If you read my dispatch post from SIOP this year, you may remember I mentioned that conferences aren’t exactly my favorite thing. Well, it’s possible that they’re starting to grow on me, because I’m here to say I attended another one – the MEECO 2019 Leadership Conference – a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, I will say it was more like a family reunion than a conference, which greatly worked to its benefit. I actually opened my presentation with this observation, and it must have resonated – the conference head, CB Bowman, mentioned it in her final address. 
For those not aware, MEECO is the Measuring Excellence in the Use of Executive Coaching, Employee Sciences, and/or Culture Through Leadership in Organizations (phew, that’s a mouthful). It is also home to the MCEC Certification (Master Corporate Executive Coach). For me, this designation really defines the type of individual who attends the conference. Over the course four days, presenters broached topics from coaching the assertive leader to situational leadership research to creating change through storytelling.
Even better, the conference was held right on the waterfront in beautiful San Diego; being from Maine, we get excited about opportunities to continue the warm weather trend into October. I attended the conference with MRG’s President, Tricia Naddaff, and our Chief Sales and Solutions Officer, Staci Nisbett.
Tricia and I were lucky enough to individually present, each presenting about exploring motivation using the Individual Directions Inventory. Tricia’s in-depth presentation was delivered on Tuesday to individuals who actually took the assessment and received their own data…this, of course, was a pile of fun. I presented two days later with a similar focus, but to those whose interest in the application of motivation to leadership coaching is just emerging. They were a very curious group, and I look forward to seeing how far they’ve traveled down their coaching path in the coming years.
Being a Diamond partner of the MEECO Institute, MRG also attended the conference to support coaches in their journey of using assessment in their engagements. Additionally, our esteemed leader Tricia was awarded with the 2019 President’s Award. As always, Tricia correctly read the energy in the room and delivered a rousing acceptance speech about the importance of the work coaches do and their continued efforts. The award presentation was also attended by How Women Rise author Sally Helgesen, as she received a Thought Leader of Distinction Award.
I walked away from the conference with two primary take-aways:
1) Approaches to leadership coaching vary greatly, and each approach comes with unique benefits; and
2) There’s an impressive sense of urgency from all who do this type of work – a compulsion to continue improving professional environments.
This sense of urgency was interesting to witness as the conference progressed. It was clear to me that people were energized by presentation topics, wanted to bring newly learned information back to their engagements, but they were also concerned about the current state of leadership. People clearly wanted to “do more.” It was fun to watch this evolution over just four days.
If you’re curious about the topics Tricia and I presented on, I hope you’ll join us for our upcoming webinar about the IDI. I really enjoyed presenting, and hope to be able to bring additional content in years to come. I have a feeling our Personal Directions assessment will fit quite nicely with this crowd and am already noodling ideas on this. At the very least, I anticipate attending MEECO in the coming years…I mean, people don’t usually skip family reunions!
