Jack Zenger is one of those very special people whose work and personal relationship has had a big impact on my career. And he’s a wonderfully warm human being and all around nice guy. As co-founder and president of California-based Zenger Miller, Jack and his organization developed outstanding leadership training programs that my previous company, The Achieve Group, distributed in Canada throughout the eighties. We not only sold their powerful programs and services teaching personal, team, and organization effectiveness principles; we built our own company around them. By 1990, The Achieve Group had become Canada’s largest training and consulting company.

In 1991, Achieve co-founder, Art McNeil and I sold our company to Times Mirror Training and merged with Zenger Miller. For the next few years, I was an executive team facilitator and coach with Zenger Miller/Achieve traveling extensively across Canada and the U.S. I delivered keynote presentations and facilitated dozens of senior management team retreats and coaching sessions. During that time, Jack and I worked together and I learned a great deal from his wisdom and extensive experience. A few years after I left in 1994 to form The CLEMMER Group, Zenger Miller/Achieve, Learning International, and Kaset were merged into what is now AchieveGlobal.

Jack and I still cross paths occasionally and stay in touch with each other’s work. He is now CEO and Co-Founder of Zenger Folkman. You can read his biography at http://zengerfolkman.com/jack/.

I was delighted to be a recent guest blogger on Zenger Folkman’s blog. You can read my posting on “The Motivation Myth That Won’t Go Away” at http://zengerfolkman.wordpress.com. Scroll down to May 5. While you’re there, check out many of the other excellent blog postings from Zenger Folkman. Jack sent me a review copy of his new book a few months ago. I’ll be posting a review on my blog in the coming weeks on this excellent new book, The Extraordinary Coach: How the Best Leaders Help Others Grow.