About Brent Stewart

Who Would Have Ever Thought Ice Cream Could Provoke an Ethical Crisis…

…But That’s Exactly What Happened

I was the General Manager of Dickie Dee Ice Cream, a national Canadian company. My mentor had invited me to Winnipeg to take the job, and it was a break-through opportunity to develop my leadership skills under the tutelage of a brilliant entrepreneur. It could have been the perfect career move. There was only one problem: I stopped eating dairy products. After a long process of exploration, I had come to the conclusion that dairy products were not good for peoples’ health. One can debate the merits of this position, but for me at the time it presented a thorny problem.

Imagine the inner conflict it caused me to believe one thing, and be promoting another. Adding to the complication, I had a special loyalty to the owner of the company. He was both a business mentor and close friend. Our relationship had started when I was in university and took a Dickie Dee franchise for two summers. Leasing equipment from his company, I discovered first-hand the excitement and financial potential of being an entrepreneur. My original aspiration to be a teacher was eclipsed by an interest in the world of business. That change in direction led eventually to this strange fork in the road over the issue of diet. I had reached a place where I was doing well in a successful business but then . . . I didn’t eat the product. What to do?

I Took a Year For Soul-Searching and Study

I did the right thing—for me and for the company – and gave my notice. This left me without work and with no career direction. I moved back to Vancouver facing the beginning of a new year. On the first day of that year, I decided to give myself 12 months away from work to consider where I was going. My plan was to immerse myself in learning and personal growth.

That was the most amazing year of my life. For the entire year I “soaked” myself in learning experiences, from water color painting to Zen meditation, triathlon training and competition, mountain climbing, fire-walking, and many programs for personal growth, including one called The Pursuit of Excellence. The Pursuit of Excellence, an intensive 5-day program dealing with attitude, personal accountability, win/win strategy, relationships, and effective communications, was the first course I took that year. In many ways it was a significant turning point for me.

That Year For Myself Led Me Into Facilitation

A Decade in The Pursuit Of Excellence . . .

Toward the end of my year of exploration, I began to realize what I loved most: learning. When I began asking myself the tough question, “What next?” I knew that I wanted my next form of work to be centered around learning.

The Pursuit of Excellence was a learning vehicle I greatly admired and had benefited from. It was part of a renowned series of programs called the Excellence Series. I was drawn to the fact that these programs were fun, lighthearted, respectful of participants, and well designed. I wanted to lead them.

The creator of the Excellence Series, Context Associated, held auditions for program leaders in Seattle. The audition itself was a challenging experience, involving presenting to and interacting with a group of people under the eye of two master facilitators. To my delight, I passed the audition, and became a facilitator of the Pursuit of Excellence and the other programs in the Excellence Series.

During training to facilitate the course, I discovered some things about myself. I discovered how much I loved working with groups in intense learning environments. I felt at home in the give-and-take of exploring difficult questions in a group. I had the sense of having found my vocation. After only a month of training, I was sent out to lead my first program. That was the beginning of almost a decade of extensive travel, teaching, and learning. I worked with thousands of individuals throughout North America and as far away as Singapore. I learned about people, about the process of facilitation and group work, and most of all I learned about myself.

Recognizing My Strengths: Facilitation and Presentation

It Was Always What I Did Best, But It Took Awhile to Notice . . .

Prior to Dickie Dee, I had worked at Xerox in sales. At the time, I felt that I wasn’t the greatest salesman, but I seemed to shine at presenting. I’d only been at Xerox a few weeks when I won a competition throughout British Columbia for doing an on-camera sales demo of a new product. All the sales people had to compete and I walked away with the prize: dinner with the branch manager at a restaurant of my choice. Aside from the visibility, I gained an important insight: I liked standing in front of a camera and pitching a product.

Another contest . . . and bigger stakes. A short time later I was promoted to handling major accounts. As part of the training I was sent to “Major Account School” in Toronto. The training period culminated in a contest where each of us attempted to sell Xerox services to a group of decision makers—played by senior executives at Xerox. Aside from acting like a very difficult group of client decision-makers, and doing their best to rip apart the presentations, they also judged the contest. There were about a dozen of us in the competition. We all watched each other’s presentations.

Every presenter was given a very rough ride. When my turn came, I found I was in my element. Under pressure, I got clear and really calm. In fact, I enjoyed the interplay. The situation felt like a dance and for the first time in my life I felt like a dancer. Aside from winning first prize, I won a deeper understanding of what I loved to do and the strengths I brought to it. The seeds were planted for a later career in facilitation and seminar work.

Back to the Excellence Story. . . and Another Fork in the Road

Towards the end of my decade of leading programs in the Excellence Series, I found myself yearning for a change and for less travel. I wanted to shift into more corporate work, so I began leading my own programs on leadership for corporate clients. I also began teaching leadership programs for Royal Roads University and taking coaching courses from the Coaches Training Institute. The world of executive coaching blended naturally with my new focus on leadership development. I began taking individual coaching clients who wished to work on their leadership skills.

Learning from the Pros…

…Working with Development Dimensions International (DDI)

DDI—one of the foremost seminar companies in the world—wanted me to facilitate their programs. I’d become a more established corporate seminar leader by this time and was approached to be one of their consultants. This was an opportunity to work with an organization that really understood the corporate marketplace.

Working with DDI’s products exposed me to the highest standards of program design and materials. I was trained in Pittsburg, licensed as a consultant, and began leading their highly polished leadership programs. A true win/win arrangement, this partnership allowed me access to corporate environments I would never have reached as a solo entrepreneur.

The Next Step: The Birth of Leadscape Learning—and a New Partnership with an Old Friend

I first met Cheryl Smith in 1992—during my training to lead the Pursuit of Excellence. As friends and business colleagues, we worked on many projects together, including co-leading leadership programs at Royal Roads University. Our philosophies and facilitation styles were a good match. We found we could co-design programs easily and co-lead them like attuned dance partners.

In 2008, Cheryl approached me with the idea of creating a special program for one of her clients. It was on a topic important to both of us: developing coaching skills in organizational leaders. Our new program was called Navigational Coaching. This program was to become the flagship of a new enterprise.

In 2010, we co-founded Leadscape Learning Inc., a global provider of leadership programs and training videos. Beginning with our first program, Navigational Coaching, we soon established an international presence, with facilitators presenting our programs from Iceland to Europe to New Zealand. Corporate clients were responding enthusiastically. We knew we were on to something. We had created a vehicle with which to offer to the world our accumulated knowledge, wisdom and experience.

Overview Of Experience

Member of the Associate Faculty of Royal Roads University since 2001, teaching programs on personal leadership, coaching, ethics and teamwork.
Formed MasterLink International in 1999, to bring together business leaders from the U.S. fiber optics industry into leadership forums. For three years led coaching forums to expand best practices in the industry.
Executive coach since 1999, working with business leaders across a wide range of industries.
20 years experience leading The Pursuit of Excellence and other personal development programs.
7 years management experience with Dickie Dee Ice Cream, a national ice cream company. As General Manager, led a fast growing organization with over one hundred franchises across the country.
3 years sales experience handling major accounts for Xerox. Received extensive sales training and won the top award for corporate presentation skills.

Education and Training

Master’s Degree in Leadership, Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC (2008)
Certified as a facilitator of Development Dimensions International’s Learning Systems (2007).
Designated Master Trainer of Corporate Coach U’s Coaching Clinic Licensing Program (2004)
Graduate, Coaches Training Institute (2000)
Professional Teaching Certificate, University of British Columbia (1978)
BA, English Literature, University of British Columbia (1976)

Fun Stuff

There’s a part of me that has always been drawn to theatre and performance. In 2003, partly on a lark, I was prompted to enter a talent competition. This involved presenting a monologue before a panel of judges from the world of movies and acting. To my surprise, not only was I called back as a finalist, I ended up winning first place in the overall competition. The prizes included an acting scholarship, meetings with agents, a photo shoot, etc. Although I wasn’t ready to set aside my business career and pursue acting full time, I decided to dabble as a hobby where possible. One of the panel judges owned a talent agency and offered to be my agent. Auditioning for parts became a fun sideline for awhile, and led to me being in a television commercial for Johnny Walker Black and a small part in a movie.

My theatrical roots go back to university days, where I appeared in various productions both on and off campus. In my 20’s I spent a year in a professional musical comedy troupe, presenting a cappella music mixed with comedy skits.
In the year after I left the ice cream company, I decided to devote energy to environmental issues. I volunteered to be on the board of directors of EarthSave Canada and became a public speaker on the relationship between diet and the environment.
As part of my public speaking on environmental issues, I sometimes used a humorous approach. In 1992, I entered a Toastmaster’s Humorous Speech competition with one of my speeches. I won all the way to the top level in Region 1 of the Toastmasters world, going home with first prize. There was a camera on hand – if you’d like to see the speech, click here: http://www.masterlink-intl.com/keynote.html
In the time between my first round of university and my job at Xerox I spent the better part of a year backpacking around Europe and North Africa. It was a year of wonderful adventure, from climbing the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland looking for a famous and mysterious creature called the “Grey Man of Ben MacDhui” to traveling through the Sinai desert by camel with a Bedouin tribe.
I love the outdoors, particularly hiking and canoeing. One of my favorite trips was with my father. When he was in his 70’s we hiked a shipwreck trail on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was a 7-day trip in the wilderness. Unbeknownst to him I hiked the trail in advance and hid a bottle midway along the trail, at the base of a cliff, just above the reach of the ocean. In the sealed bottle was a note addressed to him, ostensibly from a mysterious admirer in Australia. When the two of us came hiking along, I was able to get him to find the bottle himself, while I stayed well away (there’s more story here). For several days he was in a completely astonished state, believing that he had picked up a note in a bottle on the west coast of Canada, sent to him personally from someone he’d never heard of in Australia. He was planning to notify the newspapers about it on our return to civilization. Eventually I confessed and we laughed about it for years. To the end of his days (at the age of 100) he said it was the best trip he’d ever been on.