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Small Rewards Result in Big Changes
“Reward what you want repeated,” was something that has rattled around in my head for years. In fact, one of my first posts on this site was about that and recently I saw this phrase as I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. He reinforced my beliefs and then added the ‘why’. The basic…
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Note Taking For Leaders
“Follow up is the difference between success and failure” was advice I received after being chewed out as a young NCO. I had put in a lot of work to prepare for a certain task to be completed, I put the plan into motion and then assumed because my part was done so was I.…
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You Need Better Habits
Everyday when I arrived at work, I would login to my computer and dive into my inbox and work furiously until it was emptied. Although, this is not necessarily a bad thing, it was a bad habit for me. It prevented me from doing anything else and stole from what I thought was truly productive.…
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Are You a Natural Leader?
Defining what a leader is and if leaders are born or made seems to be one of the biggest leadership questions still to this date. I admit, I like to expend some bandwidth to these questions every now and then, but the answers really don’t matter. If we are born leaders, we still have to…
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3 Questions Know-it-Alls Need to Ask
“Well actually that would not cause the comm radio to fail…” chimed in someone from the peanut gallery while I was briefing the colonel on what we were planning to do to fix an airplane. This was great information and what he said was very true; however, it did not add value to what we…
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Retirement: 3 Lessons Learned on Day 1
Normally, I write the articles posted here well in advance; however, today is different. I wanted to catch the raw emotion of my first official day of Air Force retirement. I waited until I took the kids to school and then settled into my day before I sat down to write this. Now, I want…
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The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us
Many people like the concept of the Walking Dead and thinking about what they would do if a zombie apocalypse became a reality. Well, I don’t think we are too far away from this happening. We are not going to wake up tomorrow to zombies trying to eat us in the literal sense, but we…
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5 Leadership Lessons Learned from a Pencil
Too often we allow what others are doing or what they think we should be doing to control our lives. This was evident throughout my career and especially as I was being “groomed” for Senior and Chief. Sometimes this was to develop me and sometimes it was to further their own career. The hard part…
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Develop Box Checkers in 3 Steps
We chase the next box to fill or check off; however, rarely use what we learn and it is not doing our team any favors. We all look for those little letters we can add to our name or the fancy duty title to prove we are “accomplished.” Achievements and fancy letters, although hard to…
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Are We Truly Hearing Our Team’s Needs?
I have not come across too many leaders who were not fixated on solving the problems their team faced. The difficult part is figuring out what the true problems are. Not taking the time to truly listen to our people and getting to the deeper issues can have long-term impacts. Here is a parable I…
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