Discover Leadership

History

In 1991 Mike Jones started Soul Patrol, Inc., a 501(c3) not for profit organization presenting programs nationally to over 4 million middle and high school students focused on having them accept personal responsibility for everything in their lives.  Because of the impact of Soul Patrol’s programs, they were featured on several national TV programs from Oprah to Good Morning America and NBC Nightly News.  The Soul Patrol programs were supported by Former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton.

In 1998 Mike Jones teamed up with Diana Nicholson to start Discover U2, Inc. focused on delivering  training for educators focused on the same principles of Soul Patrol – empowering educators to accept personal responsibility for inspiring, motivating and empowering our young people to be constructive, creative and contributing members of society. 

In 2000 Discover U2, Inc. while still offering the training for teens, the company transitioned it's target market to the business community by introducing Discover U Leadership Breakthrough Training.  Discover U showed the participants that there is an "i" in team because every member of the team systemically affects the outcome of the team and allowed participants to discover their true potential.  The training was a 2 1/2 day retreat-style training focused on helping each person on the team breakthrough to their next level of leadership development.  In the last quarter of 2000, Discover added two additional trainings to further the learning's from Discover U, Discover Communications and Discover U2 Advanced Leadership Breakthrough Training.  Discover Communications empowered participants to understand themselves and others better, to build better relationships and to be able to communicate their potential effectively while Discover U2 Advanced Leadership Breakthrough was  designed to teach participants how to apply their potential.  The three trainings combined comprised Discover Leadership Training's Master Graduate Program.

2001-2002 were exciting years for Discover U2, Inc. First, the company name changed to Discover Leadership Training, Inc. Next, much of our trainers time was spent in Salt Lake City, Utah working with Coca-Cola North America on the 2002 Winter Olympics project.  The outcome was to inspire, motivate and empower the Coca-Cola Management Team to execute the best worldwide event in their history on this project.  Discover U2, Inc. implemented a training solution complete with retreat trainings, corporate training and executive coaching to reach this outcome and it was a major success.

In 2004 Discover Leadership Training went global in Korea by working with ExxonMobil on the Sacklin project bringing the culturally and nationally diverse construction team together to create a work model focused on accepting personal responsibility and delivering excellence on this very important project.

In 2005 Discover Leadership Training was featured in both the Houston Business Journal and Black Enterprise magazine for the impact the company was having in the training and development industry.

Discover Leadership Training, Inc. continued to grow and in 2006 purchased a 90 acre ranch 50 miles west of downtown Houston to be the home of it's retreat trainings and office for it's operations.  The property is a beautiful pecan tree ranch with over 800 trees and two lakes.  The location provided Discover Leadership Training the opportunity to consistently deliver excellence in the training as well as the training and dining facilities that was unparalleled to contracting for these services at various venues.  In 2007, Discover Leadership Training built a state of the art challenge course on the property to expand their experiential learning methods both in the current class offerings and corporate trainings.

In 2008 Discover Leadership Training introduced the Beyond Excellence Leadership Program for young adults between 18 and 25.  This training allowed young adults the opportunity to gain the benefits of the Master Graduate Leadership program amongst a community comprised of their peers and in 2009, Discover Leadership Training  partnered with the University of Houston Bauer College of Business to offer the program to over  100 young adults within the college over a 13 month time period.

2009 was another year of change for Discover Leadership Training.  To meet the needs of it's clients to accelerate team members through the Master Graduate Program, Discover decided to offer it's first Executive Master Graduate Leadership Program.  The Executive Master Graduate Leadership Program included the learning's from Discover U, Discover Communications and Discover U2 Advanced Leadership Training.  The program was a huge success and the sustainability of the program proved even greater than before.

In 2009 Barb Moses joined the rapidly growing Discover Leadership Training as the Operations Manager, leaving a long and successful 20 year career in learning and development with a major corporation.  In 2010 she became an executive partner on the Discover Leadership Training team. 

In 2010 Discover Leadership Training introduced the Hard Hat to the Heart Safety Training to their cadre of corporate training.  The results that the training drives is for every member of the team accepting personal responsibility for their safety and the safety of others.  Additional success to be celebrated in 2010 was the development of the Train the Trainer Program for the work Discover Leadership Training was doing with Zion's Bank in Salt Lake City on their Powered by People program.