“Your people will decide if you are a leader.” Some version of this quote appears from time to time attributed to various people who would have us believe that leaders must please their team to be a real leader. They believe a leader is not really a true leader until… Read More »Are You Waiting for Your Team to Accept You?
We’re excited to announce the first group completed The Confident LeaderTM workshop in Indianapolis this week. The Confident Leader is the first in a series of workshops formulated to provide the skills necessary to be successful leaders. Despite a small class we had great discussion and a lot of fun… Read More »The Confident Leader has launched in Indianapolis!
An article came through my feed the other day called 22 Habits of Successful Leaders from entrepreneur.com. It was an interesting article, but could have been more accurately titled, 22 Quirky Habits of some Famous Successful People. I realize it wouldn’t have gotten nearly the number of clicks, but why… Read More »Correlation or Causation – The Trouble with Studying Successful Leader Characteristics
The air around us was orange. That was pretty common after a dust storm as a fine powder of sand hung in the air. Through the orange haze, I could see the mechanics going through their morning inspections of the rescue helicopters that sat on alert, ready to rapidly respond… Read More »The Mission: That Others May Live
A very good friend of mine was recently promoted to lead the division in which she has been working for a number of years. She confided in me that in addition to the usual worries about taking a new position was the worry that the person who assumes her old… Read More »Moving up? Let go of the past!
What energizes you? When you’re having one of those days when things aren’t going right and the boss isn’t happy, what do you do? Hopefully, your answer is not to find someone to yell at. Leaders seldom make everyone happy and can count on having bad days. How you handle… Read More »Stress Relief for Leaders
We were on final for a practice bombing run 300 feet above the Arizona desert going about 540 knots (620 mph). The plane was an F-16D which is a two-seat trainer version of the F-16C Falcon. My back-seater was a flight surgeon logging mandatory air time and who was blissfully… Read More »Four Steps to Leader Awareness – Hard lessons learned from flight operations
Leaders often ask what sort of leadership style is appropriate. Authoritarian or relaxed? Different style for different people or always treat everyone the same? Years ago, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard published their Situational Leadership model, suggesting a leader should adopt a style that is appropriate to a follower’s ability… Read More »What’s the Best Leadership Style
Employee engagement is a concept that gets a lot of press these days. Leaders wring their hands about low levels of engagement and experts offer all kinds of actions and formulas that will fix the problem. All that angst isn’t really necessary, as engagement is a pretty simple concept. Few… Read More »I Want to be on That Team
I had been a commander of a flying training squadron for a few months. One Monday morning I was getting ready to go into work when the phone rang. I put the phone to my ear and heard, “Where are you?†Have you ever had one of those moments when… Read More »What do you do when you fall short as a leader? (Pictograph)