By Peter Myers, Senior Vice President, DDJ Myers, Ltd.
Employee engagement, satisfaction, and internal Net Promoter Scores are now common practices; even the NCUA is focused on increasing its employee engagement. As a consulting partner with a talent–management focus, we’re all in favor of organizations improving their cultures. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” right?
The COVID-19 environmental disruption, the call to enhance and expand member digital services, #blacklivesmatter, and the retirement of board members comprise a profound confluence of opportunities. These opportunities should not become issues with the right actions. Two years ago, a significant percentage of board members (30-40%) declared they would retire in three to five years. In addition, many tenured board members assert that younger generations are not committed to volunteering their time.
These simultaneous transformative disruptions beg questions of each board: What resources are needed now? How does our board’s governance structure take care of our membership in this disruptive and transformative situation? What conversations are needed to understand the board’s obligation to add more strategic value?
Board members should also self-reflect: Am I the best resource for this board? How will I know? What is my unique value? How do I impede success? Am I willing to step aside? Do I live as a legend in my own mind?
Accordingly, this book covers a wide spectrum of study that can help us to better understand the lives of military personnel, veterans, and their families. The book is organized in three sections. • The first section looks at the need for the proper treatment of veterans and military personnel who have experienced different forms of trauma, such as moral injury. • The second section looks at the impact on an individual’s identity as a result of traumatic change, such as the suffering of amputation or loss of limb. • The third section is focused on the challenges of military spouses, given that the well-being of military families has only received scant scholarly attention in the past. In sum, this book aims to provide an overview of a wide range of scholarship in the realm of contemporary veteran and military family issues. Each of the chapters are based on the groundbreaking research of seven doctoral graduates of Fielding Graduate University, edited by Miguel Guilarte, PhD and Barton Buechner, PhD.
Deedee Myers, PhD, MSC, PCC, CHIC Founder & CEO of DDJ Myers is a contributor to this important compilation dedicated to serve the military community.
The dualistic strengths-versus-weaknesses perspective so common in professional development is a helpful starting point in the conversation on developing leadership skills. However, this focus on weakness can also be limiting and leave us with a fixed, narrow view of what a successful leader looks like, of ourselves as leaders, even of what leadership is or is not.
Our world today is opportunistic in its learning. Yet, there are no roadmaps, no curriculum, and no solidified outcomes. The path of mastery is not a goal; it is a process, a journey, every day in the boardroom, corner office, in the back office, and on the front line.
“By the middle of the morning, I feel as if my shoes are stuck in tar,” stated one CEO. There is no map to guide us on this journey or even to show it. The world “can be viewed as a prodigious journey against mastery” per Leonard. The good news is there are many others stuck in the tar by 10:00 am who share and learn together. An opportunistic perspective is we have many opportunities to advance our leadership mastery, every day.