Dave Anderson | Leadership Training and Consultation
He sat across from me for 90 minutes. He demonstrated drive, humility, sales skills, and the character I love to hire. The problem was his background. I was hiring for a high-end medical sales position. But, he was selling dumpster pick-up service to restaurants. I really liked Jeff. But I hired someone else because Jeff didn’t fit the mold. I made the wrong decision.
Continue Reading…
There is a lot of discussion of the word integrity in business books, in politics, in universities…in every walk of life. I read about it all the time. But, my father, General Jim Anderson, the former Master of the Sword at West Point, taught me more about integrity than any other source. He says:
INTEGRITY requires three steps:
- Discerning what is right and wrong.
- Acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost.
- Saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong.
Continue Reading…
“What do you think of your team’s execution?” Coach John McKay was asked. “I’m for it!” McKay replied. The expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers finished that season winless and McKay captured the hearts of coaches everywhere with that comment.
Whether it is in sports or in business, leaders often spend endless hours preparing strategies to insure success, only to see those plans fail due to poor execution. Whose fault is it? Is it the players’ fault? Is it the leaders’ fault? Continue Reading…
I agreed to talk to the boss. Three of my peers approached me about a sales campaign that they thought missed the mark. It was our boss’s idea, but it wasn’t a good one.
Over time, I became the person my peers came to when someone needed to confront our boss. I accepted that role and felt comfortable doing it. I just wish my peers would have spoken directly to our boss themselves instead of going through me. Continue Reading…
I took a week long vacation recently in Puerto Rico. I got a massage while I was there. As I was lying on the table during my session, I realized the therapist was really not doing a good job.
I longed for the person who I use close to home. She does a great job. She knows my problem areas and gets after them. The guy who was working on me in Puerto Rico was just not cutting it.
The guy in Puerto Rico worked like an average manager. My favorite masseuse at home works like a great leader. Continue Reading…
When everything began to unravel for Pete, I knew I was going to have fire him. I took it personally. Like most leaders, I rarely lose sleep over the technical issues of my job. It is the people who give me insomnia. In this case it was Pete.
I hired Pete. He had all the promise in the world. But, he turned out to be a bad hire. He lied to me. He didn’t work hard and he pulled the wool over my eyes for longer than I wanted to admit. Continue Reading…
This is a copy of the last blog written by a student from the Brook Hill School who went to Uganda over spring break. It also happens to be my 16 year old son, Jake.
I may be biased, but this is better than anything I have ever written.
See what K.I.S.S. means to a 16 year old.
#Prouddad
Simplicity In Rwemikoma
PCM Ministries
Today’s student perspective comes from Jake:
Time slows down in Africa. Emmy D comes to pick us up at least 45 minutes later than the agreed upon time every day, if we are lucky. Some of the Type A’s around here are annoyed at least somewhat by this, however, when you take a step back, it is quite refreshing. Continue Reading…
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.” –C.S. Lewis
Wow. Opening this post with this quote from C. S. Lewis just heightened my level of attention to a subject that has been watered down through over use and misunderstanding through the years. How do we recover the word Courage from the Buzzword purgatory it’s currently relegated to?
My answer is to define it and to continually discuss it. That is the problem with corporate values statements as well. They are inadequately defined and communicated infrequently.
Continue Reading…
Merriam Webster took me on an odyssey to get to a definition of leadership. I seem to remember being taught in school to not use the root of a word to define that word. Someone should have told Merriam that!
Merriam Webster Says:
Definition of LEADERSHIP
1: the office or position of a leader
2: capacity to lead Continue Reading…
Leadership is a blend of competence and character.
BG (Retired) Jim Anderson, my father, taught me that. In 41 years in the Army, including two tours in Vietnam, he saw a lot of great leaders and a lot of leadership failures that formed his philosophy.
I started this website with this post. I have learned a lot since then. Thank you for joining me and contributing. Every time you comment on a blog, you make me better. Thank you for that!
Continue Reading…