Chesley Burnett Sullenberger, was born January 23, 1951 in Dennison, Texas, to a dentist father and an elementary school teacher mother. An exceptional student with a brilliant mind, he joined Mensa at the age of 12. After graduating from high school, he entered the US Air Force Academy. Already a competent pilot, he was...

“Good luck on your new position,” said the outgoing chairman. “You’ll start heading towards your objectives, look behind you, and find no one there.” “I don’t know why no one will help,” complained another leader. “Surely they can see I am overloaded. I can’t understand why they don’t step up and pitch in.” If there...

Leaders, especially superlative ones, are achievers. They get things done. They are typically hands-on, roll up the sleeves type of people who attack life and its opportunities head on. It is that sort of attitude that contributes to success, a tenacious, never say die pursuit of achievement. Typically they are labeled Type A, but I...

If there is one competency that separates a leader from a manager, it is this one: the ability to maintain a forward focus and organize change to facilitate it. There are a thousand things that compete for our attention (well, maybe not a thousand but it can seem like it). And there are a thousand...

Keeping Up Appearances Communication always happens. Even when you are not deliberately sending a text, speaking before a group, speaking with someone, making a call, or any of the other acts we would equate with communicating, leaders are always communicating something. That is the symbolic nature of the job. Someone somewhere is reading something into...

Born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum in 1905 to a Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ayn Rand, as she came to be known in the US, became one of the 20th centuries most controversial and influential authors and philosophers. After the Russian Revolution, her family’s business was confiscated by the government as the country became a...

Jason (not his real name) was a perfectly irritating individual. There was just something about him that was abrasive and off-putting. He had been crossways with nearly everyone in the building. He had a Gomer Pyle intellect, a Barney Fife attitude, and a Machiavellian manner. Upper management moved him from department to department almost always...