The Global Leadership Summit is Working…Better than Ever!

The Global Leadership Summit is Working…Better than Ever! A Leadership Legacy Expands Its Impact and Continues to Inspire & Equip Leaders around the World Chicago – The Global Leadership Summit (TGLS) concluded its 21st version of the annual event this past Friday and proved once again that it is not only working, it is working better than ever. A record 103,000+ leaders (an increase of over 7% from last year) from 116 countries gathered at 451 host sites across the U.S. and Canada to learn from a faculty of world class leadership experts that included Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, Horst Schulze, chairman & CEO of Capella Hotel Group and nationally acclaimed business thinker, Jim Collins to name a just few. Leading the event was TGLS founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, Bill Hybels who continued to herald his long-standing belief around which the event centers – “Everyone wins when a leader gets better.” Following an independent study conducted after the 2014 Summit, Hybels has the proof that his assertion is true. Among the results, the study revealed that 81% of those who had a superior attend TGLS in the past reported concrete ways their “supervisor or organization’s top leader improved because of TGLS.” A near unanimous 98% of all business leaders said they had applied “team-building skills learned at TGLS” and 86% of those agreed or strongly agreed that those skills “increased job satisfaction and productivity.” TGLS is an initiative of Willow Creek Association (WCA), a non-profit organization comprised of more than 7,000 member churches from 90 denominations and 45 countries. In the past, a diverse lineup of leadership experts such as Colin Powell, Mark Burnett, Patrick Lencioni, and Carly Fiorina have inspired hundreds of thousands of leaders from around the world to make a difference in their communities and spheres of influence. To further expand the Summit impact, WCA released the newGLSnext App at this year’s event WCA President Gary Schwammlein announced that over 25,000 downloads of the app occurred during the conference. There was an additional 25,000 downloads of the app as of Sunday. The GLSnext App trended as the #1 search in Apple App Store with a 5 star rating and 4.9/5.0 for Android. “Through independent research we know TGLS is having a measurable and transformative impact on attendees, but we wanted to do more,” states Schwammlein. “Whether leaders are in the church, marketplace or home, they now have instant access to a leadership library with hundreds of videos to help them address the most pressing leadership questions and challenges. Especially significant to me is the fact that our research indicates that 10% of return participants in TGLS would have quit their current positions had it not been for inspiration they received while at the Summit. With the expanded access to Summit content through the GLSnext App, untold numbers of leaders will have daily access to the same encouragement and inspiration that prevented these leaders from quitting." Not only may the Summit experience now “be taken with you” through the GLSnext App, the Summit impact will continue this fall as host sites around the world conduct their own Summit events utilizing DVD content from this past week. When it is all said and done, this year’s version of TGLS will be held in over 55 languages from 125 countries with an anticipated worldwide attendance of 260,000 people. “The Global Leadership Summit has proven to catalyze the leader within each of us, to make us better leaders, and to unite us around a common vision,” states founder Bill Hybels. “We believe the local church is the hope of the world – when it is working right.  For churches to reach their full redemptive potential, they must be led well. It’s our prayer that the Summit will continue to inspire passionate leaders toward that end.” The Global Leadership Summit