In July of 1970, I found myself standing on the parade field at West Point alongside hundreds of other young men. Seventeen years old, two weeks out of high school, and a long way from Georgia. Several months earlier, two Army football coaches had shown up at my home in Atlanta one evening, and not … Read more
The old directive leadership style no longer works. Discover why a culture of commitment and adaptive communication are essential for executive success. Recently I sat down with George Torok, host of Your Intended Message, a business communication podcast, to discuss how Adaptive Leadership and effective communication are inseparable. For decades, many business leaders operated under a … Read more
Before the pandemic and all of its 2nd and 3rd-order effects, most of us lived inside a predictable rhythm. Commutes. Office chatter. Calendars packed with meetings that required us to be physically present. We may not have loved all of it, but we understood the tempo. Work had a structure we could point to. Then the … Read more
The Question Leaders Keep Asking: “Why does this feel so much harder to navigate than disagreements used to?” I hear this all the time. It’s not that we suddenly discovered disagreement—we’ve disagreed, sometimes fiercely, through every chapter of our national story. But something has changed. The disagreements feel sharper. The emotional temperature is higher. And … Read more
Why Trust Has Become Today’s Leadership Imperative The Trust Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About Something fundamental has shifted in how people relate to authority, to information, and to each other. Trust—the foundation of every high-performing team I’ve ever led or studied—has become fragile. And in many organizations, it’s broken entirely. This didn’t happen overnight. … Read more
“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” — Rick Warren Most leadership failures don’t stem from a lack of skill or intelligence. They stem from the ego. When leaders make it about “I and Me” instead of “We and Us,” teams disengage. Strategic plans become mandates instead of … Read more
