[July 25, 2016] A good friend of mine at my commissioning ceremony as a new U.S. Army Second Lieutenant said that his best advice for me to succeed would be to respect soldiers regardless of rank, however pander to none of them. In his own way, he was speaking about respect. But respect is specifically missing from most… Read More »
[July 23, 2016] Yes, words have consequences and especially when spoken by senior leaders. Leaders have been known to make terrible choices of their words and then, unexpectedly, become more resolute when confronted. All of us have chosen poorly but rarely are word choices so important than when we are a leader. Knowing what to say, when to… Read More »
[July 22, 2016] In Part 1 of this series I pointed out some of the important things that kids should never do.1 In Part 2, I addressed some of the opportunities we should give children we are teaching leadership.2 Today, I’ll provide a few how to techniques for kids so they can develop the right skills for the… Read More »
[July 19, 2016] On this date, June 19th in 1865, Union soldiers enforced the Emancipation Proclamation and freed all remaining slaves in the state of Texas; six weeks after the U.S. Civil War officially ended. Slavery in the U.S. was a contentious issue at the time and its legacy remains in race relations to this day. Like President… Read More »
[July 16, 2016] I’ll add my two cents worth to the analysis of terrorism in Nice, France. My main point, as stated before, is that the recent surge in Islamic attacks has no single cause and no single person to blame and thus no easy solution. Very few of us are surprised that it occurred, especially in France… Read More »
[July 15, 2016] My original blog entry today was going to be about how leaders seem to take themselves too seriously. Whether it’s narcissistic behavior or simply going too far in promoting themselves, leaders can cross the line with their words and behavior. A recent dust up over the comments by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg… Read More »
[July 14, 2016] A good friend of mine for many years told me recently that “honesty is no longer valued.” He was exaggerating but also being rather blunt after an experience he had with several younger folks that accused him of being a sexist. “There was no arguing with them,” he told me. For some time now, many… Read More »
[July 13, 2016] Only leaders with priorities get things done. This is often called the “first principle of success” for good reason. That may, at first, seem intuitive to those who study leadership but when we begin to dig deeper into how leaders act, we find that many don’t practice this key standard of leadership. Leaders without priorities… Read More »
[July 12, 2016] It is certainly interesting to see news about the development of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of private email servers to transmit classified information. Of course she has denied it … and though an FBI investigation determined she did in fact do so, she steadfastly continues to deny it. This is a… Read More »
[July 11, 2016] Having been in the military a long time has given me some perspective on leadership in its many forms and how its methods are used; both for good and bad. One of my earliest times as a lowly Private, I regularly witnessed leaders telling me to “do as I say, not as I do.” Well,… Read More »