Course 5: Leadership Excellence
What you'll learn
- Ditch the office.
- Have fun.
- Concentrate on only one big thing at a time.
- Kindness, civility, and courtesy are the essence of an effective organization.
Requirements
- Desire to become a better leader or manager.
- Desire to improve your workplace.
- Involvement in an organization such as a company or club.
Description
The U.S. Navy paid my way through college. I paid them back with four years of service. The first 18 months were in Vietnam, where I was a Navy combat engineer (Seabee). I had two tours in Vietnam, two commanding officers (COs). I call them “Captain Day” and “Captain Night.” Together they taught me more about leadership—good and bad—than I could imagine. And the lessons stuck.
Captain Day, my first deployment boss, loved his sailors—not unlike Dwight Eisenhower loved his Army troop—and Herb Kelleher loved his team at Southwest Airlines (more on that coming up). He was a no nonsense get-the-job-done-on-time guy, but he clearly gave a damn—A BIG DAMN—about each and every one of us. He also avoided the command tent and spent most of his day in the field. Ten years after Vietnam I learned what to call his style: MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around—a Hewlett-Packard invention.
Deployment No. 2 brought “Captain Night.” He had a different style of “leadership” entirely. It’s often called “by the book.” He was a stickler for formalities. In fact, I sometimes thought he was more interested in typo-free reports of jobs not yet done than hell-and-high-water-completed construction with, perhaps, sketchy documentation. I had a crappy time, as did virtually all of us junior officers; and our track record in getting things done for our customers was less than sterling. For me, the quintessential event came when I was summoned to the CO’s office and lectured on the difference between “tangible” and “palpable” in a report I’d prepared that was going up the chain of command—to this day, over 50 years later, I have no idea what the difference is between the two words. But I damn well know the difference between “Day” and “Night”—and the yawning gap between leadership that fosters growth and pride-in-accomplishment versus leadership that does the opposite.
I went from Vietnam to the Pentagon, and got another “degree” in leadership—this time leadership in big bureaucracies. Some of my bosses could move mountains, some could not.
I don’t like fancy stuff so I’ve boiled my leadership learning in this course to 24 tools. No theory, just 24 leadership tools that work. My goal, then, is to give you a big box of “stuff”—practical ideas you can apply as soon as you finish watching and reading.
Who this course is for:
- Leaders and managers trying to navigate these tumultuous times
- Owners of small or medium size businesses
- Executive Level Managers
- Solopreneurs
- B-Level Managers
Instructor
Tom is a management guru, speaker, and best-selling author.
He co-authored In Search of Excellence, which has been called "the greatest business book of all time." His 2018 book, The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last, received praise by world-renowned experts including Seth Godin, Jack Bogle, and Bo Burlingham. Tom started the personal branding movement with an article in Fast Company called "The Brand Called You."
Tom is passionate about Excellence in the workplace and offering simple ways to make big change happen. His Excellence Now Campaign 2020-2022 includes an eBook, Excellence Now: The 43 Number Ones, a book, Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism, and a six-part online course series here at Udemy called Excellence: Now More Than Ever. Tom, called "The Red Bull of Management Thinkers," is now offering his expertise on Udemy so that you can create a workplace that people love.