Thomas Kolditz

Operating environments for both government and business are characterized by volatility, complexity, and uncertainty—perfect conditions for crises to emerge. Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz, author of In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It, shows how extreme life-and-death situations can offer profound lessons for leaders in any setting. Tom’s research reveals that the leadership skills and principles evident in dangerous settings also apply to leading in business and everyday life, making this program applicable to both personal and professional success.

Fear of failure holds companies back. General Kolditz shows anxious employees, particularly young people, that failures, even big ones, do not necessarily end one’s career IF handled properly. He reviews a number of colorful mini-case studies of significant failures, then stuns the audience with the reveal that the failures were all his. He unpacks how fear affects leadership, and discusses how firing vs. retaining personnel really works. His direct professional experience at managing failure, yet becoming highly successful, is both informative and inspirational to all for whom fear that a single failure is a career ender.

If you can’t measure it, how do you know it’s working? With four successful start-ups, and as the founding executive director of the Ann & John Doerr Institute for New Leaders, Tom shares specific techniques for sparking innovation, tracking outcomes, and achieving real results. Management by OKRs has been extraordinarily successful in stand-alone start-ups, but it also energizes innovation and initiative in established organizations. Tom can lay out the “how.”

Too often, leaders hope for success without using specific techniques for leading effectively. After leading dozens of organizations on 4 continents, and teaching leaders and leadership for 25 years, Tom distills eight proven techniques he uses regularly to get the job done as a leader. This presentation is extremely pragmatic and will allow for immediate application in peoples’ professional and personal lives.

One of a leader’s most powerful legacies is developing the leaders who follow them. Leadership development programs in business are often focused on talent managers and HR directors. Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz illustrates how, in an evidence-based way, each leader can personally and directly develop their people, increasing the performance and retention of employees and building a solid foundation for the future. Tapping leadership development principles used at West Point, the Yale School of Management, and other high-performing organizations, Tom’s presentation creates a clear path and practical framework for leaders to have greater impact and influence over their people while simultaneously helping them achieve their potential.

Few people want to be put into a position of being crisis managers. So how can leaders prepare organizations to avoid crises before they occur? In this engaging talk, Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz will take the audience through specific processes and techniques to help leadership anticipate and prevent crises and have a more effective, more empowered workforce every day.

While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the top of the pyramid, “servant leadership” is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps develop the team to perform as high as possible. In this keynote, Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz outlines the most prominent servant leader approaches, and how all leaders can adopt servant-leader behaviors to impact the growth and well-being of other leaders, team members, and the organizations to which they belong.