Late last year, the Velsoft team decided to create a series of free guides as resources for clients and others. The Conversations That Matter guides are intended to provide useful information, and to begin a conversation, with the goal of promoting positive and healthy work environments.

The first — called Preventing Sexual Misconduct in the Workplace — was made available to download in February. Due to the positive response, and because we always planned to produce more guides in the series, this month we’re releasing the second one — The World Needs Good Leaders Now.

The idea for the first guide — and the series — came from an internal discussion after several clients contacted Velsoft looking for training materials because of concern for their employees resulting from the #metoo movement. They wanted to make sure sexual harassment doesn’t happen in their workplaces. We decided to put together a package that offers useful information for employers that will enable them to take proactive steps toward eliminating harassment in their workplaces.

The inspiration for this new guide came from the students in Parkland, Florida who became reluctant leaders of the Never Again movement after 17 of their classmates and school staff were killed when a gunman shot them at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February. The survivors of the mass shooting are calling for stricter gun controls to prevent future tragedies, and they say they feel they need to step into this leadership role because others aren’t.

Today, the general feeling is that leadership in various aspects of our lives — in government, business and elsewhere — is inadequate.

In fact, according to a Washington Post-ABC News survey conducted after the Florida school shootings, 77 per cent of potential voters think that Congress isn’t doing enough to prevent deaths from gun violence. And almost two-thirds believe President Donald Trump needs to step up and take action to stop these tragedies from occurring.

A survey on Leadership Development conducted by Borderless in 2016 found that 54 per cent of respondents describe leadership development in their organization as poor. In Australia, 75 per cent of employees who completed a survey reported that workplaces need better managers and leaders.

The World Needs Good Leaders Now strives to help rectify this situation.

It explores what makes a good leader, the impact of poor leadership and how can we become better leaders. It also provides resources that we hope will help you work on your own leadership skills — no matter whether you are a supervisor or manager at work, the organizer of a community event, the head of the local hockey association or none of these things — in order to make this world a better place for all of us.

Download the guide here.