Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz - Sloppy and Uncoordinated Leader Development

Dr. Tom Kolditz is the founding Director of the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University–the most comprehensive, evidence-based, university-wide leader development program globally. The Doerr Institute was recognized in 2019 as the Association of Leadership Educators' top university leader development program. Before Rice, he taught as a Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Management and Director of the Leadership Development Program at the Yale School of Management.

A retired Brigadier General, Tom led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point for 12 years. In that role, he was responsible for West Point’s teaching, research, and outreach activities in Management, Leader Development Science, Psychology, and Sociology and was titled Professor Emeritus after retirement. A highly experienced global leader, General Kolditz has more than 35 years in leadership roles on four continents. His career has focused on either leading organizations himself or studying leadership and leadership policy across sectors. 

In 2017, he was honored with the prestigious Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership—an honor also bestowed on Doris Kearns Goodwin, Howard Schultz, Tom Peters, and Benazir Bhutto. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is a member of the Academy of Management. 

Professor Kolditz has presented leadership content to more than 300 governmental, corporate, and social sector audiences worldwide. As a professor, he has led academic seminars or given lectures to students from Babson, Wellesley, Duke, Columbia, Yale, the University of Missouri, the Military Psychology Center of the Israel Defense Forces, Peking University, the Beijing International MBA program, Harvard Law School, & Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.

 He’s worked with the CIA, FBI, and DEA. Kolditz has appeared on Bloomberg TV, 60 Minutes Sports, ABC World News, ABC 20-20, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CBS, NPR, Calgary Today, Morning Ireland, and interviews with reporters from the New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, Discovery, the Washington Post, and more than a dozen national and international news agencies.

Dr. Kolditz holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Vanderbilt University, three Master’s degrees, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Missouri.

 A Quote From This Episode

• "In the first chapter of Leadership Reckoning we excoriate universities, for sloppy, uncoordinated, amateurish leader development, that just doesn't match their excellence. "

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• Doerr Institute for New Leaders
  • Carnegie Elective Classification for Leadership for Public Purpose
  • HigherLed
• Leadership Reckoning by Kolditz, Gill, & Brown
• Inclus

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Transcript

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate 

Scott Allen  0:01  
Okay, good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon wherever you are in the world. Thanks for checking in on the phronesis podcast today. I have Brigadier General Dr. Tom Kolditz, and he is the founding director of the Ann & John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University the most comprehensive evidence-based university-wide leader development program in the world. The door Institute was recognized in 2019 as the top university leader development program by the Association of leadership Educators. And prior to race he taught as a professor in the practice of leadership and management, and was the director of the Leadership Development Program at the Yale School of Management. A retired brigadier general Tom led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and leadership at West Point for 12 years. In that role, he was responsible for West points teaching research and outreach activities and management, leader development, science, psychology, and sociology, and was titled Professor Emeritus after retirement. A highly experienced global leader, general Kolditz has more than 35 years in leadership roles on four continents. His career has focused on either leading organizations himself, or studying leadership and leadership policy across sectors in 2017. He was honored with a prestigious Warren Bennis award for excellence and leadership and honor also bestowed on Doris Kearns Goodwin, Howard Schultz, Tom Peters, Benazir Bhutto, and in 2018 he was globally ranked the number six in coaching by global gurus in independent research and professional ranking organization. And in 2019, he was among eight global finalists in coaching and mentoring by thinker's 50. If I'm not mistaken, we have some Marshall Goldsmith right there. He is a fellow in the American Psychological Association. He's a member of the Academy of Management, Professor Kolditz has presented leadership and content to more than 300 governmental, corporate and social sector audiences worldwide. As a professor he taught at Duke, Wellesley, Columbia, Yale, University of Missouri, Harvard, and you know what he's worked with the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, he has been on Al Jazeera, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, he's been interviewed by the New York Times. And you know what he holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology from Vanderbilt, beautiful campus, three master's degrees, and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Missouri. Sir, what gaps do we need to fill in? What else should listeners know about you? That is, that's just incredible. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks. I really appreciate the introduction. When I introduce myself, what I try to stress is that I'm what I've referred to in the past as a soldier scholar mutt.

Tom Kolditz  2:53  
I, you know, I got my PhD in 1982 as a lieutenant in the army. Hmm. So I'm, I'm academically aware and connected. And I've worked at universities, West Point, Yale, rice, Mizzou, I've also spent at at this point in time, you know, well over 30 years as the principal responsible for an organization, whether it was a business related organization, whether it was a military organization, and so I've got a lot of practical experience that failing at leadership. I mean, I you know, leadership is like a constant stream of mistakes that you overcome, and, and so sometimes they sound like a professor, because I'm referring to research and other times, I sound like a, you know, some old guy that has run a lot of organizations and made all of the dumb mistakes. I made all the easy mistakes, low hanging fruit. That's that's kind of who I am.

Scott Allen  3:52  
Tom, what brought you to this topic of leadership? I mean, I see some roots, potentially, in the sociology and the psychology. What is it about this topic that is always kind of fascinated you? What drew you to the topic of leadership?

Tom Kolditz  4:07  
I was exposed to it at a very young age by my parents who were leaders in the small town. I grew up in a town of 1800 people in Southern Illinois. They were leaders. My dad was on the school board. My mother was a well known nurse who took care of everybody in town. And so it was just kind of assumed that my brother and I have one one brother would be leaders. And I can remember, when I was five or six years old, the first grade teacher pulling me aside when this class was at recess, and telling me, Hey, Tommy, I want you to go out there and I want you to get the kids and make sure that they all come back in here but you can't boss him around. You just have to. You just have to talk to him and get him to come back in. You know, at the time it made perfect sense to me because she played bridge with my parents. I mean, this is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. But looking back on it, what I realized was happening was she was teaching me to lead. And she didn't do that for everyone in the class. She just did it for a few of us. Hmm. You know, then as I progressed through middle school and high school, there were opportunities to lead on athletic teams, and you know, in other organizations, I was very interested in, in psychology, but I, I needed a scholarship to go to a school like Vanderbilt. And so I got an ROTC scholarship. Ah, after I graduated, I went straight to grad school in psychology, I really was fascinated by psychology and sort of the influence that psychology has on on behavior. And I thought the army would make me an army psychologist, a research psychologist. What they did was they said, well, thank you, we don't need any of those right now. We need artillery men. So they made me a Cannoneer, an artillery officer. And it was actually a lot of fun, because I got to shoot big guns. You would think that shooting big guns would be, you know, just sort of this rambunctious thing. It's actually a lot of math. Because you have to do ballistics solutions. You know, you have to understand principles of physics, yes, and how to make this 115 pound projectile land in the right place seven miles away, I was exposed to the need to lead people in the army. And the first person I reported to in the army was actually a West Point graduate who had played basketball for Mike Krzyzewski, when Coach K was the basketball coach at West Point, is very focused on leadership. And he started teaching me about leadership, you know, about how you actually lead soldiers, and I got hooked. I really did. So my whole career because I had a PhD, was back and forth between leading soldiers and in combat type units, or having more sophisticated kind of cerebral jobs in the Pentagon, or in the center for Army leadership or places like that. So it was back and forth between doing it and thinking about it, doing it and writing policies about it, doing it and, and so on, I I've always been sort of a mixture of doer and thinker. And that's, that's kind of how I got to all of this.

Scott Allen  7:39  
Tom, talk about the benefits of having that perspective. How do you make sense of that in your own mind? Because that's an incredible strength doing and studying, and writing and doing? I mean, it just brings such a depth and breadth to your work?

Tom Kolditz  7:57  
You know, Well, John Doerr, who I now know well, and who really inspires me has a saying that ideas are easy. And execution is everything. And in academia, in particular, but in America, in general, we are in love with ideas. But, you know, the max effective range of a leadership speech is zero meters. I mean, it, it does not, it generally does not change a person. And there are a number of things that simply don't have sufficient influence to change people. And you learn that when you practice, you know, when you do it, and there are other academic reasons that have popped up, you know, we've done some research at Rice. And one of the things we discovered is that the correlation between how well students do in leader development programming, and how well they do academically, their grade point average correlation is zero. Well, that's because it's a completely independent set of skills and practice. Leadership is developed through practice. It's not developed, because you figure out some factoid about leadership. You have to go do it. And the best way to do it is somebody who knows what they're doing looking over your shoulder like anything else,

Scott Allen  9:19  
yes, it probably wouldn't have worked to be an artilleryman and just have talked about it and been in the classroom the whole time, right? You get out in the field, that's not going to be good. Right? 

Tom Kolditz  9:30  
And, you know, it's, it's sort of the relationship between science and engineering. It's good to study science, it's sciences do anything. It's only when engineers take it and do something with it, or bio engineers or physician, or whoever. And so there's that aspect to leadership and leader development, university faculty live and work and an individual performer culture. They don't work in a leadership driven culture. Neither do students for the most part. Yes, that's what we have to overcome if we're going to change the way leaders have developed in higher ed.

Scott Allen  10:08  
Well, I want to get to that I want to get to the book. And I want to get to some of your perspectives on that, because I think it's critical. But I want to take a journey to West Point for a couple moments. So I just finished an article. This is probably a couple of weeks ago right now, but it made me think of you. And this discussion. It was, I think the author was Louis and it was really about cadets in their constructive developmental theory Robert Keegan's work, and kind of where the cabinet's cadets were in their development. And it was just a fascinating article, as you reflect on your experience at West Point, and doing the work of leader development, what are some, they could be hallmarks, they could just be reflections. But as you think about that work in that context, what are some things that stand out for you in developing leaders?

Tom Kolditz  10:59  
Yeah, well, you know, we were we were talking about Kegan's work at West Point, beginning in the late 1990s.

Scott Allen  11:07  
Yes, I mean, it's an old article!

Tom Kolditz  11:11  
It was really, it was really great to intellectualize in that way. But if you actually read keygen, as it turns out, getting from one stage to another, in the short for your time of West Point, is pretty difficult to really do. The biggest thing I learned at West Point. And I was chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences, leadership, so I had all the leadership, academic courses. And that sort of thing was that cadets were not learning to lead from the courses that my faculty were teaching, what they were learning was that leadership is important enough that we would teach required classes on. But that's not how they learn to lead, the way they learn to lead is, they would be part of a team that was charged with running a land navigation course. And being in charge of the safety of it, and transportation, and you know, all of the moving parts. And they were coached through that by a very special group of army officers that were picked from the field to come to West Point, and be what we referred to as tactical officers. And that role was so important that we developed a program with Columbia with the teachers college, to give those officers a 36 credit hour master's degree in organizational psychology and leadership and turn them into into coaches. So there were 80 of them. In a student body, only about 4000. I realized at that point in time, that the secret to leader development was to take people who are already passionate about something or interested in something related to leadership or operations or business or what have you. And then coach them through that. Making them better leaders as they go. Look, it's how we make our plumbers, in our electricians. You know, they are premised essentially, yep. And so this fundamental principle of, of showing the people what the way I took with me to the Yale School of Management only instead of having these army officers, I had to use professional leadership coaches, yes. But it showed me that there is no substitute for a professional coach, not a mentor. You know, not an untrained person, but someone who has been trained to develop leaders. So it was like this epiphany that someone who's educated and trained and experienced something is better than someone who is.

But look, look, I'll tell you, if you if you look across, whether it's universities or business, you find all kinds of people who are not educated or trained, or even in some ways experienced at it, who are giving speeches and Ted Talks and you know, all kinds of things that communicate some leadership ideas. But there's no practice component to it. And so it's just, they're just selling it, you know, they're just selling the speech or whatever.

Scott Allen  14:27  
Well, it's interesting. Tom, when you mentioned that you were in ROTC, I posted a paper to, to the discussion that we're having. And in that we do a little case study on ROTC. We interviewed some of the leaders of that program, to just look at how they're approaching the work. And, you know, baked into that whole experience and it's not professional coaches. So that's not where I'm going. But at least there's some level of mentorship and guidance that it's it's occurring. From the senior level cadets from the other individuals, the senior seniors or juniors, who can at least model coach, they can, they can provide feedback to some of the younger cadets. And there's that system that's in place that perpetuates itself. It's hard to replicate at times outside of outside of the military. But it sounds like in many ways that's been a hallmark of your work is in some ways, replicating now we're going to get them a professional coach and ICF, certified coach, who knows what they're doing. And we're going to provide some professional opportunities to be coached, actively coached by a professional to help facilitate that development and that growth. And you're doing that it sounds like at West Point sounds like at Yale. And then you get to door you get to rice. And as I understand it, you helped build this from the ground up. And I know that that's a core piece of your work there right now. Maybe we transition into that story. What brought you to Rice, and what's been built so far. And where are we headed?

Tom Kolditz  16:11  
Yeah. So Anna and John Doerr are both rice graduates. And John is of course a famous venture capitalist. He put the initial money under Google under Amazon, under Netflix,

Scott Allen  16:27  
Would that not be fun to say?

Tom Kolditz  16:30  
No, he's built about 250 companies. Oh, wow. And he felt like he got a great education from rice, but terrible preparation, in terms of leadership skills, and abilities, which he learned through the school of hard knocks. And luckily, he survived. So he and his wife decided they wanted to build a significant infrastructure at Rice, that would bring leadership development opportunities to every student in the school. Wow, that wanted, I was teaching at Yale at the time, and so had 100 came and visited me. And he said, Look, you know, we want you to go down to rice and build this thing. And it was a terrific offer, you know, I've worked directly for the provost, I don't have to be under a dean or anything like that. And I get so little supervision, that I was just had unlimited opportunity. The they gave rise, what at the time was the biggest donation ever $50 million. You know, you give a guy $50 million, and you don't supervise him and stuff starts happening. And so, you know, I was I was able to do some things that other people hadn't, you know, and the coaching thing is big here, we probably coach 35% of the students at Rice, graduate and undergraduate, wow, probably 75% of the MBAs, we've discovered that it costs less than half of classroom instruction. And what that means is, if it costs half on something you're already doing, then it is a choice. Whereas people in the past have looked at something like that. And they think oh, that's, that's so gold plated? No, not really, it's just more efficient than teaching leadership classes and works better in the long haul. Because we coach students in the context of what they're already passionate about. So an engineering student gets coached in an engineering projects team. A cellist in the School of Music. It's coached in the context of a quartet, or the orchestra. Wow. So we're not we're not creating what we refer to as contrived events for students to, you know, ropes, courses, and things like that. We coach students where they're already active and passionate and interacting with other students. That's why it works. Because they have the investment from day one, rather than us inventing some sort of retreat for them to go on, and trying to convince them that it's important.

Scott Allen  19:13  
I mentioned before we started, I just ordered Leadership Reckoning this morning, I downloaded the free chapter that I'll put in the show notes, the link to that talk a little bit about because I imagine some of your foundational thinking is in that text. So I'm looking forward to reading it. But how are you approaching leadership development, leader development in a different way? We've got this coaching Hallmark and major component of this experience. What other components are baked into the philosophy of how you're approaching the work?

Tom Kolditz  19:50  
We go with only four fundamental first principles. The first is that universities have an obligation to develop Students as leaders refer to it as a core function of universities. Second, we only use evidence based techniques. Third, we only use professional leader developers. We don't use professors, mentors, peer coaches, anything like that. And then fourth, we measure outcomes. And something doesn't produce a measurable outcome in students capacity to lead. We kill it. And if it does, we funded. Simple. You know, very simple. And so I mean, coaching works very well. It's not as expensive as people think if they run a smart business model. I mean, if they pay executive rates, then, you know, goodbye. You know, we make sure we pay our coaches, a low and hourly rate, but we give them 10 or 15 clients a semester, yes. And they use that as a base of business, then they add their own executive clients. So it's, we don't think that all university should do exactly what the door Institute does for businesses. But we do think that the first principles are quite fundamental. If the university is delivering something for their students, they shouldn't be using amateurs. They shouldn't be using peer students. I mean, what the hell is up with that, I mean, they would never do that. Poetry or or anything else, but they've but they've become so used to bottom feeding. And that's really what the first chapter of Leadership Reckoning is about we excoriate universities, for sloppy, uncoordinated, amateurish leader development, that just doesn't match their excellence. And I'm not talking about, you know, obscure small schools, I'm talking about top 10 schools that are horrible at leader development. Maybe it's happening in the business school, and they've got an executive education program or something. But for your average undergraduate, it's amateur hour, we see that it's flat wrong. And then after we, we point that out, we spend the rest of the book giving away our ideas, giving away our business model, you know, basically saying, here's, here's how we do it. You don't have to do it in the same way. But if you're going to have in your mission statement, that you're developing the next generation of leaders, you need to treat it the same way you treat other things at the university. Yes, physics or poetry or anything else that you teach. And then we took that book, just to show you how altruistic orientation is, we send three copies each, to the President and Provost to the top 200 universities in the country. Wow, with a letter that basically said, I mean, I'm obviously paraphrasing, but it said, you know, if you're like, most universities, you're screwing this up. And we want to help you, you know, get better. We've had a steady stream of university presidents, we had one university chancellor bring five of his presidents to door Institute. And it really has become a national movement around improvement in the development of college students as leaders, and it's going to have, over time, it's going to probably take 12 to 15 years. But over time, businesses going to have a different product when it comes to college graduates. I mean, you know, we just we just saw, the Chief Scientist for the president united states, resigned because he was a bad leader. We have to start developing scientists and educators and social sector leaders and others on how to lead from the very beginning or they fail at the application of their education. That's where the universities are really failing to give people an education, and they do next to nothing to help them apply it in a social context. Whether it's business or government or social sector, military, wherever, and we're going to change that. That's John doors. Big Idea. That's my big idea. We're gonna change that.

Scott Allen  24:32  
Well, you've mentioned the movement you'd mentioned. You know, there's a consortium that people can be engaged in. Would you talk a little bit about that? Because we're, we're opening it up to people beyond rice? Correct.

Tom Kolditz  24:44  
Oh, for sure. So we're currently leading a consortium as of today. It has 152 colleges and universities in it. They're all interested in having better leader development at their schools. We have partnership now with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and have created a classification that is, in March going to be available to all 5200 colleges and universities in the country. It's an application that's a self examination. So the schools put together committee and they fill out the application to be classified in leadership for public purpose. In other words, fulfilling this obligation by universities to create leaders for business and society. We're just running that system on behalf of Carnegie, it's Carnegie's classification. But we designed it and we we administer it, and our our goal is very simple. It's improvement. That's what we want is improvement. And in the process of putting together this committee, and the university reviewing everything it does, whether it's for students, or faculty or staff isn't to university level assessment, they'll change, they'll see that, you know, they're wasting money on a lot of things that just what we refer to as leader attainment, you know, it's just things that you give to students or others that, you know, oh, they love the retreat, and the salmon was perfectly cooked, but it didn't change them.

Scott Allen  26:21  
Are we moving the needle?

Tom Kolditz  26:23  
And you know, what universe, every university in this country has the capability and the talent to do well, at this. It's just somehow the process has been relegated to bottom feeding, you know, just really low levels of sophistication and excellence. And so all we're really doing is saying, Hey, y'all, come on?  Come on, you know, if you're in the top 20 of universities in this country, and your students are graduating with high school level leadership skills that they brought with them. Which is what we have found, our research shows that if students don't go through a deliberate process of leader development, that getting the four year degree does not even incrementally change their capacity to lead. So we graduate 2.2 million students a year with college educations and high school level leadership skills. What a disaster for business. I mean, it's a strategic nightmare. But that's where we are, over time, as we fix this business is going to have a lot more options in terms of young people who can not only, you know, figure out engineering solutions, but they can run a project team, they can lead other people in the conduct of their work.

Scott Allen  27:49  
Well, to your point, there's so many institutions that it's a it's a marketing slogan, it's it's a statement, even college as a business, where I'm situated, we looked at the top 25. And then the mission, vision or values, it's, you know, we develop leaders and and at the undergraduate level that might equate to a section in an organizational behavior course. At the graduate level, maybe it's a class most of the time, right. And to think that we're quote, unquote, developing leaders in that one segment of organizational behavior. No, we're not. What if we approached accounting that way? You know, here's one segment on accounting, you're now an accountant. No, absolutely not. It's so fascinating, Tom, when you sit back and you kind of look at what we're doing, what we say we want to do what we say we're about. And then when you look at actually what's happening, I couldn't agree with you more, there's a better way. There's a different approach. And we have to do better. I think we have to be graduating individuals who are going back to Robert Keegan, talk about being in over our heads. It's only accelerating? And are we developing and graduating students who are lifelong learners, who have that mindset of growth and development who are used to having a coach and find value in that experience? And then maybe they'll do that on their own? Because that's ultimately to your point. over four years, we're probably not going to move the needle on mental complexity as far as we would love to. But do we set them on that path?

Tom Kolditz  29:32  
Yeah, you know, one of the things we found is that the work that we do, changes the way students think about themselves as leaders Wow, we measure that as a psychological construct called leader identity. What happens when you have the shift and leader identity students be begin acting like their leaders, even if they're not they seek out leader roles at more than 50% Higher rates than their peers. And so they begin to teach themselves. Because they, they change the way they think about themselves as, as leaders. You know, most college students right now don't have a positive view of the term leader or leadership, they've seen too much bad leadership. So they don't necessarily identify with it. And step number one is changing that, getting them to realize that, you know, being a leader has a lot to do with how you treat other people. And, and that, if you practice it, particularly if a coach is encouraging you in certain ways to practice it, you can see it come alive, you know, you can see yourself do it. As soon as that light bulb goes on, in students heads, they take off like airplanes they do, they get better and better in measurable weights. But until that happens, if they sit there in the audience, and they listen to some CEO ramble on about leadership, they don't change your identity at all that CEO, somebody they think they'll never be. So they walk out, they might remember it for a week. But after that, the inspiration goes away, and there's nothing there. So, you know, for a top tier leadership speaker, you know, a school might pay 40,000 $50,000. Well, with that money, you could coach 80 students and get a change, you know, get a change in every one of them.

Scott Allen  31:31  
Yes. 

Tom Kolditz  31:32  
But a lot of you know, a lot of this leadership stuff has politics and cronyism about it. I mean, just people get drawn into universities because they lead somewhere else. They don't know how to develop students as leaders, but by golly, they're going to teach him a seminar in it, you know? It's just about being honest, intellectually honest about what works and what doesn't work. And that's the bread and butter of a university. You know, teach fake physics theories. But they're more than willing to have some leadership person come in and talk some wild snake oil, you know, what they think is Oh, trust. That's what's important.

Scott Allen  32:17  
Tom, I love it. What? So what are you thinking about? What puzzle? Has you perplexed right now, when it comes to the task of developing leaders? In this context? Is there anything okay, we're not quite there yet. We haven't gotten our arms around this. anything come to mind.

Tom Kolditz  32:35  
It's all about scale. We've got the Carnegie thing. That's, that's great. We also have created a course in measurement that's aimed primarily at grad students in social science fields, so that we can over time at scale, populate the universities with people who know how to measure actual leadership outcomes, you know, don't just throw up their hands and say, well, it's just you just can't measure that, you know, that is untrue. And we want to eliminate that myth. But in order to really change, an institutional array, like universities in the United States, will have to have a dozen initiatives, at least. And so right now, what's going on in the door Institute? So we got people working on like, what's the next strategic initiative and most people who work in leader development or leadership, they think at the program level, or maybe the course level, and we are way beyond that, you know, we are thinking about institutional structures in higher education, and how to coordinate mass change in them. That's a big freakin deal, man. It's hard and and it only it will only happen at scale. But we're there with the Carnegie initiative. We're there with the with the measurement course, you know, we'll do 200 A year, probably grad students that are going to go everywhere after they graduate. But but we need we need to do more. Yeah. There are other organizations that focus at the program level. I mean, I'll call out to the association of leadership educators are great about about courses and leadership. And then the, the International Leadership association in the IRA establishes program standards, that's fine. That's their thing, and we endorse them and we think they're doing a great job. It's not our thing. You know, our thing is that at strategic level, and we also think that the changes we're making in universities, businesses watching, they will learn as we go as we develop this in universities, and then they're going to make changes themselves because a lot of money is spent on leader development, and a lot of it is wasted. Yep, you know, a lot of it is not producing. And businesses hate that they hate to spend money and not produce. But the system is not favorable right now.

Scott Allen  35:10  
This whole podcast series started off with an interview with a friend of mine, a colleague named Dave rush. And the episode was called, I have a fear. And it was exactly that all this stuff we're doing isn't necessarily moving the needle. So how do we ensure that we are? And I'm so thankful that you all are exploring, experimenting, building, thinking at this level, that systems level? How do we scale this shift? Because I think that's what it is. It's a big shift, and how we approach the work. Now, as we wind down, what are some things that you've been reading lately, or listening to or streaming, something that's caught your eye? It could have to do with leadership? It doesn't have to do with leadership. But is there anything that's really caught your attention in recent times?

Tom Kolditz  36:00  
Well, you know, I mean, you'd have to be asleep, to not recognize a movement towards diversity, equity inclusion and its effect on leaders and leadership. And so books like Inclusify by Stephanie Johnson, who's a University of Colorado Professor. Susan MacKenty Brady has a book out several books actually, that focus on that both these women are terrific leaders themselves. A little bit of a confession. I really don't read leadership books very much. Yeah. Because because most of them are variations of hundreds that were written before. I learned more by by watching the world, you know, I learned more about watching our students and I learned more about measuring outcomes of things that we do, you know, in some ways, I just don't have the time or the desire to, to do that. Now, I've endorsed quite a few leadership books lately, including books by dedicated and unquestionably capable leadership authors like Jim Kouzes. And Barry Posner, you know, yeah, I've watched a couple of their books and Jim Collins, I, you know, there are people who do write really good leadership books, books have a hard time changing people. Yeah, look, books contain ideas. And unless people move into practice, they're probably not going to learn anything, they may be inspired by the book, they may get some ideas by the book. But those are going to fall by the wayside when they're working every day, or going to school every day or what have you. So it's really tough for leadership books to make a difference. And I, you know, I've written a couple of myself, so I'm not against book writing. I don't spend a lot of time with that.

Scott Allen  37:52  
Anything else outside of leadership? And it could have to do with anything that's caught your attention recently?

Tom Kolditz  37:59  
Well, I have a 13 week old puppy that is preventing me from getting sleep.

Scott Allen  38:06  
Talk about a leadership challenge!

Tom Kolditz  38:08  
You know, the thing weighs 20 pounds, and it's smarter than me. But not, you know, I do, I do watch politics pretty carefully. Because it used to be a place where you could find good leaders. Less so now. It's more about power than it is about leadership. Some of it concerns me, I can remember being a soldier being an army officer in West Germany, when the wall came down the Berlin Wall. Yeah, I was in my battle positions in the Fulda gap, you know, looking over into Czechoslovakia. And on the other side of that border, there was a KGB Captain named Vladimir Putin that was shredding documents, and, you know, doing what people do when their government fails, basically. And we have come full circle now to a point where a lot of people think he's okay, and that, you know, the threat to Ukraine is, is just fine. You know, why do we care about Ukraine, and that I focus on that a lot. That bothers me a lot. Because what's, you know, what's happening in Ukraine is the reason we fought World War Two. Yeah. And so I, I do pay attention to that. I feel like, you know, a good leadership practice leader development practitioner has to watch leaders all the time, whether they're business leaders, whether political leaders, religious leaders, there are things to learn from all of these people. And so I do spend a lot of time with my head in the media, and I don't use one media source. I probably, I read a half a dozen newspapers in the morning. You know, St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Houston Chronicle The New York Times, Chicago Tribune. I mean, I'm I am in all of them. I try to have my reality tested by that. You know, I want to I want to Be aware of the world and living in.

Scott Allen  40:02  
Well it's really fascinating how a number of the different outlets frame the world. And in many cases, it's no longer Walter Cronkite saying "that's the way it is." There's many Walter Cronkite saying that's the way it is. And it can be confusing. And I think one of the only ways to combat that is to do what you're doing is to investigate and explore and be open to these different outlets to better understand the narratives to make sense. But that's confusing for the general public. I think that's hard. That takes what is right, that's six papers a day. That's that's effort.

Tom Kolditz  40:41  
Yeah. Well, I do read fast, and I do pass over things that are irrelevant. Sure, things jump out at you, when the Vice President United States makes a statement that the President Trump was wrong. And a news outlet doesn't publicize that for two days, you can start to make assumptions about what the what the function of that news outlet is, and how it works. So politics and business, you know, these are the outcomes of leadership. These are where leaders matter, I do pay attention. You know, I'm an independent. I'm not I don't belong to a political party. It's very common among army officers that you don't pick sides in that way. And I like that. I mean, I like to be centered. I think it's a good good approach for leader developers to take.

Scott Allen  41:31  
It is so impressive, General, doctor, or should I call you doctor general or general doctor? Tom, it's incredibly impressive what you're building Thanks for the good work that you're doing. Thanks for stopping by today. I'm very appreciative of your time, and excited to not only share this story with the world, but share some of the resources that you're you've developed and I'll provide all kinds of links into the show notes. So keep up the great work. Keep thinking about that problem at scale. I love it. It's awesome. So much fun. Thank you, sir.

Tom Kolditz  42:07  
My pleasure. Thanks for inviting, okay, be well

Transcribed by https://otter.ai