[April 21, 2015] With a small group of high school friends, we began college as freshmen engineer majors and with the hopes that we would survive the heavy course load heaped upon us. A few of us did finish but only those of us who had the ability to organize details in our lives and school were able… Read More »
[April 20 2016] A number of folks have commented on my two military leadership priorities; quality training (in peacetime) and taking care of people. There are many reasons for having these two as important aspects of military officer responsibilities but I’ve found that they work reasonably well and people remember them. The only problem I encountered was that… Read More »
[April 19 2016] A good friend of mine, I’ll call him Bill, was a truly good leader of soldiers. He was an U.S. Army Infantry officer and he was the type of person you wanted to be in charge of troops in time of war. Bill was aggressive, reliable, trustworthy, and could operate with little guidance or help. … Read More »
[April 18, 2016] Geez, you would think that with so many senior political leaders running for high office that they would know the first rule of mature leadership … Rule #1 … never blame the other guy for failures where you have responsibility. Everyone knows that leaders don’t personally do everything and that their job is to provide… Read More »
[April 17, 2016] One day in the future, I hope to travel to North Korea and tour the countryside to see inside a nation that has been at the heart of impoverishing millions of its citizens and threatening the world. The hermit kingdom of North Korea has revealed signs of collapse (or implosion) for decades and despite predictions… Read More »
[April 15, 2016] To be a great mentor doesn’t require much … but it does demand a passion and purpose to arouse the spirit of those mentored. Much has been said about mentorship here in theLeaderMaker.com and elsewhere. How to separate fiction from fact and opinion from reality is what leadership is all about. What I’ve done here… Read More »
[April 12, 2016] Yes we do accumulate bad habits and it’s not unusual for senior leaders to be hindered seriously in their job performance directly for this very reason. I’ve seen it happen many times. Leaders are particularly susceptible to picking up bad habits because they’ve reached their position through successes that have given them a bit of… Read More »
[April 11, 2016] The traditional mission of formal education is to make kids smarter, better citizens, and more successful in life. Turning kids into leaders, however, is a fairly new attempt to do just that … and more. Teaching, mentoring, and coaching kids about leadership is beginning to show positive results and that is good for all of… Read More »
[April 10, 2016] In Part 1 of this short series on tainted leaders I wrote about how it was impossible for any and everyone not to know about a leader’s mistakes. However, when mistakes are bad enough and a scandal erupts, it’s not too late to do something about it … that’s my opinion anyway. But it takes… Read More »
[April 9, 2016] We regularly read about leaders who are involved in some scandal; either from their personal behavior or by association. Most of those who violate moral, legal, or ethical standards are fired or resign from their jobs but they don’t just disappear. Leaders tainted by scandal present a special leadership challenge. In a networked-modern society it… Read More »