Leadership author and speaker
Leadership author and speaker
Ultimately, leadership is both highly personal and highly situational. There are all sorts of teams and leaders, and the themes and truisms I lay out in this book are universal; each leader has to adapt their own style and personal ethos. I submit that the personal ethos is the first thing a serious leader should […]
Onboarding new employees is critical to the success of any organization. Without a deliberate and thoughtful onboarding process, new employees are set adrift in an organizational culture without any guide–and some will lose their way. Done correctly, a good onboarding process will imbue the new recruit with company values and energize them to find where […]
Always do everything you ask of those you command. – General George S. Patton When I was an instructor at the Air Force’s Officer Training School, I noticed the uncanny way the groups of officer trainees we led became mirrors of their Flight Commander. It was a little scary, really. If the Flight Commander was […]
Twenty-first-century business requires agility–from teams, from institutions, and from leaders–and that agility comes from synchronized leadership. Despite the radical change in the environment, many institutions still cling to Twentieth-century management models. Those Industrial Age management models are ill-suited to guide leaders in the Information Age. Perhaps the “king” of management models from the last century […]
Rule #3: Don’t Let Perfect Be The Enemy of Good One of the hardest things a leader had to do sometimes is hold back enthusiastic employees or teammates who are so focused on perfection, they keep working on a project well past when they should’ve stopped. Sometimes “good enough” really is good enough. On one hand, […]
Ask any HR professional and they’ll tell you how recruiting quality people and then developing them is much more a cost-effective business model than constantly seeking the perfect match. When Tom Landry and Tex Schramm led the Dallas Cowboys, they rarely recruited players for a particular position. They went looking for the best athlete they […]
Living and leading authentically means being real, connected to those around you, and honest.
The entrepreneur’s passion and sense of mission is what drives them. Kathy Carroll, Founder of Lana’i Animal Rescue exemplifies that passion.
In the first part, I discussed leaders’ role in guiding an organization through tragedy. But what if it’s you that suffers the tragedy? How do you continue to lead when a personal disaster depletes your attention and energy? The first thing to remember is if it’s a big deal to you, it probably a big […]
Tragedy is a part of the human experience: we can’t escape it and as leaders we get one chance to get that right. Whether that tragedy is the loss of a co-worker to an untimely death, a teammate with a life threatening disease, or the loss of an employee’s family member, leaders have to be […]
When discussing leadership we most often focus on the leader-follower dynamic. But there’s another relationship crucial to the success of any effort: the teams relationship with themselves and other teams. The leader who can lead teams to work effectively amongst themselves, and with others outside themselves, is a high performing leader. As a young officer […]
I spotted this great article from People Development Mag on leading teams and wanted to share! I like their model: and it closely resembles my own: Says Ms Shafer: When initiative, productivity, creativity and execution are lacking, the costs to the team can be very real. The tangible results can be a lackluster […]
I just finished a grueling 2 week schedule, and by Wednesday of the second week I was really looking forward to Friday. I hadn’t had my usual amount of sleep and not a single meal with my family in almost a week. There hadn’t even been time for my customary morning rituals of a workout […]
In the first part, I discussed the necessity for leaders to help their teams find value in participation in professional and social organizations related to the business. For Air Force officers, that used to be the Officers Club, but I discovered my younger officers didn’t necessarily sign up to that particular tradition. Like the office coffee […]
It was axiomatic as a brand new lieutenant I was expected to join the Officer’s Club. I read about the expectation in my Air Force Officer’s Guide, and senior officers repeatedly reinforced that expectation. It was part of my professional obligation to support the Club, and I accepted this at face value. In fact, other a couple of […]
In military aviation, the “wingman” is responsible for protecting the lead in a two-ship formation. As the “Lead” prosecutes the target, the “Wingman” watches his back and calls out threats. In this “two-ship” formation, there’s a leader and a follower, but they work together to accomplish the mission and get everyone back home. Put another […]
One of my core tenets is leaders must give teams a sense of mission: In my book Leading Leaders, I recount the story of a friend of mine who took over leadership of a volunteer re-sale shop. “She and her leadership team began by listening to the volunteers and addressed their personal concerns about the […]
Near my home in Hawaii is a stream that leads out to the ocean where I often paddle my kayak. It’s also where the local outrigger canoe club practices. I’d seen the outrigger canoes many times on television, but the first time I found myself in the water with them I was surprised by the […]
Leading volunteers is not easy. It would seem axiomatic that leading a group of volunteers would be easier than leading any other group, but it can more difficult because both the “transactional” relationship and the “mission” relationship are different from other types of teams. In a for profit venture the primary motivation is making the company […]
