The Remarkable Service program was designed to hold every employee to a consistent service standard. But a standard only works if leaders understand it deeply enough to model it, coach to it, and hold their teams accountable to it. Leaders were going to receive the same three-day training as everyone else but that was not enough. They needed their own day first.

I worked closely with the VP of Member Experience who would facilitate the session to understand what leaders actually struggled with. The gaps were clear: leaders had no shared coaching framework, no tools for managing upward, no consistent approach to recognition, and significant discomfort around accountability conversations. The session was designed around those four gaps specifically.

Before the program went live I ran pilot sessions with the COO, CEO, VP of Member Experience, and VP of Employee Experience to pressure-test the content and ensure it aligned with their vision for what leadership at ACFCU should look like. Getting four executives in the room to review a training before it reaches every leader in the organization is not standard practice. It signals how seriously this program was taken and how much trust was placed in the design.

A full-day instructor-led training covering five objectives: understand your leadership why, embody the four ACFCU leadership attributes, coach with intention, lead with accountability, and recognize and reward remarkably.

The coaching section alone spans nearly half the day and uses a deliberate before and after structure. Leaders do a baseline coaching role play with no instruction first so the facilitator can observe where they are starting. Then they receive the framework, watch a Synthesia AI coaching video, complete an original coaching session plan I built from scratch, and redo the role play using everything they just learned. The difference between the two role plays is visible in the room.

Other activities include a gallery walk where leaders identify behavioral examples of each of the four leadership attributes, a Red Light Green Light game using real Teams messages to distinguish constructive from ineffective peer feedback, an upward influence map where leaders answer structured questions about their own leader before practicing upward coaching scenarios, a Kahoot poll on accountability comfort levels, and a recognition brainstorm grounded in neuroscience videos on dopamine, Maslow, and the reciprocity principle.

Every worksheet, every activity card, the coaching session plan, and the upward influence map were built from scratch. None of it existed at the organization before this program.

Designing for leaders is different from designing for individual contributors. Leaders come in with strong opinions, limited patience for content that feels beneath them, and a low tolerance for anything that feels like a lecture. Every section had to earn its time in the room. The coaching section in particular required a carefully sequenced before and after structure so leaders could feel their own growth within the session rather than being told they needed to improve.

All leader cohorts completed the training in January and February 2026 before employee cohorts began. Leaders entered the three-day employee sessions having already internalized the standard they were expected to reinforce. The CEO publicly praised the program at the March 2026 town hall.