Rather than ignoring that people have lives apart from their jobs, Mike Hovda suggests using employees’ “24-7 life” as a starting point for learning better leadership skills at work.

Hovda decided six years ago that his approach to teaching leadership and life skills for the workplace would end, not begin, with the work setting. As owner of Hovda & Associates Inc., a Sully-based training and consulting company, Hovda believes that people are more motivated to learn skills to help them improve how they do their jobs if they first recognize the value of those skills in their lives outside work.

“A lot of the things that are displayed in a sense of getting along with people and time management are also displayed in the family relationships,” Hovda said. “When people see the value there, they seem to identify quickly with that, and those same principles and techniques can be similarly applied in the work environment.”

He calls his approach “InsideOut Leadership,” which he describes as teaching for the “24-7 life” and applying these skills to the “8-to-5 work life.”

“All of these things are also found in a person’s 24-7 life,” Hovda said. “A lot of times, when we’re teaching people conflict management skills, and we find that they’ve contributed to conflicts at work, it’s because they’re also crashing and burning in this area outside of the 8-to-5 work window.”

When people can connect with the greater value in the training they’re receiving at work, they are more inclined to not only listen to the presentation, but to also participate in the training as well as to retain and implement it, he said.

Hovda said his training approach was not complicated to develop.

“I suppose it was a natural evolvement,” he said. “It wasn’t so much a negative approach to other training as much as it was we felt that we just had more capability to connect with people and get more traction in the sense of changing their behavior.”

Hovda & Associates tests the effectiveness of its InsideOut training by measuring the four R’s: receptivity to the message, retention of the material, routine (the extent to which people incorporate the skills into their learned behavior), and results for the company’s bottom line.

Like Hovda’s unconventional approach to training, the path that led him to this vocation and the subsequent growth of his business has also been somewhat unusual. Hovda, an Iowa transplant from Phoenix, has a diverse background. He has degrees in aviation, theology and counseling. His work experience has included research and development in aeronautics, testing jet engines and serving as a faculty member at a college. Most recently before starting his own business, he was a pastor for 14 years.

His decision to leave the ministry was prompted by encouragement from a friend who had witnessed his skills for public speaking and leadership. Hovda began accepting speaking engagements toward the end of his career as a pastor, and he found a demand for his services.

“My parents encouraged me to pursue areas of interest, and that’s what I’ve done, both in my studies and with my career,” he said. “The common denominator is that all of my adult life, I have been involved in some form of education.

“The path I’ve taken hasn’t always been necessarily the shortest route to economic success. I’d like to tell you I designed the journey this way. What I do right now is really a combination of education first-hand experience. From the counseling and being able to listen and discern problems to the human nature issue of what makes us tick to being involved with research and development in a corporate setting – it’s all prepared me for what I’m doing now.”

Since launching his company in December 1999, Hovda has provided training and consulting services to many large corporations and government agencies, primarily on the East Coast. Cisco Systems Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Time Warner Inc. are among his clients. Hovda has three associates – one based in Iowa, two in Ohio and one in Chicago – to round out his InsideOut Leadership team.

In addition to training and consulting, Hovda and his associates deliver keynote speeches and seminars around the world, administer a program called SurroundSound 360, an online 360-degree performance evaluation, and create customized training programs on topics such as business writing at work and how to manage Generation Y people in the workforce.

“The company has grown at the mercy of the clients,” he said. “My skills have not been in marketing, so we’ve grown by people contacting me and us going to wherever they’re located. A couple of months ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., contacted me for some team-building work. I had no idea who referred them to me.”

Now, Hovda wants to build a client base in Iowa. “I guess it’s kind of backwards to the way normal people would do it,” he said.