Leadership and people management principles

¶ … Leading People

Being able to lead people is extremely important. I have been a leader in both the government and the private business environment for more than 20 years. Leadership experience that I have currently encompasses service to my nation as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army and as a senior civilian manager within the Department of Veterans Affairs of the Department of Defense. During the time that I have worked in these environments I have learned that leading a change initiative requires much more than simply envisioning the future. It requires staying on top of budgets, people, materials, vendors, and others, while at the same time ensuring that the necessary activities of the business on a day-to-day basis continue. In today's fast-paced and rapidly evolving environment, change is the norm. Before an organization can completely finish their adjustment to one change the same organization often gets hit with several other changes. Individuals are now living in a period of almost constant transition and the shelf life that we have for solutions keeps getting shorter. In other words, what works for an individual or organization often becomes history very rapidly.

There are two examples of this that are important to discuss briefly here. The first example involves the Office of Protocol and the establishment of it as it was very difficult to find a balance between the traditional military protocol and the providing of protocol services that supported the VA's culture and its mission. I also learned how to integrate many of the essential components of an organization such as the financial, technological, and human capital resources that were necessary to standardize protocol service delivery. Once again I seized the opportunity to demonstrate my skills in leading individuals and I did this by emphasizing the area of team building by planning a team that all worked together to execute delivery of cabinet level protocol related services. I developed the infrastructure for this program as well as developing my staff to help the department's success in many of the protocol related activities within the VA to support several high-profile events between 2001 and 2005.

I have learned that a very important ingredient in leading people is being able to measure the level of success that is achieved in accomplishing the mission. I developed and implemented many annual reporting requirements in order to measure the production of the Office of Protocol activity and to also track the implementation of the VA's new mission throughout the department. I was fortunate to have the ability to lead such an elite cadre of hand-picked staff in order to provide protocol services for related activities. Each staff member was new to the VA and also to the types of services that were being delivered. As such, I was able to personally train each member of my staff to ensure that the efforts that they made were in accordance with the VA's mission. I am pleased to say that the performance results of my staff were very impressive. I believe much of this has to do with the mentoring that I gave my employees and they have been successfully nominated to hold many positions on several activities within the organization.

I value diversity very strongly and half of the employees that I have are minorities, women, and veterans. They have many unique roles in their lives which range from being parents, spouses, and single parents to balancing the demands of home and work life, and providing top-notch services to the department. I took this group of talented employees and transformed them into a cohesive and high achieving team.

Another example of leading people occurred in July 2004 in which I had four challenges which overlapped and greatly impacted the performance of my organization. There was a 30% turnover in staff during this time with employees moving to North Carolina and Florida. Because of this, the challenge of recruiting for a season that is historically busy was a very high priority. Secondly, there was a transition of the organization's leadership during that period of time which required a shift in operations education for the staff. The third challenge was the planning and execution of many of the high-profile events that took place during that time and which I had to work on and be involved in on a daily basis. The fourth challenge involved my selection to participate in a senior executive service candidate development program. This required me to attend courses for core qualifications as well as maintaining my job performance on a daily basis.

Within a six-month time frame from August of 2004 to February of 2005 I recruited for the positions that were open, interviewed 11 candidates, hired new employees, provided on-the-job training, built a cohesive team of professionals, and planned and executed several high-profile events. One of the main benefits of the online college program I was required to take for the senior executive service candidate development program was that it made me much more aware of various ways to maximize the positives and work around or even actually change the negatives, as well as how to avoid overuse of the positives.