Leading From a Distance: Becoming Better at “Distance Leadership”

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” – Max De Pree It seems like every conversation I hear these days is about the challenges of virtual communication and leadership. In the pre-pandemic days, I focused on scheduling “face-to-face” … Read more

What A Great Culture Looks Like

I didn’t always understand what a great culture looks like. In fact, as a young West Point cadet and later as an Army officer, I only had a vague notion of what a culture was at all. We had a set way of doing things, to be sure, but it was pretty much taken for … Read more

Creating Opportunity: Where Opportunity Lives

Here’s one entrepreneur’s view on creating opportunity… This is from Biz Stone, one of the original co-founders of social media giant Twitter: “I grew up in a very affluent town, but my parents divorced when I was young. My father wasn’t much involved in my life, and we were poor. Many kids I knew played … Read more

The Backbrief: A Tool For Better Listening

Listening can feel harder to do than ever. That seems even more true in a world where many of us are still ‘socially-distanced’ and dealing with online-only ‘remote teams.’ Now more than ever we can use a tool for better listening that will cut through all the noise. There’s always going to be outside distractions. … Read more

Special Edition Podcast: Adaptive Leadership Skills for the Current World We’re In

Over the past few months, COVID-19 has created historic disruptions and changes to the way we work and live – on a local, regional, national, and even international scale. Our challenge as leaders is to continue to apply the appropriate adaptive leadership skills in order to lead our teams and organizations from the front. Let’s … Read more

Making the Judgment Call

  “If Passion drives, then let Reason hold the reins.” — Benjamin Franklin Hopefully, all of us have been able to serve with leaders at some point in our careers who demonstrated a tendency toward sound judgment –  “interpretation of the evidence that points to the right choice.” [1]  When confronted with difficult circumstances, widely … Read more