In the Seat

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly empathetic person. I don’t naturally lead through emotion. I tend to process problems logically, make utilitarian decisions, and focus on outcomes. But that description gets complicated when I look at how I actually lead people. I still think about dignity. I still soften the edges of hard feedback. I still weigh someone’s personal circumstances again...

Setting a goal is usually the easy part. The harder part is discovering that the path toward it is rarely as simple as it looked from the beginning. This Talk uses my pursuit of a perfect fitness score as the backdrop for a broader discussion about difficult goals: failed attempts, changing plans, frustration, and discovering new problems only after solving the old ones. The goal stayed the same....

Every new level brings authority, responsibility, and problems you have never actually carried before. Schools, doctrine, observation, and previous assignments can prepare you, but none of them let you be the commander before you are the commander. This Talk came from a conversation with a junior officer who was apprehensive about taking command—and the realization that the apprehension itself was...

A few months ago,  What Are We Measuring?  asked a basic question: when we evaluate another leader, are we measuring them against an objective standard—or against our own idea of what good looks like? I was uncomfortable with how much of my own perspective inevitably entered that judgment. I’m less uncomfortable with it now. An evaluator’s job is not to somehow become perfectly objective. It is to...

The Talks: Why It Exists In the Seat starts with the questions I am still working through. The Talks is where I take the ideas that have become clearer over time and talk about the answers: what I think, why I think it, the experience that shaped it, and where it may matter. Some of those conversations will grow out of questions raised on In the Seat. Others come from leadership ideas developed ov...

I put a lot of energy into command. I’m present, available, involved, and usually operating at a pretty aggressive pace. I’ve always viewed that as a positive example of what engaged leadership can look like. But I started wondering whether some people see something different. Instead of thinking,  I want to do that someday,  do they think,  There is no way I want my life to look like that? This e...

I built this podcast around a simple constraint: no polished answers. The point was to work through real leadership tensions in public—to expose the uncertainty, tradeoffs, and unfinished thinking that usually get cleaned up before anyone else sees them. Fifteen episodes later, that constraint is starting to create a new problem. There are things I want to talk about that I am no longer wrestling...

We talk a lot about balance as if the goal is to keep every part of life evenly weighted. I don’t think that’s how it actually works. Family, work, military service, health, and personal priorities all demand different levels of attention at different times. Sometimes one of them needs to become the solo. The question is not whether the mix is equal. It is whether you are still paying attention to...

I want to build a culture where leaders understand the intent and then move. No unnecessary permission. No constant oversight. Go do good things. But that kind of empowerment assumes something: judgment. What happens when someone is capable, energetic, and valuable, but that same energy starts carrying them outside the boundaries? How much do you correct before you start killing the initiative you...

What does a mistake say about the leader responsible for the organization where it happened? This episode starts with a simple mentoring point: you will make mistakes. But the harder question is what happens when responsibility expands faster than control. As leaders become responsible for more people and more outcomes, they also become less directly involved in the decisions that produce them. Th...

Quietly Visible Good work does not always speak for itself. Leaders often want to believe that results, consistency, and reputation will eventually make their capability obvious. But organizations rarely observe the full body of work. Supervisors see outcomes, records, brief interactions, and occasional snapshots. They do not always see the judgment, preparation, or effort beneath them. In this ep...

Some separation between what we personally believe and what we professionally do is probably necessary. But too much separation becomes dangerous. This episode explores the tension between personal conviction and professional obligation — especially inside an apolitical institution asked to execute decisions that come from political leaders. It also wrestles with the harder question: execution may...

People join the military for all kinds of reasons. Adventure. Family legacy. Money. Direction. Opportunity. But eventually those reasons stop being enough on their own. This episode explores the difference between why we join and why we stay — and how service can slowly shift from something transactional into something tied to identity, stewardship, influence, and purpose. It also wrestles with a...

What happens when your sense of legitimacy becomes tied to how much burden you can carry? This episode explores the relationship between suffering, capacity, and leadership identity. Not just the ability to endure hardship, but the desire to prove usefulness, competence, and legitimacy through carrying more than everyone else. The focus here is not on physical toughness alone. It is on the emotion...

What happens when reality stops validating the image you have of yourself? This episode explores the tension between confidence and honest self-correction. High performers often rely on belief in themselves to push through difficulty, but that same confidence can quietly become resistance to reality when performance no longer matches expectations. Using the experience of the E3B competition and th...

What happens when leader involvement starts creating dependence instead of growth? This episode explores the tension between staying engaged and letting go. Leaders are supposed to develop people, but it is easy to confuse access, responsiveness, and fast decision-making with actual leader development. The focus here is not on becoming absent or hands-off. It is on the difference between empowerme...

What happens when a leader’s presence starts affecting the outcome more than their intent? This episode explores the tension between staying engaged and knowing when to step back. As leaders become more senior, it gets easier to stay involved in the name of helping, guiding, or staying informed. But involvement is not always neutral. Sometimes it adds value. Sometimes it changes the room in ways t...

What happens when an organization says it wants innovation, but only rewards success? This episode explores the tension between mission accomplishment and risk tolerance. In high-stakes organizations, failure is hard to accept, but without some tolerance for failure, real innovation usually never happens. The focus here is not on excusing poor performance. It is on separating reckless failure from...

After a year in command, it might seem early to think about the next assignment. But the higher you go in the Army, the more those decisions start to shape the rest of your trajectory. In this episode, I wrestle with a tension I didn’t expect to feel this strongly. For most of my career, the assumption was simple: if you want to influence the Army, you climb as high as possible. More rank means mo...

In the Seat  is a series about the responsibility that comes with occupying positions of authority — the weight, the judgment, and the tradeoffs that aren’t always visible from the outside. In this opening episode, I wrestle with how we evaluate leaders inside a system that demands both excellence and sustainability. If I’ve structured my life around a particular model of command, is it fair to us...