Last week participants gathered for an opening session at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, where they heard from President George W. Bush, General Peter Pace, former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, among others. Participants were selected after a rigorous application and review […]

Last week I flew to Washington, D. C. and drove to the Westin Hotel in Annapolis, Maryland, to attend the 5th annual Service Academies Global Summit.  I was going to represent RallyPoint and also to speak.  The conference began with a reception.  Attending the Summit were graduates and current students of all of the nation’s […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zMwcc6fsWA A special thank you goes out to RegularVeteran.com | twitter.com/RegularVeteran | instagram.com/RegularVeteran | Facebook.com/RegularVeteran for doing such a great job hosting this video blog!

I was so proud of my colleagues at the VA.  They shared their data which demonstrated a continual decline in the usage of opioids and an increase in alternative treatments for pain management that include acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, and whole health coaching.  Dr. Robert Sproul, Pharmacy Pain Program Manager and a leading voice nationally, […]

Thursday morning Diane and I were up before 6 a.m.  I was suffering a cold, so I slept in rather than exercised.  Plus, I wanted to get ready for the day’s events.  We went down to the Washington Room of the Thayer Hotel, where we met Claudia Phillips, who is Director of Events for the […]

Seamless leadership transitions are necessary for organizations to sustain themselves and thrive.  Only 61 companies on the Fortune 500 list when it started in 1955 were still on the list in 2015.  Certainly one factor that led to the demise of those companies who fell off the list was poor succession planning and bad leadership […]

The McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character began in 2012 with the vision of being the premier transformative, short-duration leadership experience for young, emerging global leaders who unite together with preeminent world leaders in an enduring partnership. The conference has been hosted each year by the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Since its inception, […]

The mission of the McDonald Conference for Leaders of Character (MCLC) is to bring together a diverse group of the top undergraduate student leaders from across the globe with world class senior leaders who act as mentors in a team-based, experiential event that bolsters leadership skills, fosters critical thinking and collaboration, and develops potential strategies […]

One of my ten leadership beliefs is the importance of “everyone wants to succeed, and success is contagious.” I have never in all my life, in any career, in any country, at any time, met a person who tries to fail.  Everyone I have met wants to succeed.  So, the job of the leader is […]

I often am asked what is the most difficult role of the leader?  While there are many difficult roles, my experience and that of those with whom I’ve talked would say the most difficult and time-consuming task is getting the right leadership team in place. Adaptation Is a Must Organizations like human beings need to […]