I enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17. I wanted to prove myself to the world and to myself. What better testament to my worthiness than to become a Marine. It was an incredible challenge and my first adventure into the arena of “human potential.” I loved the sense of purpose and identity that came from being a Marine, so much so that I went on to become an Officer. As a Marine Lieutenant, I was deeply schooled in the traditional models of servant leadership that have made the Marine Corps so famous. I discovered tools, techniques, orientations, and philosophies that facilitate profound personal growth and foster unbreakable connections, even in the face of extreme adversity.
After the military, I earned an MBA and joined Towers Perrin as a strategy and organization consultant. Armed with my Marine training and an MBA I thought I was ready to take the world by storm, but quickly learned that there was a shadow to the style of leadership that I had been trained in. I received healthy doses of feedback and began to see the limitations of a leadership model based on invulnerability. These limitations showed up in my personal life too. I began to see that a cloak of invulnerability didn’t make me more worthy, it blocked my growth and my connection with others. That insight put me on a path of focused self-development and exploration that I walk to this day.
At the same time, as a Management Consultant, I started working in organizations and was shocked to find that most leaders were operating out of a similar “invulnerability” model. In business, the focus tended to be more on intellectual invulnerability, but the impact was the same – people weren’t connecting, trust levels were low, teams struggled to get clear on strategies and align on priorities, and very few leaders were focused on “how” to build and lead teams that could execute strategy. As a consultant, I got to see first-hand that life in many “world-class” organizations was stressful and miserable for most people. At the time, few organizations and leaders were addressing the critical connection between leadership and strategy. High-priced strategy consultants (of the kind I was) only tried to solve the problem with deeper strategic analysis – they didn’t have the capabilities to dive into leadership mindset and team dynamics.
Given the incredible influence of business on society, I also saw that the failure of leaders and organizations to truly evolve in more conscious and connected ways had an impact far beyond business. In 1998, with that insight and the skills we had gathered along the way, a former Marine, a world-class white water guide, a Harvard MBA, and an AT Kearney Consultant founded Trium. Our mission: change the world by changing the way business leaders think. I have been fortunate to be living that mission since.
Perhaps most important to all of this and the thing I’m most proud of is my amazing 20+ year marriage and my two wonderful children who’ve grown up in a semi-functional household quite differently from the dramatic dysfunction that both my wife and I experienced. My deepest passions beyond my family are my close group of lifelong friends, big mountain skiing, the music of the Grateful Dead, and The Work of Byron Katie, and I am deeply grateful to have a life that supports all of that coming together.
