Q&A with Russ Ouellette and Kristi Baxter of Sojourn Partners

Russ Ouellette and Kristi Baxter of Sojourn Partners are veterans of the corporate world, where they learned leaderships skills from the people who led them and from becoming leaders themselves. Along the way, they learned the essence of great management and company culture, where employees achieve success within a framework that recognizes their contributions and challenges them to become the best versions of themselves, even when the journey becomes difficult.

In addition to the coaching services they provide to executives and company teams, Ouellette and Baxter teach the Emerging Leaders Training Program in partnership with the Business & Industry Association and the University of New Hampshire’s CEO & Family Enterprise Center.

The six-month program, presented at the BIA’s headquarters in Concord, features interactive sessions where participants learn from each other through classroom discussions and exercises as well as through the guidance of Ouellette and Baxter. The program also includes guest talks from leaders from major New Hampshire companies.

NH Business Review’s managing editor, Amanda Andrews, and editor, Mike Cote, are both graduates of the program (and can testify to the great value of the sessions). This interview was culled from a recent episode of NH Business Review’s Down to Business podcast, available at nhbr.com and major audio streaming services.

We’re both alumni of the Emerging Leaders Training Program that is offered through the Business and Industry Association and the CEO & Family Enterprise Center. Tell us about how that program was established and what it offers businesses and emerging leaders in New Hampshire.

OUELLETTE: It came out of the BIA. The demographics are changing, right? Leaders are moving up in the organization. How do we get younger people to be attracted to this? (Former BIA president) Jim Roche and I spent some time talking about it for a couple of years … We crafted it to be different than the state and city leadership programs. This is really about leadership overall, about building the muscle of leadership within companies, to give up-and-coming executives a chance to see the BIA and a chance to interact with leaders from the BIA and really hone their skills to lead and get ready to step up.

We have no problem getting speakers from the membership to come and speak to people. The results every year are pretty positive.

How did you and Kristi come together to form this program? You guys play off each other well.

BAXTER: When I joined, Russ had already gotten this up and running … I became active during the COVID years to do some of the online delivery when we couldn’t be in-person. It was a little challenging during COVID to keep it interesting and dynamic. Thankfully, the world returned to normal, and we could go back and being in-person. We love doing this program. I find every class has its own character and a little bit of its own flavor. It’s always really exciting for us at the beginning of the season to see who’s in it and how the class is going to take shape.

OUELLETTE: From our perspective, KristI and I are going into a room full of peers, really bright people that are in these companies, and we’re not there to lecture them, even though I have a tendency to maybe do that a little bit. But we really try to have interaction with peers. We’re not the professors and you’re the students. We’re kind of all in it together, and we’re facilitating and guiding you through an experience.

BAXTER: Russ and I learn as much from the participants as hopefully they do from us. Everybody has a story, everybody has experience, everybody has a perspective. When we can share it in an environment that’s very collaborative, and kind of growth oriented, I think everybody benefits.

OUELLETTE:  It’s really just normalizing the situations that we’re in. You learn you’re sitting with somebody in a completely different industry, and they’re facing the same exact challenges you are. What we’re trying to do is when you walk away, we want you to think, ‘oh, this is really not as hard as people make it out to be.’  We can develop a certain muscle and the courage to be able to go off and do stuff. When one of your peers is talking about a challenge that they’re working through, and you’re sitting there coaching them and advising them on it, you’re taking it extremely seriously. It’s as real as it’s going to be in any case study.

BAXTER: I like to say that we really give participants a very practical, pragmatic leadership toolbox. You will walk away from this program with some really good tools that we’ve already practiced in real time. They should have a comfort level walking right back into their organization, saying like, ‘OK, I can have a challenging conversation, I can do strategy. I have a sense of how I influence people and what kind of impact I want to have,’ and just be more intentional as they move through as a leader.

For more information about the Emerging Leaders Training Program, visit biaofnh.com.