[June 13, 2014] The United States gave up on Iraq years ago and the Iraq leadership stumbles as a result. Yet there is not a senior leader in the U.S. military who would confidently say Iraq’s future was assured after pulling out our military forces. News comes to us that the ISIS, a militant offshoot of Sunni al-Qaeda,… Read More »
[June 12, 2014] Considered one of the greatest speeches of the 20th Century, U.S. President Ronald Reagan spoke these lines on June 12, 1987 as part of a major speech to the citizens of West Berlin. In the speech, he addressed the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and told him to sign up for peace and prosperity… Read More »
[June 12, 2014] Playing little league baseball while growing up in the deep South brought with it a number of lessons in life. These lessons were to later translate into successful leadership traits that were to stay with me the rest of my military career. In fact, I think that was the point of the game; besides having… Read More »
[June 11, 2014] It’s just plain hard to make this stuff up. So read the headlines spread across pages 4 and 5 of the New York Post, today’s printed edition. The print-edition subheading and the Post’s website has another line that reads, “Shucks, we wuz so broke, wernt no way to fix it [sic]”. There is a lesson… Read More »
[June 11, 2014] During Basic Combat Training in the U.S. Army, I learned quickly that giving an excuse for not doing my job or for failing to take responsibility for something for a decision that was mine, had the “effective range of zero.” Army Drill Sergeants took nothing for granted and took no excuses from us trainees and… Read More »
[June 10, 2014] On my way to JFK Airport in New York City last week, I discovered by accident a really good radio station that had Howard Schultz discussing the concept of success and how really difficult it can be. What intrigued was that the radio station was dedicated to leadership topics. Good leaders are always looking for… Read More »
[June 10, 2014] A pattern emerges from the study of great leaders demonstrating that many of those who are the greatest of leaders were successful at both governance and military leadership. This pattern holds for Ramesses II (1303 BC – 1213 BC), also known as Ramesses the Great – the third Egyptian pharaoh of the 19th dynasty. He… Read More »
[June 09, 2014] Cartoonist Bill Watterson returned briefly as a guest to draw in the cartoon strip called Pearls Before Swine. He did so to raise money for a Parkinson’s charity called Team Cul de Sac. Of course, Bill Watterson is the creator of the superb cartoon series called Calvin and Hobbes1; a strip that he stopped at… Read More »
[June 09, 2014] Effective leadership means the leader should be regularly identifying and eliminating their bad habits; those that affect their leadership. Bad habits make it much more difficult to be successful leaders. Mountains of self-help articles and books are written, seminars given, and academic courses taken on how to eliminate bad habits.1 Leaders, of course, are subject… Read More »
[June 08, 2014] Sometime in the past few days theLeaderMaker.com website had the “Archives” and “Search” go missing from the sidebar. It’s not just the inconvenience but also not knowing – there were no error messages or warnings. Running a blog site is always full of Internet tribulations but I still enjoy all of it, of course. Thanks… Read More »