Meyer: What do you do?

Ruggero: I help business develop leaders and help them with leadership issues.  Leadership is an under-used lever in business.  Everyone is always looking to squeeze out 1%, 5%, more efficiency but usually the focus is on processes, that's what mangers do and often ignore about leadership.  I help them build better leaders at the mid-level, be better leaders at the top, and improve leadership in the frontlines.

I try to get people to a common understanding as to what leadership is and leaders should be expected to do and then give them tools so they can improve their own leadership and really get a vision as to how the can improve their leadership throughout their organization.

Meyer: What's the West Point connection?

Ruggero: I taught a West Point.  I published a book called Duty First: West Point and the Makings of American Leaders.  It's an inside look at how West Point goes about this.  The point of Keynote speech is that the way West Point goes about leadership is applicable to business. 

The way about leadership development is find the right people.  Challenge those people. Asses what they are doing, measure it, give them feedback and give them room to fail because when you let them stretch they are going to fall down.  That's the crunch point in a lot of leadership development programs.  It's very difficult to let someone go ahead and make a mistake if you have been through it.  But it is essential because that is the ultimate teaching tool.  The experience of failure can in effect shake a person world view. 

Meyer: Do you pull from historic examples?

Ruggero: We take people to Normandy.  The principles of leadership remain the same.  If you look military organization the ultimate test of leadership is combat.  If you look to history you see over and over people making tough decisions in incredible stressful situations.  Thos principles are transferable even when there is less stress.   The reason we go to Normandy and Gettysburg is there an emotional component of being there, this is very hard to replicate in an academic setting.

Especially Normandy, it really broke down a lot of barriers.  I am a story teller so I deliberately worked that angle to reach people.  It helps them open up.

Normandy provides materials at every level: strategic, global, and personal.  I have book coming in the spring about the America n Paratroopers in Normandy so it is based upon.I can personalize the story.

When you send people out into the chaos of war you need people who are willing to make decisions and what you get are leaders who are empowered to make decisions, are expected to make decisions, which is a pretty good description of the kinds of leaders most business would like to have as well.  They have been through it, they know their stuff, their people, and they are ready to step up.

• Set the example
• Have a personal connection to the people you lead
• I talk about leadership development as deliberate

People think leadership development is somewhat supposed to take place through osmosis.  They don't take this deliberate approach to coaching people for instance. 

The principals of leadership at the highest level are the same and one the most successful organizations in the world for building leaders is the US Military.  Business people can learn from these transferable principals.

A lot of people who are not from the military assume leadership is all authoritarian, command and control, which is not true.   Leadership in combat is decentralized so the trick is to build leaders.  People who are willing to take decisions and there is a way to go about that and the military has been going about that for a very long time.

Find people who want to do that, challenge them, and stretch their skills, asses them, give them time to reflect, and let them know they are going to fail, drag them out of their comfort zone.  There is going to be some time when you fall.  The important thing is that you get back up again.  We learn something from that.

Meyer: What is the most common mistake made by corporate leaders?

Ruggero: Aside the one that people just assume leadership is going to happen, people will tend to overestimate their own leadership abilities.  They think because I am such a great leader somehow the people around me are going to absorb these lessons.  They don't think of leadership development as something they have to plan. 

The second thing is that many people are conflict avoiders.  They think of coaching in terms of conflict.  You have a problem that I have to fix, which is really not what coaching is about.  Coaching is "where do you want to go and what does your organization need; let's see how we can match those things up."  A lot of people won't have those hard conversations. 

It is the assumption leadership happens by osmosis and the fact that I avoid it that it will somehow going to handle itself. 

Do good leaders tend be less self-reflective?

In leadership you got to know your self, you got to know your stuff, it's what your people are capable of.  It starts with what you are capable of.  A lot of people are unwilling to turn that harsh light on them.

I wrote a book about writing your own leadership philosophy.  It's right out of the stuff the US Navy does.