounded in your challenges and aligned with your business goals.
We start by identifying the specific leadership skills needed to meet your operational objectives. Then, we apply real-world scenarios to help participants gain practical strategies they can use immediately on the shop floor or in the front office.
Our manufacturing leadership development goes beyond skill-building to help you foster a culture that prioritizes people, performance and long-term success.
How we help you
Wipfli’s Leadership Essentials emphasizes the core of strong leadership in manufacturing environments: the ability to foster trust and guide team development. Our program equips leaders with practical tools they can apply on the shop floor and back office, helping them integrate new leadership techniques into their routines while tracking their growth over time.
Leadership Essentials is built for the realities of your business and:
- Offers support at every level: Our sessions are designed to connect with leaders across your business, promoting trust-based, authentic leadership.
- Fits into your workflow: Delivered in focused, four-hour sessions every other week over 16 weeks, our program minimizes operational disruption while delivering meaningful change.
- Drives hands-on application: Leaders are encouraged to immediately apply what they learn on the job, reinforcing skills through real-time practice in their daily operations.
Our essential topics
We take up to 24 leaders on a journey that covers:
- Defining leadership and being an authentic leader.
- Communicating effectively.
- Partnering for performance.
- Delivering feedback.
- Coaching for growth.
- Delegating with purpose.
- Building a high-performing team.
Your results
Participants walk away with tools that make an immediate impact, including:
- Clear strategies for performance and retention: They learn how to set measurable expectations, reduce employee turnover, manage operational change and align leadership actions with business goals.
- Trust-building skills: From navigating tough conversations to communicating effectively, leaders gain practical techniques to foster stronger relationships.
- A personalized growth roadmap: Each participant develops a customized action plan tailored to their role and challenges, helping them continue growing long after the program ends.
Wipfli’s team development solutions are built to strengthen collaboration and accountability across your manufacturing teams, leading to faster decisions and better results.
We follow a structured, three-phase approach that targets key drivers of team effectiveness:
- Recognizing workstyle differences: Team members gain insight into their operating styles and obstacles to achieving their personal and team goals.
- Building high-performance habits: We guide teams in developing mutual trust, encouraging open dialogue, aligning around shared objectives and taking ownership of outcomes.
- Driving alignment and execution: Teams learn to focus on top business priorities and use their collective strengths and resources to execute precisely and consistently.
- Creating organizational clarity: We help teams align on your business’s most critical goals and harness team tools and resources to empower effective execution.
Wipfli offers industry-tailored coaching services and peer groups that can help your leadership transform.
Peer groups
Wipfli’s manufacturing peer groups are designed to foster professional growth, problem-solving and strategic collaboration. These sessions connect manufacturing leaders with like-minded peers to exchange insights, navigate challenges and accelerate leadership development in a high-value setting.
We host two groups to meet the needs of leadership across your business:
- The senior executive roundtable for presidents, manufacturing executives and C-suite level leaders.
- Leadership forums for young and upcoming leaders.
Leadership coaching
We help leaders excel with support that addresses their specific skill deficits and helps them grow in the aspects critical to leading others. Whether you need to develop high performers, new leaders or leaders who haven’t reached their full potential, we offer a three-step process that can help them transcend:
- Discover: Your leaders will gain a deeper understanding of how they operate and their core values, beliefs and strengths. We also help them identify the behaviors that are obstacles to their success.
- Conquer resistance: We help leaders challenge beliefs and assumptions about their leadership and recruit a team to support their development.
- Transcend: We help leaders find their edge and leverage it so that they can transcend their limitations. We also enable them to foster an ongoing, relentless curiosity through a growth mindset.
We offer two coaching options to match your business’s needs:
- Rise: This accessible, 90-day program helps leaders rapidly realize their capacity to own and drive change for businesses facing transformation or innovation.
- Transform: Over six to 12 months, we provide personalized, one-on-one coaching that helps leaders strengthen essential capabilities — such as executive presence and emotional intelligence — so they can lead with confidence and clarity.
Wipfli helps you make data-driven workforce decisions with talent assessment tools that empower you to hire the right staff and place them where they can perform at their best. We help you leverage people data using assessments, including:
Predictive Index
As a certified partner of Predictive Index (PI), Wipfli helps you use this powerful talent optimization platform to make informed hiring decisions, reduce turnover and structure teams for peak performance. With PI’s behavioral and cognitive assessments, you gain actionable insights to align talent with the demands of your operations.
EQ-i 2.0
Wipfli supports manufacturing organizations in using the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i 2.0) to identify and develop high-potential leaders. We help you interpret and leverage EQ-i 2.0 results to:
- Design targeted development plans for staff across your business.
- Identify individuals with the emotional intelligence needed to lead effectively in any environment.
360-degree assessments
Wipfli helps you implement 360-degree assessments that gather input from peers, direct reports and supervisors, so leaders better understand how they’re perceived. This insight helps identify strengths and growth areas, enabling the creation of tailored development plans and support that can ultimately help you:
- Improve leadership effectiveness.
- Boost team engagement.
- Enhance overall operational performance.
Our team
Jeffrey H. Wulf
Jeff Wulf combines experiences in management consulting and business process improvement to provide a unique blend of talents for Wipfli’s clients. He specializes in developing holistic consulting strategies aimed at improving overall client performance.
Brett Polglaze
Brett Polglaze brings over 20 years of experience to Wipfli’s organizational performance management consulting team and has a passion for tackling complex organizational questions. From improving business process flows to assisting clients through complex system selections, his focus has always been to architect solutions that solve critical business issues. He has led all aspects of technology selection, implementation, and operations improvement initiatives.
Tom Cox
Tom Cox leads Wipfi's leadership development programs. As a partner with 35 years of experience, clients benefit from Tom’s demonstrated ability to develop leaders and teams, cascading plans and accountability throughout organizations.
Mike Devereux, CPA, CMP
Mike Devereux has identified millions of dollars in tax incentives for manufacturing clients, led hundreds of research and development (R&D) tax credit study engagements and demonstrated leadership and exceptional judgment in the tax structuring of various acquisitions. He speaks nationally to various professional and industry trade organizations and associations about opportunities to reduce federal and state tax liabilities and has written dozens of articles for trade publications.
Laurie Harbour
Laurie Harbour is a partner with more than 35 years of manufacturing and consulting experience. Prior to joining Wipfli, she was the co-owner of Harbour Results, Inc., and has spent her career helping clients develop strategies, improve operations, reduce risk and optimize business performance. Clients benefit from Laurie’s ability to work with leadership teams to assess the current state of their business and provide strategic and operation recommendations for improvement.
Implement the right systems for success
We helped Jones Sign select an ERP that helped them unify data and eliminate manual processes across seven facilities.
