[July 28, 2017] The United States Marines Corps’ leaders are fond of saying that the foundation for leadership is character, intellect, and integrity. They also make it clear that character is higher (meaning of greater value) than intelligence as a foundation for leaders.1 In doing so they have based their understanding on many of the world’s greatest philosophers… Read More »
[July 27, 2017] Leadership failure has been around since humans began to walk on this Earth but it has also been big in the news recently; anytime one listens to the media, failure is there glaring us in the face. Lately, the focus has been on political leadership failures but for our purposes here we should not ignore… Read More »
[July 26, 2017] Many years ago during a combat deployment, a good friend of mine had the duty to tell a General Officer that he would not use the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a construction project because they were too slow, too expensive, and not good enough. The only problem was that U.S. law required their… Read More »
[July 24, 2017] An interesting development in the area of leadership growth in the U.S. military occurred last week when a gathering of colonels and navy/coast guard captains was convened to discuss how to more effectively develop leaders. For the uninitiated in military affairs, there has been a wide-ranging dialogue on matters related to the criticality (or not)… Read More »
[July 23, 2017] Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Laurence J. Peter published a chillingly nasty but satirical book that helped shape in the minds of many what they had observed for so long. The idea was that in any “hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”1 … and he called it the Peter Principle.… Read More »
[July 22, 2017] From all accounts, the new movie Dunkirk is a blockbuster that will draw crowds from all age groups and geographic areas to see it in local theaters. What makes it popular is something that we can look into to see what we can learn about leaders and what its attractiveness can tell us. My grandmother… Read More »
[July 21, 2017] In the twilight years of senior leaders, they often reflect upon what it was that allowed greater success compared to other leaders who were just as smart, motivated, and talented as they. In each case that leader will tell us it was a lifetime of relationship building that made the difference. Many people have said… Read More »
[July 18, 2017] It is no surprise that leaders who have risen to the top of their professions, if asked, would tell us that the key element in their success would be the delegation of their authority to others. The tasks in any organization are simply too complex and difficult for a solitary individual to contemplate; as such,… Read More »
[July 17, 2017] My mother used to tell me to learn all I could about history because “its value far exceeds its fun factor.” That was her way of acknowledging that the topic of history was probably boring to a child but its importance to me as a man was high. My first recollection of this came up… Read More »
[July 12, 2017] Our behavior is constantly under observation. That is so because that’s how people learn about others and it’s both normal and acceptable. Despite the fact that we are humans and often make erroneous judgments, generally people are more right than wrong about drawing conclusions based on their observations of other human beings. Leaders are more… Read More »