Reflections from the NCEO New Manager Workshop: Building the Newest Generation of Ownership Leaders

This past week, I had the privilege of being onsite for the NCEO’s New Manager Workshop in Denver, CO, and I'm still thinking about it. There's something unique that happens when you get 67 managers from employee-owned companies across the country in one room—the energy shifts from "let's get through this agenda" to "wait, can we keep talking about this?"

Why This Workshop, Why Now

New managers occupy a unique and powerful position in employee-owned companies. They didn't necessarily ask to be on the front lines of ownership culture, but that's exactly where they sit. Employees typically don't experience "the ESOP" through plan documents or annual statements; they experience it through their manager. How their manager communicates, how much they're trusted with information, and whether their ideas are taken seriously. That's where ownership culture either takes root or quietly withers.

This idea shaped everything about how we built this workshop. We didn't want a series of lectures about ESOP mechanics. We wanted new managers to leave with a tangible sense of their own role in making ownership real for the people they lead, plus the practical tools to back it up.

How the Week Came Together

We brought together eight speakers and 67 attendees from companies spanning the country, and the range of industries and company sizes in the room ended up being one of its greatest strengths. A manager from a manufacturing ESOP and a manager from a professional services firm don't face identical challenges, but when they sat at the same roundtable, they found they were wrestling with a lot of the same questions: how do you talk about company performance without losing people in jargon? How do you make eligibility and vesting feel less like fine print and more like something worth understanding? What can I do to support the line of sight between what my people do everyday and the success of the ESOP?

The sessions built on each other in a way that left attendees with a deeper understanding of their role in bringing ownership mindset to the forefront of their teams and actionable tools to implement when they returned to their respective companies.

What People Took Away

If I had to distill all the conversations that took place over the two days in Denver into a single theme, it would be language. Not scripts, but language, ways to talk about ownership, performance, and contribution that feel natural rather than corporate.

The roundtables were where the real magic happened. Rather than focusing on polite, scheduled small talk, the roundtables enabled the types of conversations where someone from a 200-person company in the Midwest can compare notes with someone from a 40-person company in the Pacific Northwest, and they both realize they're solving the exact same problem. You can’t manufacture that connection; you can only create the conditions for it, which is what an event like this is really for.

What This Means Going Forward

Ownership culture isn't built once—it's built every day by managers, in small decisions and conversations most people never see. This workshop didn't hand anyone a finished playbook, but it gave 60+ managers a stronger foundation, a network of peers they can call when they're stuck, and a little more confidence that their day-to-day leadership genuinely shapes whether ownership feels real to the people they lead.

Watching new managers walk in uncertain about their role and walk out energized and equipped was exactly the kind of impact I strive for in NCEO programming.

Thank you to our speakers, attendees, and everyone who made the trip to Colorado. This community continues to be the best part of doing this work.