Sterling Institute was founded in 1967 by professor J. Sterling Livingston of the Harvard Business School, author of the classic Harvard Business Review articles, “Pygmalion in Management” and “The Myth of the Well Educated Manager”. Over the years, Sterling Institute has pioneered methods aimed at giving training more impact, linking it more directly to organizational objectives and the participants' jobs, and providing the framework for managers to provide sustained support for employee performance improvement and career development.

Sterling Institute specializes in leadership and management development training. We have designed and developed “soft-skill” programs for more than 40 years. Our training programs enable executives, managers, supervisors, and front-line employees to develop the core competencies they need to improve their performance on the job and to increase organizational effectiveness.

The Institute was the first to implement multi-level training to ensure that participants and their supervisors are fully prepared to work with each other back on the job to implement, review, and measure the results of performance improvement plans. We have long believed in the power of Action Learning where participants work on real problems, develop solutions that they will apply on the job, and are held accountable for their implementation and the results achieved.  We were among the first to design and develop video-based case studies, computer simulations, multi-rater assessment instruments, and other innovative approaches to learning and development.