Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

At Accelerent, I was lucky to meet the commander of the USS Cole and hear his story of the day his destroyer was nearly sunk by al-Qaeda. Kirk Lippold made clear that his ship was saved mostly because of how he led and trained his crew in the years prior to the attack, rather than by any dramatic decisions or heroics on October 12, 2000.

His “Five Pillars of Leadership” are:

• Integrity

• Vision

• Personal Responsibility and Accountability

• Trust and Invest

• Professional Competence

He gave a thrilling and informative presentation. I particularly thanked him for illustrating the masterful use of chain of command, maximizing his impact as a leader by improving his officers rather than continually reaching down to personally resolve specific issues.

The Navy, unfortunately, tends to be rather unforgiving of officers whose ships are damaged so Kirk Lippold never made Captain. The military’s loss is our gain as he tours the country sharing his leadership lessons.

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On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of
Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

Capsule Review

I read this book and I review it here not because of any particular interest in sanctioned killing, rather because of my interest in institutional means of getting people to do difficult yet important tasks. I train salespeople and other business leaders.

I first heard the author, Dave Grossman, on a radio interview promoting this book. I heard him say that that in the history of combat from Alexander the Great through World War II only about 15% of soldiers in battle were trying to kill the enemy. He’s not talking about the long administrative and logistical tail of the army. Only 15-20% of the people with guns or swords in their hands, who were facing a threatening enemy, were willing to kill that enemy. I know this is Read the rest of this entry »

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Why? Because employees are more sensitive to mood than leaders often realise. And these moods are contagious. Research carried out by Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that in 70 different teams, people working together in meetings ended up sharing moods – whether good or bad – within two hours. And bad moods spread faster than good ones.

In their 2001 Harvard Business Review article “Primal leadership”, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKie argued that one of the key duties of leadership – they say it is the most important one of all – is to manage your emotions with care.

–Stefan Stern
Financial Times

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Many companies and organizations are dealing with multiple changes right now to adapt to the huge shifts in our economy: layoffs, salary reductions and freezes, office closings, budget cuts, etc. My CEO executive coaching clients are making painful decisions, managing personal stress, communicating more often with employees, customers, and suppliers. All of that is useful and important.

I also find it useful to remind managers that change is not quick or easy for companies.

Leaders, especially the most dynamic, creative, and  entrepreneurial, must keep in mind that stability is in the nature of organizations. That’s why we call them organizations, rather than alterizations or adaptizations. People, especially in groups, need Read the rest of this entry »

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The Killer Angels
by Michael Shaara

Fabulous insight into the military mind, the minds of men, the minds of people dedicated to actions and ideals greater than themselves.

Kurt Vonnegut is said to have revealed the secret of fiction as, “Create characters the reader cares about, then do something terrible to them.” Mr. Shaara gives us a dozen characters worth caring about–from both armies–and then plunges them into one of the most terrible things to happen on American soil: the cataclysmic Battle of Gettysburg. The book is a model of storytelling, and beautifully written. My brother, who earned a Masters in American History just for the fun of it, warned me to Read the rest of this entry »

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It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

–Teddy Roosevelt
Citizenship in a Republic
Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

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