HRI Leadership Academy Student Portal
Preference is given to candidates with at least five years leadership experience and 7 years relevant industry work experience.
Welcome! Congratulations once again on your acceptance into the HRI Leadership Academy Class of 2025. To become a class member, you had to demonstrate your commitment to leadership roles, your desire to enhance your leadership skills, and your dedication to the horticultural industry. Well done!
As a class member, you have committed a substantial amount of your time to the HRI Leadership Academy. In addition, AmericanHort and HRI have invested heavily in you as a participant in this program. Others have made a commitment to your involvement, including your business and your family. For these reasons, we know you will want to maximize your involvement and take advantage of every opportunity to grow and expand your abilities. Now, the work (and fun) begins!
Participation
You are expected to fully participate in all sessions and coursework. Remember, physical presence itself is not sufficient. You are tasked with being mentally alert, practicing critical thinking skills, keeping an open mind, completing assignments and being prepared, asking well thought-out questions of classmates and speakers, participating in class discussions in person and in between sessions, etc.
Assignments & Materials
All classmates will complete an assessment called HBDI® (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument – If you have taken this in the past, please complete another assessment for Leadership Academy). The results of this assessment, your HBDI® profile, will be given to you during our 1st session and will provide insights into your individual thinking preferences. As a result, you will better understand how you approach leadership activities, like communicating, decision making, and problem solving. We’ll refer to HBDI® and discuss its application to various topics throughout Leadership Academy. Click here to complete this brief assessment.
LEAD Project Details
The LEAD Project is the culmination of the HRI Leadership Academy. We know that participants become better leaders when they learn from current, real-world opportunities and challenges versus applying concepts to a theoretical case study. Developed over the course of the program, the LEAD Project provides participants (typically in groups of three to four) with a safe environment to explore ideas to better their businesses and the industry. Teams examine a real-world issue or opportunity facing businesses or the industry and recommend a business or industry improvement, investment, or solution. In the end, participants will leave with hands-on, relevant experience with innovative and realistic ideas for business and industry consideration.
LEAD Project
- Learn and research an issue
- Engage with team and others
- Adopt a position and solution
- Deliver final plan & recommendations
The LEAD Project development process consists of:
- Research the situation: data-driven where possible, interviews with experts encouraged
- Pose a hypothesis
- Assess the business or industry impact of possible solutions
- Make the case for change
- Recommend a solution and course of action
- Receive program and industry coaching throughout
- Presentations given at Cultivate