INTERVIEW TRUSTED MENTORS – SHARE LESSONS LEARNED
Concept: By interviewing three trusted mentors which have extraordinary leadership qualities, experience, and lessons to learn from, I aim to capture those lessons and share with a greater Army and leadership focused audience.
Prior to the interviews, I provided each of them the questions focused on stories and dialog. Two of the interviews were web-based and one interview was in-person. I recorded both web-based interviews and most of the one face to face interview.
Output: Following the interview, I wrote an article for publication later this year (NCO Journal, Army Engineer Magazine). The publication date is later this year. Additionally, I have opportunities to give this as a presentation to the 416th Engineer Group NCOs and use it during the upcoming Great Lakes Regional Leadership Development Program in May 2017.
Connections to Organizational Leadership Masters and Personal Philosophy:
The competencies discovered and demonstrated in this project intersect with my leadership philosophy. In the article, I captured lessons of being authentic, taking care of people, and learning the job you are in. Not communicated in the article, are lessons of depth/breadth of leadership influence, always being adaptable/flexible, moral/ethical decisions, the value of continually learning, diversity, managing vs leading, and developing vision. All are competencies that were studied in the Gonzaga Organizational Leadership Masters program. This project connected and forced me to reflect on those lessons.
Leadership Philosophy Intersection: I believe that leaders care for other people, not because they have to, but simply because they want to and can. And by doing so, others can find their success. As I reflected on the interviews, I noticed the similarity from the words / lessons of all three (Todd Burnett, Ron Johnson and Hal Reynolds). The matches allowed me to relook and consider my philosophy. It gave me strength and inspiration. This shows personal value in the project. Looking towards the future, my hope is that those words will resonate also with young Soldiers and potential future Command Sergeant Majors.
Informing Ongoing and Future Development: The act of doing the interviews and the project is developing me into a better leader and listener. It is not only listening during the interview, but it also required over a dozen reviews on what was said as I wrote the article. The value was discovering that things are missed, even after several iterations reminding me that active listening is a practiced skill.
Featured in the article are Command Sergeant Major (Ret) Todd Burnett – Former CSM of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Army Command Sergeant Major Ronald Johnson, Transatlantic Division Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Army Command Sergeant Major Harold Reynolds, the Dean and Commander of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. It was impossible to put all the lessons in the article. The article is prefaced by a short bio of each and how I came to know each of them. Please share with others you think would benefit.
Below are the links to the Interviews and a TOPIC TIMELINE for each. Again, please share if you think this would benefit others.
Ron Johnson Interview (21 MAR, 2017):
Harold Reynolds Interview (18 MAR, 2017):
Todd Burnett Interview (24 MAR, 2017):
Finding Pfalz (life in Rheinland-Pfalz) 