Melissa Bostrom sold me on applying to the Emerging Leaders Institute (ELI) with one word: “deliverable.”  The program included many attractive characteristics: leadership training, self-assessments, and coaching.  However, from the beginning I was focused on the group project – not simply as an exercise in working with others but to develop a concrete product that I can reference in future interviews as a significant accomplishment from those six weeks.

In the end, I got both – a learning experience in working with a team and a product that exists in the real world. (more…)