CEO and Founder, Bright Wire Leadership
In our recent conversation with Christine Dagenais, CEO and Founder of Bright Wire Leadership, we delved into her pioneering role in leadership development. Christine’s innate ability to nurture talent has crafted both her entrepreneurial narrative and the dynamic team behind Bright Wire. Eschewing the standard one-size-fits-all paradigms, Bright Wire’s bespoke coaching plans cater specifically to individual ambitions and team requirements. Their strategy workshops, rooted in the SOAR framework, not only guide leaders in strategy formulation but also its proficient execution. Unique in its team-based coaching model, Bright Wire’s collaborative ethos offers unmatched value to their elite clientele, including Canada’s Fortune 100 companies. With a team boasting top industry accreditations, they’ve carved numerous success stories across Canada and North America. As Small Business Month unfolds, Christine shares invaluable insights for budding entrepreneurs, emphasizing the essence of visionary leadership and industry differentiation.
With over 20 years of experience in leadership development across a range of industries and disciplines, Christine understands how to turn challenges into opportunities. Having grown up in the corporate world and transitioned to Entrepreneurship mid-career, Christine has successfully built and scaled an industry-leading organization, in just under three years.
Christine has been recognized as a Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network and was recently awarded a Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for demonstrating exceptional qualities and outstanding service to the province of Alberta. In 2020, Christine published her first book, The Intentional MBA, and in 2021 she received the Transformational Leader Award through the Universal Women’s Network, Women of Influence program, for the impact of her work that has enabled successful transformations for hundreds of leaders and organizations. In 2022, Christine was inducted into the University of Lethbridge’s Alumni Honor Society for her exemplary leadership and impact in the industry of Leadership Development and Professional Coaching. Christine is a frequent writer for Forbes Coaches Council and an active mentor to women in leadership, in partnership with numerous organizations and causes.
Her organization, Bright Wire Leadership, was recently recognized as a finalist by the Alberta Chamber of Commerce as a Business of Distinction. Christine actively gives back to the community and non-profit organizations, including previously traveling to Peru with Light Up the World, to install solar technology in rural villages, providing access to light with the vision of increasing literacy rates among children and has travelled to over 60 countries around the world.
How has being a forerunner in the industry, coupled with your inherent knack for bringing out the best in people, shaped your entrepreneurial journey and led to attracting such a dynamic team at Bright Wire?
First of all, thank you for the compliment. I feel that my ability to bring out the best in people was honed because of my genuine desire to do so, which in a way sort of illuminated my path to coaching. Even within my work as a more one-on-one coach, partnership, long-term relationships, and lasting results were of paramount importance to me. These priorities translated well into founding Bright Wire. Ultimately, at Bright Wire, we’re in the business of people, potential, and partnership. This exists within our team as much as it extends to our clients.
As I began building out our team, knowing that I have an intrinsic drive to continuously improve my own skills and widen my own horizon, it had to be a team that helped me do that—to continue to uplevel, and indeed, surpass myself. As such, the Bright Wire team was bound to be dynamic, in addition to being highly respected, credentialled, experienced, and educated. By working mindfully to attract a team of likeminded people with different perspectives and shades of expertise, we now have a team full of individuals who enhance each other every day.
Traditional leadership development courses often follow a one-size-fits-all approach. How does Bright Wire’s custom coaching plan differentiate itself, ensuring it caters to unique professional goals and team development needs?
The nature and needs of business today is everchanging, every person is fundamentally unique, and all circumstances are nuanced. As such, a one-size-fits-all approach is a misnomer as much as it’s a fallacy. One-size-fits-all doesn’t fit anyone. For this reason, Bright Wire has no off-the-shelf content to ensure that our process is completely bespoke and our leadership development and coaching programs are perfectly tailored to the purposes of a given company or individual.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t consistencies across our programs. Each is steeped in the capabilities we know to be critical to a leader’s ability to deliver on business strategy. This means that we first commit ourselves to learning the strategy and understanding the purpose and values of the company before making our partnership recommendations. We also recalibrate as needed over the course of our relationship with any given organization. We have an unwavering commitment to building executive sponsorship which helps ensure our work’s impact long outlasts any active partnership.
Bright Wire’s strategy planning workshops are based on the SOAR framework. How does this results-driven approach enable leaders to not only identify their strategy but also ensure effective implementation?
While we perform a SOAR analysis to assess the strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results that exist within a given business in light of the present market, this is just part of what informs our strategy planning workshops. We lean heavily on our leadership development capabilities and advanced business acumen to recognize which existing strategies are falling short and to arrive at an aligned understanding of the business’ overall purpose. It’s just as important at this stage that we create consensus relative to the amount of rework—refinement or overhaul—needed and arrive at agreed upon measures of success. Reciprocating accountability is key throughout.
Our approach enables our partners to build leadership capabilities as well as refine the strategy of your team, department, or organization in parallel. In addition to more tangible outcomes like mapping current state against desired state, clear KPIs, and a plan of action, the exercise itself doubles as a teambuilding opportunity, and a stronger team strengthens an organization’s ability to implement and thrive through change.
Bright Wire stands out as one of the only coaching firms that operates as a team. How does this collaborative approach amplify the benefits for your clients, especially those leading Canada’s Fortune 100 Businesses?
It might be a bit of an oversimplification to say that we enable high-performance teams because we are one, but it doesn’t make it any less true. We work as a team to take a systemic view of the business and collaborate to come up with the best approach. This not only drives maximum results, it’s also the most efficient way to execute for our clients and an excellent way for each member of our team to continue to add to their own core competencies and expand on their expertise. We share learnings, iterate on best practices, and report in aggregate to provide our clients with the kinds of insights that wouldn’t be available to independent contractors who work in silos.
All of Bright Wire’s coaches and experts have the highest levels of accreditation in the industry. How does this rigorous standard contribute to the success stories of the organizations you work with across Canada and North America?
It’s about our individual and collective experience as much as it is about our accreditations. Our team’s firsthand experience holding positions of leadership enables them to relate to our clients, and to relate their education to partner circumstances. We draw from all facets of our backgrounds in our coaching and executive advisory work as we share our own experiences while ensuring that the path forward is charted by the client.
The importance we place internally on education and proven performance is becoming more and more of a differentiator for us as the market is flooded with “coaches” without professional credentials. Our stance on the matter positions us to partner with similarly discerning clients. Because we hold ourselves to a high standard, we’re effective in helping the organizations and individuals we work with push themselves in pursuit of better.
As we celebrate Small Business Month, what insights can you share for emerging entrepreneurs seeking to elevate their leadership abilities and distinguish themselves in their industries?
Identify your strengths and focus on honing those while you develop others or pursue new ones. Naturally, I’m a firm believer in the power of working with a professional coach, but that’s not the only option or within reach. What is always available is seeking opportunities to engage in or witness conversations between qualified people speaking on topics you hope to master. Always be on the lookout for webinars or meetups concerning your area of interest and expertise. Just last month we hosted our first ever Spotlight Series session wherein a panel of our executive coaches discussed the meaning and importance of candour in business and leadership today.
As far as what not to do, never take on business you aren’t equipped to serve well and never say yes to something or someone that is not aligned with your values. At Bright Wire, we’ve maintained our vigilance on these fronts and credit these boundaries for our sustained scalability and ability to build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with our clients and partners.
