I’m excited to share that today, we’re adding more than a dozen new courses in a brand-new vertical, Tech Leadership, to the Uplimit catalog. We are also thrilled to welcome a group of world-class leadership instructors to our platform—including Carole Robin, award-winning instructor of the “Touchy Feely” class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Sara Sperling and Stuart Crabb, former leaders of Meta’s Learning and Development function.
If you’d asked us about our expansion plans a year ago, we would have told you leadership courses were low on the list. On a personal level, I believe deeply in the importance of good leadership training—I became a manager at age 24, and I’m still humbled every day by the impact and responsibility I have as a leader. But there are a lot of leadership programs out there, and at first we weren't convinced Uplimit would serve our customers or our mission by jumping into an already-crowded market.
The more we talked to learners and companies about the skills they needed, though, the more I believed we had something important to offer. In the end, three things convinced us:
- Companies are struggling to find leadership programs that deliver both quality and scale. In conversation after conversation with companies, we heard that they were forced to choose between two less-than-ideal options: live, in-person or live virtual leadership training that was only accessible to a few, or asynchronous online courses that reached everyone but didn’t include hands-on practice and feedback. That’s a problem that exists across all areas of learning and development—and it’s exactly the problem we founded Uplimit to solve. As we talked to companies, we also realized that the shortcomings of asynchronous courses were even more apparent when it came to leadership development. Leadership is inherently about behavior change; changing your own behavior—or someone else’s—requires trying new things, getting feedback, reflecting, iterating, and trying again. Leadership isn’t something you can learn in a vacuum.
- In a post-COVID world, high quality leadership training is a must-have. Leaders and managers are facing unprecedented challenges, from fostering community on remote teams to keeping employees focused and motivated in a turbulent economy. Everyone—from the C-suite to the front line—needs more support to lead effectively.
- There’s real synergy between leadership training and our existing tech skills content. Rapid technological change is one of the biggest challenges leaders are facing today. Companies need leaders who can guide teams through major technology transitions, and tech professionals at all levels are taking on more strategic leadership responsibility. This is why we chose to focus these new courses on tech leadership: we believe the future of leadership is inextricably linked with the future of technology.
Just like our tech skills courses, courses in the tech leadership vertical will leverage project-based learning, peer-to-peer support, and personalized, AI-enabled just-in-time feedback to drive real, meaningful learning. We’re grateful to be working with instructors who are as excited about these features as we are—here’s what a few of our new leadership instructors had to say about why they chose to teach on Uplimit:
I taught the legendary “Touchy Feely” class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for almost two decades (often described by MBAs as worth the entire price of tuition) and co-authored the book Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships to arm as many people as I possibly could with the interpersonal skills required to achieve both professional and personal success. These competencies help build stronger, more robust, and functional relationships. They have proven to make a tremendous difference in people's lives—leading to promotions, saved marriages and repaired friendships. I am excited to collaborate with Uplimit to teach this course because they have developed a platform leveraging AI and community that achieves real personalization and learning outcomes at scale, helping me fulfill my dream of bringing this valuable knowledge to many, many more people.
Stu and I have worked together since 2007 and during that time have designed and implemented leadership development programs at more than 200 high growth organizations. The focus of our work has always been people managers and the teams they lead since they are the critical drivers of performance and the cultural experience in every organization. Throughout this time, we have been searching for a platform and partner that would enable us to truly amplify our work and make it more accessible to a wider audience of leaders. We didn't truly find the right match for this vision until we met the team at Uplimit and saw why their emphasis on tangible learning outcomes at scale combined with a great platform was the perfect fit for us.
- Sara Sperling and Stuart Crabb
We are so honored that Uplimit is connecting experts like Carole, Sara, and Stu with a wider audience, and we can’t wait to see the impact these courses have for our growing community of Uplimit learners. You can explore the full list of courses below or on our new Tech Leadership vertical page!