Training Programs Designed for Business Beat Crime in the Streets of Battle Creek

After training parents, police, and gang members in The Ken Blanchard Companies Situational Leadership II and Building High Peforming Teams programs, Battle Creek, Michigan has seen a dramatic reduction in violent youth crime. Not only are lives being spared but the community is saving money.

A few years ago, Battle Creek, Michigan, had serious problems. Gang activity was escalating in the high school and creating an explosion of violence and other juvenile issues that caught parents, school leaders, and the community off guard. Their kids were not only becoming high-risk youth, but many were losing their lives.

Today, Battle Creek is a touching turnaround story—the community has achieved a dramatic reduction in youth violence. According to Police Chief David Headings, the recent summer was the quietest summer most of his force has seen in their entire careers. That has come about through a highly successful collaboration between a Blanchard trainer, a caring corporate CEO, a community activist, concerned parents, a proactive police force, and the kids themselves—all of whom were able to unite to set and achieve common goals and productive communication through the skills they learned from training programs designed for business.

Years earlier Dev Ogle of The Ken Blanchard Companies was sitting in a restaurant in Battle Creek with Erv Brinker, the CEO of Summit Pointe. Brinker’s company is a provider of mental health care services and well known in the community for the way it is organized into units of self-managed teams. Ogle and Brinker were discussing the problems and thinking that it would be great if there was some way to pull the community together to forge a solution.

Enter Carl Word. At that time Word was a high school principal who dealt with at-risk kids. He also served on the board of Summit Pointe and was the beneficiary of Summit Pointe-provided training in the Blanchard Situational Leadership II and Building High Performing Team programs. The programs’ ability to help create open communications, develop competence and commitment, and get people working in teams left an impression.

Word, who was leaving the educational field to work for the Urban League of Battle Creek, kept asking himself how to apply the things he’d learned through the Blanchard training to improve social situations in the Battle Creek community—specifically thinking of how to improve the schools and reduce crime. Serendipitously, Summit Pointe has been a long-time supporter of the Urban League and Brinker generously offered to provide the resources and training required to support Word’s dream. Word took the lead and began to get people together. Having worked with some of the community’s most difficult kids, he knew exactly where to begin.

Rosetta Brewer, who is the chairperson of an organization called Parents Against Gang Violence, tells how it evolved.

“On January 9 my son got killed. Sometime after that, I went to a town hall meeting.

I went because of Carl Word—my kids had attended an alternative school that he ran called ‘ACE’. I took a big blow up photograph of my son in his coffin to the meeting and I told people: ‘This is reality; this could be your child.’ I said that if we didn’t step up and look at the problem, then we’ll lose a lot more kids.

But when people at the meeting asked if anything could be done about the violence, I said, ‘no.’

I didn’t believe that until this thing got dropped in people’s lap like it got dropped in mine that they were going to help do anything about it.

Then Mr. Word asked me to go to a training class offered by The Ken Blanchard Companies for business people. When I was there I kept thinking to myself, ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ I learned a lot though.”

After Brewer and others were trained in Building High Performing Teams, they held a retreat to talk about how to apply what they learned in the training in their home environments. They identified 150 kids who were the most disruptive to the community and then selected 17 they deemed to be at the highest risk level. The parents of those 17 were trained in the Building High Performing Teams Model.

Those parents developed norms, a charter, and a vision. That vision was to save their kids, save themselves, and save their community. Everyone wanted a safe environment and a safe community.

After the parents went through training, police department personnel were trained, and then the kids. Now the kids have their own charter and their own vision and the police and the kids have a relationship—the kids no longer run when they see police cars.

Parents Against Gang Violence is taking the same ideals that Blanchard delivers to professionals and applying them at the community level. “We’ve now trained over 200 people in the community— community leaders, parents, kids, the police department,” says Dev Ogle of Blanchard. “Their goals are to reduce gang violence, get kids back in school, and help people be better parents. It’s making a significant difference—and making a difference in economic hard times.”

Kevin Matthews tells about the difference it’s made for him and his family.

“Twenty years ago, I was where the kids were—I was a gangbanger and I did a lot of [bad] things. When I lost my little cousin, things began to hit me. But it really struck home when my son was shot. And then he was shot again. All I could see was that he was going to end up in a casket. I came into the Parents Against Gang Violence because I was tired of the shootings and the crime. I was scared. The training helps me understand how to help stop conflict and how to be a better leader. I have other children at home, including another son. I’ve told my son ‘this is no game.’ Either you change your life or you can lay in the casket or go to the penitentiary.”

Matthews believes that the training has helped a lot. “There are kids who would have told me before ‘get out of my face’ and now they’re right there with us. I serve as a mentor to 10 guys. Some of these are guys who have been in prison before. As far as the community goes, The Ken Blanchard Companies has done a lot. And my son is doing better. He now understands my position; understands about life.”

Vicente Munoz who has been a School Liaison Officer for 10 years at Battle Creek Central High School says, “There are probably a hundred kids that I could cite as examples, but there’s a young man I’d been working on a relationship with for four years—ever since he came into high school. He was arrested for some minor misdemeanor crime. I was working in the juvenile diversion program and this came before me. In talking with him, a whole slew of issues came to light about what was going on in his life—essentially he was being sucked into gang violence. With a lot of encouragement and a lot of effort, he graduated with a 3.8 grade point average. And he’s now on a full scholarship at a university. It was a revelation as to what could be done—how far it can go with one child.”

Rosetta Brewer sums it up by saying, “Without the training we wouldn’t be where we are today. I wouldn’t be where I am—in my home and in my community. My healing has come a long way. When I lost my son I promised God that I would serve our community; that I would help to save kids in our community. He gave his only son; I decided that I could give mine. I have God and I’ve learned a lot through the training. It’s not just for business—it’s for families and communities, too.”

Fortunately what’s working well in Battle Creek has the potential of growing roots elsewhere. Recently, Ken Blanchard spoke at prayer breakfast with California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He told of being approached by a citizen who asked “What are we going to do about the crime rate and what about our schools?” Schwarzenegger said, “I’m glad you said ‘we.’ As my wife’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ If we’re going to address crime, improve our schools, we all need to take responsibility.”

About the Training Programs

Situational Leadership II (SLII) is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and practical method of effectively managing and developing people, time, and resources in the world. SLII provides leaders with a model and the tools for creating open communication and developing self-reliance in those they manage. It is designed to increase the frequency and quality of conversations about performance and development. As a result, competence is developed, commitment is gained, and talented individuals are retained. SLII is recognized as both a business language and a framework for developing people because it works across cultural, linguistic, and geographical barriers. The foundation lies in teaching leaders to diagnose the needs of an individual or a team and then use the appropriate leadership style to respond to the needs of the person and the situation.

The Blanchard Building High Performing Teams Model helps groups focus on team chartering and creating a team vision, purpose, and values, clarifying roles and goals, developing appropriate leader and member skills, team decision making, and conflict resolution. It provides the teams with a shared model for working together. Building High Performing Teams addresses the need for agreements in several key areas. These include organization and team vision, purpose and values, team norms, team member roles, key responsibility areas and goals, communications strategies, decision making (with accountability and authority defined) and resources needed by the team to accomplish its goals. Once these are defined, strategies can be derived to help the group in its development. Managers can develop a specific action plan for managing the journey to team empowerment.