Central to Laychak’s philosophy around leadership development is preparing as many individual contributors for leadership as possible. She said, “Not all high-performing individual contributors want to be a manager or would be a good one. For that reason, we seek to develop our managers before they become leaders.”

Laychak and her team meet this goal through their Aspirational Manager Program for individual contributors. “This program is open to anyone at any level as long as you are interested in becoming a manager, leading a team, or influencing teams that might not directly report to you,” Laychak explained. The program is one of the most popular and fastest-filling programs in what Aerospace refers to as Aerospace University.